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Cosplayer of the Week: Inuki Cosplay

I won’t beat about the bush here, Inuki Cosplay is one of my favourite horror cosplayers ever. Of all time. I was absolutely delighted to be able to interview him for this feature as he deserves much more recognition than he gets. If freaky and creepy isn’t your cup of tea, perhaps look away, but otherwise Inuki is certainly one to watch out for.

Freddy Krueger
Photo by Scott Tsai Studio

Age: 31

Location: Vancouver, Canada

Favourite food: Korean spicy BBQ chicken

Crimson Head
Photo by Gord Gallagher

Who or what first inspired you to start cosplaying?

Since I was a child I’ve been obsessed with Halloween and dressing up. I went to a local convention to help volunteer at a table and saw how much fun attendees were having in cosplay. Another event that helped inspire me was attending the local Zombie Walk every year.

What would you say is your favourite part of the costume making process?

For me it’s experimenting with, and learning to use different mediums. I cosplay a lot of creatures so I get to play with makeup and prosthetics, lots of different kinds of foam, thermoplastics, fabrics, paints, adhesives and electronics. One of the great things about horror and post-apocalyptic characters is all the weathering techniques involved, and you don’t have to worry about a clean or “perfect” looking product. It’s a bit like impressionistic painting, where the details are there to serve the whole. I also really like making things functional. For example, on my Keeper cosplay from The Evil Within, I used real door hinges on the helmet and backpack and on my Springtrap cosplay I used elastic to make the jaw move along with the movements of my mouth.

 

The Keeper
Photo by Juan Rostworowski

It all sounds rather complicated, but what would you say is your most complex build to date?

That’s a good question! It’s probably my Springtrap cosplay. It was my first time working with upholstery foam, and building something like a mascot outfit. When I made Springtrap other people had done Five Nights at Freddy’s cosplays from previous games, but nobody had done Springtrap as the third game hadn’t even been released. I had very few reference images. Aside from the moving jaw and soldering the electronics for the eyes, I was able to transfer a lot of building techniques over from EVA foam armour builds. For example, I used straps and buckles to connect the pieces together over a black bodysuit so they wouldn’t slide around. The gloves were a creative invention, I used fabric gloves as the base but then held the finger joints in place with wire so that they would be more proportionate to the rest of the body. I love looking at tips and tricks from haunters (people who design haunted houses), I think the wire thing was an idea from how haunters build what are known as “stalk-arounds” or lurkers, which often have PVC arm and wire hands. Another functional thing most people wouldn’t know from looking at it: I attached the ears to the head with Chicago screws so that they could easily be removed for transport without damaging them.

Springtrap
Photo by The Kaigan

Do you have a dream cosplay you’d like to work towards? Could you use anything you’ve learned from past cosplays to help with this?

I have a lot of dream cosplays, though it seems like the list of what I want to do is constantly changing. I’ll name a few of the more ambitious ones. I’d love to do John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). There are several versions of that which would be really fun to make, including the mutating dog version. I think some of the work I’ve done with latex in the past could help, but I would have to pick up a lot of new skills. Another cosplay I’d love to make would be an Ohmu from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I like it because it’s a creature but because of the insect’s exoskeleton, it has an armour-like quality. It’s a bit different from anything I’ve made previously. I had ideas to make it so the pieces all come apart since it’s segmented. I think some of the larger builds I’ve made would help inform how to structure something like that. I’d also love to do a Final Fantasy summon, maybe the Doomtrain from Final Fantasy 8 or one of the creepier versions of Bahamut. Who doesn’t want to make a Bahamut cosplay though?

If you could you back in time and give newbie Inuki any advice, what would it be?

My biggest piece of advice was a lesson I learned the hard way. I threw a lot of money and energy at too many different projects I was excited about, but did not have the time I needed to do a good job on them. I always do year-end review posts of what I made, and back in 2013 it was twelve cosplays. The following year I got that number down to eight, and last year it was only four new projects, two were more elaborate. I’m not saying there’s a gold standard for how many costumes someone should make per year, but if you’re wasting money on materials for costumes you don’t have time to make properly then it’s really important to reassess your choices. I’m at the point where I see it as more beneficial to only make one new project a year if I can wear it to a lot of events and I’m satisfied with the caliber of the work. My biggest weakness is when some themed event is announced or new game gets released and I end up frantically making that thing last minute. It stops being enjoyable and just becomes stressful at that point.

