I spent a day with COSPLAYERS

cosplay a portmanteau of the words costume and play is a performance art in which participants called cosplayers dress up as characters usually from anime cartoons manga and video games the first recorded cosplay ever took place at one of the world's first science fiction conventions worldcon in 1939 with the turnout of just 200 people since then cosplay has exploded in popularity with hundreds of thousands of cosplayers all over the world gathering at conventions and meetups multiple times a year my name's anthony padilla and today i'm going to be sitting down with some of the most talented cosplayers in the industry to find out why so many people take part in such an expensive hobby is cosplaying something people do just for fun or is it an escape from a horrible reality hey stella hey hi kelton thank you so much for coming out jackie thank you so much for teaching me a little bit about the wondrous world of cosplay my pleasure how do you refer to yourself are you a cosplayer i refer to myself as a special effects makeup artist i guess cosplayer content creator streamer class player but i also costume design professionally what are you cosplaying as right now i'm kba ahri from league of legends and this is like the new skin uh i don't know if you saw the music video it's like super awesome uh right now i am red sonja this is one of the sideshow versions of red sonia and so my character was based on the character symmetra from overwatch and it's a male version but also i combined three different costumes from the game the devi skin the oasis skin and the dragon skin but also i went to different temples in singapore and bought um a bunch of indian fabrics wait so you travel to singapore to make this costume authentic yeah how long does it take you to get in and out of your cosplay so depending on the cosplay like this one for example when i have all nine tails it took me like four hours four hours when this costume was fully done yes well i'm only wearing like one quarter of my costume today the actual costume had like a giant rotating dharma wheel in the back that had another of these faces on the back so how long does it take you to get on that full costume the full costume probably be like four hours of makeup this particular class takes like 15 minutes to get into makeup takes a lot longer because like i have scars i've got yeah you have you have fake scars i actually have your face yeah from collodion that you just put on it actually tightens your skin and makes a scar that looks like legitimate scars i thought you were actually uh scarred since last time i saw you you know i was scarred but emotionally so why did you initially start cosplaying i am a huge weeaboo when i was younger i really loved like making my own like diy stuff yeah and then eventually i saw that people actually dressed up like game characters so i was like oh that's really cool i started cosplaying because of my love for zelda huge zelda fan which you already know jackie actually did all the costumes and actually played zelda in the legend of zelda rap that i made back when i was with smosh like eight years ago how long have you been cosplaying about eight or nine years now since 2007 or eight i would say at least 15 16 17 18 somewhere around that years what's the worst part about being a cosplayer the worst part is probably that like work-life balance because i'm i've made cosplay into my job and so my amount of like stress and anxiety and pressure has like gone way up does that change your relationship with cosplay it does because it's like a love-hate relationship sometimes um you know when i'm really stressed out i'm just like why am i doing this but then once i put on the costume it's like wow i'm so happy when you realize you didn't budget your project properly and you start like digging into your savings and you're like oh dude the injuries i'll get from making a costume but you get injured while making oh yeah cosplay i'd say almost every single costume i've made i have bled wept and sweated over i know it's not like that's what it's here's for real it's really real do you change your personality or behavior when you cosplay um not necessarily but i definitely like channeled the energy of the character so yeah like it's like a really badass character who's super strong has like swords and like warrior i feel like ten times more badass when i am cosplaying someone like that not really like when i'm posing and stuff like i don't pose like jackie or anything like that i pose in character do you think cosplaying is an escape from reality i think it is yeah so yeah i think for me it's no longer an escape because i've made it into my job but what i want to do is provide that experience for other people do you make all your cosplay outfits and props yourself i would say i make like 80 of my costumes but i've been so busy lately that i actually buy a lot of my costumes and i'll make the ones that are really complicated so is that expensive lifestyle uh last year i spent half of my income on materials no yeah half of your entire income for an entire year was spent on just materials for your cosplay yo people think cosplayers be ballin no what's the most money you've spent on a single cosplay on average my projects cost between eight hundred to three thousand dollars yeah what's your process of designing and building cosplay like if i was doing my own design i would do lots of historical research as well as sketches so this is me just like planning out the faces on the costume and then planning i had henna on my hand that actually glows in the dark whoa so yeah so i had to come up with how to create a kind of paint that would stick and glow in the dark i throw a bunch of random sketches together and if i like how it looks overall then i just put the overall thing together and then end up with the final sketch how do you choose which characters to cosplay as there's two different ways i choose my characters um one is like if i really really love the material the other way is like whatever is trending because you know as a content creator you