I usually spend a lot of my day just surfing the web and finding cosplay photos. In this case, I don't exactly recall how I stumbled upon Asuka's Bunny Girl version photos but find them I did and post it I did a few months back - and the amount of comments and likes were pretty staggering.
KikaiSaigono is a cosplayer from Atlanta, GA, now currently living in Chicago and attending the Illinois Institute of Art for illustration. Like many of cosplayers, she juggles her interest with illustration as well as cosplay. I originally planned to be at Anime Weekend Atlanta to do a video interview but last moment, I didn't make it out so I emailed her.
The interview after the jump ....
I'm originally from Atlanta, born and raised, and AWA was the first con I had ever attended when I was only twelve years old. I moved to Chicago for school, but I always try every year to make it back to Atlanta to see how AWA has grown each year. It's always the cosplay. There are always amazing cosplays at every con, there's no doubt about that, but there is something about AWA -- The level of craftmanship, the amazing photographers that flock to the sunlit lobby -- it's like the perfect set up for some fantastic cosplay pictures to happen. Many of the cosplayers and artists I see year after year at AWA are some of my oldest friends. Being able to come together and see how all of us have grown is a wonderful thing. AWA just has this feel to it. I attend so many cons every year in the Artist Alley, and AWA is still the one I look forward to the absolute most.
I have always been a huge fan of Asuka. Evangelion was one of the first anime I ever watched; I like her attitude and her general "I do what I want!" outlook in life. One day my friend Megan, a marketing director for Anime Weekend Atlanta asked me if I wanted to be a booth bunny with her at MomoCon 2012 to help promote AWA. I couldn't say no! Another friend of mine suggested that I make a cosplay based off of an adorable figure of Asuka dressed as a bunny since I love her so much. As soon as I saw the outfit, I knew I had to make it and there would be no stopping me.
lol, I can understand that. Did you cosplay the first time you went to Anime Weekend Atlanta ??
Oh yes, and man was it bad. I cosplayed as Elie from the series Rave Master. I think the only thing I actually made consisted of red felt hot glued to a white tank top. It was a nightmare. I wish I could redo every costume. In hindsight now Elie's outfit would be so fantastically simple to do! Over time I tend to fix up and update my costumes as I go. I actually already want to remake my most recent outfit - Asuka's plugsuit, even though I only just debuted it this weekend at AWA. There were so many things I wanted to fix if only I'd had the time. That costume was the most challenging thing I have ever done, and even though it did not come out exactly as I wanted it to due to lack of experience and time constraints, I'm still quite proud that I was actually able to finish it. It has been my dream costume for many years.
One of my favorite comments from when I posted your photo on my page was "This has restored my confidence in cosplaying, seeing a full-figured woman cosplaying like this." Was it tough for you at the beginning to put yourself out there ?
It has been difficult at times. Being plus-sized automatically makes me in some minds "too fat" to cosplay. But being plus-sized in a bunny suit? Man, you'd think I'd ruined Christmas with some of the negativity that move got me! And yet when I was at the convention in that outfit, not once was there anyone who said anything negative to me, all of the hate messages and insults came from the internet where people could cower behind a computer screen. I received such a positive response from the community that it made me want to work even harder on my costumes.
As for handling it -- at one point in my life I just had to sit down and think to myself, "Why do I cosplay?" Do I cosplay to make the jerk calling me fat happy? Do I cosplay to get my face across the internet? Do I cosplay for other people?
No. I cosplay for myself. I cosplay because I love characters and want to dress like them; I cosplay because I enjoy the community and the craft and because I'm the only person that I need to impress. I can't lie, it will always be hard to see yourself mocked and insulted over your body, no matter what your size. Even today I come across forums where I'm being insulted and called fat by the same fandom that I consider myself a part of and yes, it hurts. But then I go back and think about how their small opinion does not matter to me, their happiness over how I cosplay is not my concern. There will always be people who will try to drag you through the mud and insist that you care what they think about you. And you know what? I have spent the majority of my life caring what others think of me, when all along I should have been doing what made ME happy; and now that I am I have never been happier in all of my life.
No matter your body size, gender, height, skin color, etc, you are cosplaying for YOU and you alone, and as long as you walk around in your costume like the you own the place and you have confidence in yourself as a cosplayer, you will ALWAYS look amazing.