Two Face
Photo by Kevin Free Photography

Past Cosplayer of the Week
Hailing from North East England, Corvidae Cosplay Emporium is made up of a fearsome duo of foamsmiths and sewing masters. They’re no strangers to guesting and judging at cons all over the UK, and looking at the calibre of their work, it’s not hard to see why! We caught up with Olivia to talk more about their costumes. Orochi and NobushiPhoto by Dr Whero Photography Age: 24 Location: Thornton Favourite food: pork belly ramen Who or what first inspired you to start cosplaying? I’ve always loved costumes but games were and are the most inspirational thing for me. The same goes for Ryan, the other cosplayer that makes up Corvidae Cosplay Emporium – we’re both massively inspired by games and making characters come to life. Taniks the ScarredPhoto by Dr Whero Photography What was your first costume? How does it compare to some of your more recent work? Our first costumes were when we were very little – our families have always been into us making and wearing costumes. Mine was a big foam Flounder when I was about 5! Ryan used to have kid’s armour that he would take on camping holidays to castles and he would run around pretending to be a knight! But our first cosplays were when the first images for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate came out; we knew it would be Victorian England so we made steampunk Assassins. In comparison to recent work they were good but very sewing based and amateur-ish. Ryan’s good at sewing as he used to work at a tailors, but since then I have completed my degree in costuming so all our patterns are made from scratch from our own basic clothing blocks and then adapted into what we want. We also are a lot better at foam work and use more technical things such as a 3D printer, airbrush, we resin cast and use LEDs in our cosplays too. They’re a lot more advanced these days! Monster Hunter World huntersFeaturing Kamui Cosplay What would you say has been your most complex costume so far? Probably the Monster Hunter World costumes that we won the Cosplay Championships at London Film and Comic Con in last year. They were complex base patterns, the armour was mental and we had to use a lot of different types of foam with different densities and thicknesses to achieve the final result. We used foam clay too, which was the first time we had worked with it. There was LEDs that had to change colour, weapons that are taller than me (and were a pain to get on and off the underground with!!!) and we had props to go on stage with to make our performance more interactive. We made the 3D files and printed numerous sections of the build, which was great fun as it was the first time we had utilised the 3D printer for complex designs, and we had about 5 weeks to make the costumes around working… safe to say we didn’t sleep for 4 days before the competition. I’ve never been so tired and pumped in my life! The costumes still aren’t done either – there’s lot we want to finalise or aspects that need changing (the Championship was the first time we both wore our costumes so there’s a bunch of stuff that can be reworked to make them better) but the entire thing took so much out of us, those costumes are packed away and we’ll sort them out when I can cope with looking at them again! Metro StalkerPhoto by Dr Whero Photography Do you have dream costumes? Can you use anything you learned while making your Monster Hunter outfits to help? For me it would be to replicate a Kaiju from Pacific Rim, it’s my all time favourite film and I would absolutely love to have the skills to do a good job with it. It’s an end goal though, it’s nothing like anything we’ve done before and I need to learn more about old school character methods from filming to attack that bad boy with the vigour that it deserves! Ryan says his dream cosplay would be Predator, either original or elder, because of the cape! I think realistically he poses the skills required to make it, but again it’s a case of wanting to master different techniques so we can both really nail the costumes and do the original inspiration proud! What’s your favourite part of the costume making process? We both love working with foam – making a 2D design into a 3D detailed reality, that’s an amazing feeling. The figuring out of how to put the costume together and how everything will work from a technical perspective is always good fun, especially considering how we need all our costumes to be not just aesthetically correct but also correct and fitting to the settings you’d find them in (like fabric choices for a Samurai costume or the cut and sewing techniques on a sci-fi piece) and, most importantly for us, that we have to perform in them – performance and being the character is the most important aspect in our eyes, so the costumes must be designed to withstand this. Then there’s obviously the final piece, when you’re wearing it and people respond to you as though you’re the character – I absolutely live for that narrative that people create with you in costume. Hunter from DestinyPhoto by Dr Whero Photography Like this:Like Loading... [...] Read more...
