Cosplayer of the Week: Xanthe Flora Cosplay

This weeks cosplayer of the week, belongs to the talented Xanthe Flora Cosplay who is both cosplayer and a photographer. She’s not been cosplaying long but she is really one to watch because she’s awesome and lovely!

Age: 16

Location: London

What is your favourite food? Vegetarian Katsu curry

You have done a mixture of armoured and non-armoured costumes, do you have a type that you prefer doing? Why?

I currently prefer non armoured as it means getting around cons a lot easier (I constantly had to stop and secure leg armour for my athena cosplay) but I do love making armour, so in the future I want to do more armoured costumes so I can improve my skill. In particular, I want to make fem shep’ armour from mass effect but obviously its going to take a while to make!

Taken by Eddie of Food and Cosplay

What has been the most tricky technique you have had to master so far?

The most tricky technique is cell shading I’d say, I have a hard time spending ages trying to get the lines to look precise and clean, so I’m seriously blown away when my friends manage to pull off cell-shading perfectly.

You seem to be able to rope your siblings into your cosplay sometime, is it difficult to get them into costume? What do your family think of cosplay?

It’s easy enough to get my little brother into cosplay as he’s into geeky stuff already, though I still have to teach him cosplay making skills so that he can begin to make his own costumes and props. My family are quite supportive of cosplay (thankfully) my dad took me and my brothers to my first convention so it’s not something they are completely clueless with!

Taken by Aperture Cosplay

You recently announced on your page that you want to open up your photography page again, do you think that being a cosplayer helps with how you pose and work with people when you are the photographer?

I would agree that it helps a lot being a cosplayer when you are also into cosplay photography. It means that it becomes easier to present the costume in photo, to show off the actual costume as well a making the photo look good. When I have photos taken of myself, I rely on either the photographer or a friend to tell me that either my wig is slipping back or I should change my pose slightly or even tell me to do something different, since there’s no mirror for me to check my pose or costume, so I guess being in that position, you become more aware. You also know how to talk to the cosplayer too, there are some people out there who are a little bit clueless in regards of how they compliment/treat the cosplayer being over the line/creepy, so it means that cosplayer becomes uneasy and won’t shoot with them again. A few of the photographers I have shot with, are cosplayers already and I have always gotten amazing photos back from them that have become my favourite cosplay photos, so it does prove that it helps a lot being a cosplayer and photographer!

Taken by Project Sagittarius

What advice would you give to new cosplayers?

I’d say the best advice I could give to a new cosplayer, is to aim to make cosplay a positive community. There is too much negativity in the community already, so just try and get out there, make loads of friends and remember that cosplaying is literally just dressing up in geeky outfits, its not supposed to be serious and harmful, have as much fun as possible!