I tell that to a lot of people constantly that anyone can cosplay but I also realized that it depends on your definition of cosplay. Obviously cosplay is to mimic and dress up as accurately as possible to your favorite characters but at the same time, that's pretty rare because not everyone will be able to pull off a character *exactly*. And you've seen enough anime, games and figurines that no one can really match those measurements. I say cosplay just for the love of it and ignore the rest. It's a simple thing we do. We dressed up as kids, we're dressing up as adults - it should be a fun thing.
I think for everyone there comes a moment in their life somewhere when you realized, I don't have to listen to this. Why am I letting people's comments affect my feeling ? When was your moment when you realized that it was time to take control for yourself ?
Well, this is something I share very often, but when I was fifteen I suffered from Anorexia Nervosa. It was a very strange experience and one I can't quite put in to words. It was nothing like television or books or movies told me it would be like. I wasted away to a size 2 and at my height that was way, way to thin. Even at that weight I didn't think I was thin enough to be considered beautiful. I hated look at myself in the mirror, in photos, in anything. My scale said 88 pounds, but in my mind it was more like 350 pounds. I was told I had a disorder called Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which is a basically a condition where your brain tells you that you look way different than you actually do.After becoming very close to hitting 70 pounds, I was forcibly put in to therapy for my eating disorder. I met so many girls and boys (because boys suffer from eating disorders as well, and society says they are not "allowed" to and they feel they can't talk about it) and my therapist said that Anorexia "never truly leaves you". You will recover, and you might even be able to move on, but there will always be days where you feel like the whole world is looking down on you. The only thing you can do is pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on. It will be difficult and you might relapse -- and that is okay. You can always try again tomorrow.
With these words in my head, I went home and dusted off my sewing machine. I hadn't cosplayed in a few years, ever since I developed my eating disorder. By this time I had gained back a lot of weight and was even heavier than when I started starving myself. I stared at that thing for a good hour before sitting down and saying, "I don't owe these people a damn thing. I'm awesome and it's time I start showing the world just how awesome I am." That was when I got a message from my friend Megan and I decided to make a bunny suit.
You're definitely inspirational ! I looked through your cosplay.com account for photos to post but sadly, I didn't see as much though I noticed you had up Seras from Hellsing and Slynia from No More Heroes 2.
Now I read in your cosplay.com profile, your dream cosplay was Asuka's plug-suit and I know you were working on that to premiere at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2012, tell us about your latest cosplay.It's true! I'm much too embarrassed to upload anything from before the bunny suit! Sylvia was made to go alongside my friend Ashley's Bad Girl costume for a photoshoot we were planning on doing. I couldn't pass up the chance to do another underwear-clad costume, haha. Pants are too uncomfy. Sylvia's outfit is basically just a short trenchcoat with lacey undies and cute bow heels. The jacket was altered to match Sylvia's (including a crazy amount of gold buttons). I decided to keep the color of the jacket the same as the game's while matching the underwear more to the concept art style. I hand sewed the wrist cuffs and pleats and made bows for the heels. The wig was bought second hand from cosplay.com, which was a great decision. You can find many cheap but still great quality items from the marketplace there. It was simple costume that was done on a whim, and Sylvia is a very playful character to portray. Pulling a small handgun out of your bra for pictures is always a crowd favorite!Seras began when I was rereading my old Hellsing manga. I bought that manga in secret because when it was published I was so not allowed to read it. It was way too bloody. It is still one of my favorites, and I really love Seras because she's sexy was also very air headed and innocent. I instantly wanted to build her anti-tank gun Halconnen. I'd never built large props like that before and wanted to challenge myself. What a beast of a gun! It started out as just a project to do on the side, but when I saw fellow cosplayer Faraday selling her old Seras cosplay on coscom, I decided that I wanted to finish it and make it a full fledged cosplay. I already owned some gorgeous red contacts from a Matryoshka Gumi cosplay I'd made, and when I received the Seras cosplay in the mail I went about fixing it up and tailoring it to hug my body (Seras is known for her very sexy curves, after all), molding fangs for my teeth, and cutting my old Sylvia wig. It was the first time I'd ever made tights, and that was a very interesting nightmare. I hope to debut her at a con with my insanely huge 12 foot long Halconnen in November at Youmacon. It's going to be so much fun to do a shoot with! I'm going to make 2013 my year of challenging cosplays.