I believe I discovered Bacon, Bitches & Cosplay by accident while looking up something completely unrelated, but her name made me chuckle so I thought I’d check her out; I’m glad I did! This German cosplay is a master mermaid, a brilliant seamstress and a dab hand at creepy makeup. Bacon, Bitches & Cosplay is a great all-rounder. Twi’lek Age: 25 Location: Bavaria Favourite food: bacon, of course! ValkyriePhoto by BildRausch Who or what first inspired you to start cosplaying? That’s a tough question. I think it was a Marvel-related fan group on Facebook that I’m part of. I met a few members in person and we had the idea of a Marvel cosplay group, which worked out great! After a meet at the Leipzig Bookfair, we founded our cosplay group, “Young Avengers Europe” and we still cosplay together now. In the beginning, I only made Marvel cosplays, but now I have many fandoms. FaunPhoto by Eschnapur Photography What would you say is your most complex costume so far? I don’t think I have very complicated costumes, I’m currently working on a post-apocalyptic outfit which is a lot of work, but it isn’t finished yet. I think my most complex is Medusa from Inhumans because I made everything except the shoes. I even braided 6 metres of wire in the hair! MedusaPhoto by BildRausch What’s your favourite part of the costume making process? The best part for me is wearing the costume, either at a con or on a photoshoot. I have so much fun really playing the character. When wearing costumes at a con, in German we would say “berufsrisiko”. You have to watch out that you’re healthy, hydrated, etc. If my feet hurt, I take off my shoes. If my head hurts, I pull off my wig. It’s so simple and I don’t care what other people say about it! Do you have any advice for new cosplayers? Just do it! If you fail, so what? Cosplay is about having fun, keep going until you’re happy. Narcissa MalfoyPhoto by Vanity Art Photography Like this:Like Loading... [...] Read more...
Despite being a relatively new cosplayer in the grand scheme of things, Nirel Cosplay blew me away with the sheer quality of their costumes from the moment I discovered them. You want anime cuteness? Gaming badassery? The Dark Lord himself? Don’t worry, Nirel’s got you. SamaraPhoto by Steeve Li Photography Age: 22 Location: Paris Favourite food: croziflette (a French dish based on Reblochon and pasta) Paladin T21Photo by Marc O Carion Moc Who or what first inspired you to start cosplaying? It was Shoko and Jerome Cosplay. In 2013 I went to my very first Japan Expo in Paris. I already knew what cosplay was, so I wanted to watch the cosplay contests, especially the ECG (European Cosplay Gathering) finals. There they were with their awesome Monster Hunter cosplay, they were amazing on stage, I had tears in my eyes! They won the contest. Two years after, I finally started to cosplay, and every day I keep thinking about their performance, and it motivates me a lot. Maybe one day I’ll be able to make cosplays as great as they do! LokiPhoto by DriStudio Photography What was your first cosplay? It was “Le Nain” from “Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk”, a French MP3 saga! I made it with really cheap green foam, and as it’s a dwarf I had to make a beard, so I bought a Santa Claus beard and orange hairspray, mixed them together and tada! My chainmail was just a grey fabric, so it was really cheap dwarf. What would you say has been your most complex costume so far? As I like to improve my skills with every costume, they’re all complex in their own way, but I think the one that introduced me to the most different techniques is Gimli. I had to make real chainmail, and a beard! I had to work with leather, armour, fabric, and make up! GimliPhoto by Christian Poulet What’s your favourite part of the costume making process? I think it’s painting, I’m a perfectionist on that. I need to have the right shade with the right shadows and lighting so sometimes I can use five different shades of the same colour on just one armour piece! Do you have any advice for new cosplayers? Keep trying! Keep trying new techniques and challenging yourself, and never forget to have fun. NightcrawlerPhoto by Steeve Li Photography Like this:Like Loading... [...] Read more...

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