Oh man... I made a plugsuit, and my god was that the silliest decision I have ever made in my life. Why do I want to torture myself by trying to remake it?!This plugsuit was a lot of firsts for me. It was my first time working with vinyl (and evil material), my first time doing boot covers (an evil process) and my first time making gloves from scratch (too evil for words). I also patterned the entire suit by myself, and I am not skilled in pattern making in any sense. Even though I've been making cosplays for a while, they have all been fairly simple and straightforward, and this was the most challenging thing I have ever worked on.The suit is made of two parts instead of one: A leotard over leggings attached to the boot covers, all made of vinyl. Vinyl is a seriously tricky material... and when skintight the seams tend to come apart very easily on the parts where the most stress is on them. Vinyl is also unbreathable, and I only was able to wear the suit for 2 hours! Atlanta is insanely humid, and even though I knew this I still dared to venture outside for a mini photoshoot.
My wig is made of an Eowyn and Le Tigre Long in Pumpkin from Arda wigs sewn together to get the right fluffiness of Asuka's wig, and boy was it heavy and hot. And because it is twice the wig, that means there were twice the tangles. By the end of the day my wig was tangly and I was hot and dying.Sadly because of my inexperience my suit started to come apart a little at the end of the day. Some aspects of the costume were torn off when a con attendee glomped me unexpectedly (the numbers, the butt strips, etc!) But instead of thinking of it as a failure, I see it as a good learning experience and knowing how to improve it even further for my next con in Detroit in early November. I learned SO much from the plugsuit that I can't help but give myself a tiny pat on the back for even finishing it. I mean, what else can I do but move forward and improve?
That's the best way to view it - as a learning experience. Now you got this down, it'll be easier for you next time when you take on that challenge again ! Besides cosplay, I noticed your deviant art is full of illustrations and you're in school for that too. Have you always been drawing and doodling since a kid ? How was your experience at your first artist alley ?
I went to Fanime for my first artist alley and it blew me away - I had so much fun - but next time, I wouldn't tackle a 20,000 people con for my first AA....it's kinda scary - but I learn a lot.
I have been drawing ever since I can remember -- My babysitter years ago bought me the first Sailor Moon manga at a thrift store and I was so enamored with it. Even today my style of drawing has a very shoujo feel to it because I was influenced so much by Naoko Takeuchi's style.
My first Artist Alley was at Anime Weekend Atlanta back in 2004, and while it wasn't as big as it is now, it was still HUUUUGE for a first timer like me. It was nothing short of a disaster... I was very young and very inexperienced. I did make back the cost it took to get there, but just barely! In the years I have done the AA, I have learned so much, made so so so many friends and it has just been a blast. My friend and I now run an Artist Alley 101 panel at a lot of the cons we go to to help those that want to try the AA out but are too intimidated. I can understand feeling overwhelmed if Fanime was your first con, I felt overwhelmed there myself! D:
That's pretty awesome your babysitter bought you your first manga ! Is
that how you were introduced into the world of anime and manga ? Fanime
taught me a lot and lucky for me, there's a wealth of resources online
about doing artist alley so I read a lot of blogs and basically made it
fit what I do. There was a learning curve but I went to the biggest
cons in the country to do artist alley so man, it toughens you up and
you definitely gain a lot of experience.
That is how I got in to manga! I believe I had seen Leo the Lion as a small child, but had no idea that was an anime at the time :P After reading the first Sailor Moon manga, I bought the others and got in to other series like Rurouni Kenshin, Evangelion (bad anime for a little kid, omg), Gundam Wing, Utena, Outlaw Star, Magic Knight Rayearth, and many more after that. Naoko Takeuchi, Hideki Anno, and CLAMP are some of my biggest inspirations as creators.
There are many positives. I meet a lot of great, life-long friends through cosplay. I'm also always excited to improve my craft, and the community itself is so great at sharing ideas and how-tos. Having people come up to you and compliment you on your costume is a really rewarding thing to hear, especially if you made it yourself. I meet a lot of people who are just as big of fans of fandoms, games, series that I am, and that leads to making friends who you can share your nerdiness with. I also get to work with a lot of amazing photographers, and it makes me really happy to see such professional pictures with me in it. It's a wonderful feeling.
Not so positive... Being bullied online for your body or on your craftmanship, or just because of the character you cosplayed. I've also come across a strange website where it is entirely dedicated to taking "ninja butt" shots of cosplayers, and I've been featured on there. It's like, just because I'm cosplaying a somewhat sexy character does not give anyone the right to take pictures like that of me with out asking! That just opens me up to comment where people think they have a right on how "bangable" I am or rate me on a scale of 1 to 10.However, I think that the positives greatly outweigh negatives. The negatives are far easier to forget, but the positives are what keep me going.
Follow her :
DeviantArt
Coscom
(top photo : André Michel Ouellette / bottom two photos : BentPic5 )