want to make sure you're like on top of like all the memes on top of those memes i tend to go for very like dark brooding characters is that so you relate with dark and brooding i think so is that how you describe yourself on your dating profile dark brooding batman can you show me one of your most intricate pieces or maybe the piece that you're most proud of which blade is the one that a lot of people seem to be attracted to that's so much detail and i sculpted it all with the toothpaste this is with the toothpick this is all made of silicone caulking i basically took like a rubber glove and stuffed it put it on a stand and then just took caulking and sculpted it all on here and then hold it yeah yeah so can you get it on yeah yeah there you go i'm a bad boy i've never seen anyone spank themselves with my glottal have you had any awkward situations while wearing your cosplay i was dressed up as a cute maid because i'm obsessed with maids and so this random guy comes up to me and he asks me um if i was japanese and i said no i'm chinese and i knew where he was going with it too because no one just comes up to you and asks you what your race is right well what happened was as soon as i said i'm chinese and i said it really slowly like kind of like dot dots i was like i'm chinese and then he went like this oh i came to this convention because i wanted a japanese girlfriend to have sex with me and i was like i'm trying to fly no never not at all not a single awkward i don't get fixed not this girl awkward encounters happen on the daily like some conventions are you know a lot of the attendees are very polite and sweet and then you get the wandering hands that are like oh how low can i go like limbo or something it's like disgusting like if i'm in red sonja i'll like place my prop so they can't put their arm around me um or like if i have makeup on i'll just say oh please don't touch the makeup like you can't say get your hands off me off my booty and because you know you get you people think you're mean or you don't say that because it's mean that seems like a i know that sounds like a fair boundary you would think but i've been told i was a [ __ ] for that kind of stuff and so i like i do tell them like i'll say hey stop that and then i like i'll read about like oh she was a [ __ ] online or like you know whatever i'm so sorry you have to deal with that that's not right no it's not do you plan on being a cosplayer for the rest of your life no no i plan on dying one day well i definitely want to cosplay for the rest of my life but being like a professional cosplayer i don't know where like my five year plan or whatever that is is going to be like 80 year plan it's just going to look like this forever that's my goal do you think that as you get older you'll start cosplaying as characters that are older actually i really want a cosplay it's from ocarina of time comey and kotaki the two old witches you would cosplay super old and gross right and you wanted to put on the makeup because you'll already look like that yeah exactly if i were to cosplay who do you think i could pull off best you can pull off so many characters it doesn't even matter yeah you got a face for cosplay yeah you hear that i got a face for cosplay that means i'm hot right [Music] i think you make a good like dante devil may cry yeah the cosplayer community is there any pushback to people dressing up as different genders or different races with genders it doesn't really matter people have been cross-playing and gender bending and like reimagining characters um forever and no one cares but what people do care about is when you are cosplaying a character and trying to be that race well that's for obvious reasons like american history do not blackface yes but even with just anyone darkening your skin or lightening your skin it's like a big no-no in cosplay because it's all about respecting like people who have been marginalized you know just because you're cosplaying something um from from fiction doesn't mean it doesn't have like real world consequences what's the biggest misconception about cosplay people will think oh she's dressed as a sexy whatever i can put my hands on her i can talk to her however way i want that means she wants it they think cosplay is consent yeah i think the biggest misconception is that everyone who cosplays is a sexy cosplayer uh-huh because sexy cosplay is the most popular thing on the internet right now and i'm also a sexy cosplay i love cosplaying lewd things i love like pushing the envelope i've always done that since the beginning but recently there's been this whole divide in the community where people are complaining there's too many sexy cosplayers and i think that's not fair because there's still just as many like non-sexy cosplayers um it's just that sex sells and so i want people to be more comfortable with their bodies i want them to love like the way they look and i want to empower other people to want to do more sexy things because bador and like lewd cosplay is really fun it is so it's fun youtube user pavnaj asks is an anthony padilla cosplay possible i feel like the hair but i don't know if they'll be able to replicate your face like face is too perfect yeah i don't know if they'll be able to i will cosplay anthony padilla you're going to cut you would i will get the wig you would cosplay as me so yes i will do it comment below if you want to see jackie cosplay as me you have five seconds to shout out anything you want go you can find me on facebook and instagram as keltonfx and i make like masks and stuff like this follow me on instagram jaclyn goener follow me on patreon jacqueline goner twitter jackie gonnard so check me out on stellachu.com uh twitter stellachu instagram solitude i feel like now i understand the the wondrous world of cosplaying after spending the day talking to some of the best cosplayers in the industry i've come to understand that cosplay is so much more than just wearing costumes these passionate artists bring their most beloved characters to life and embody their heroic confidence and personalities each with their own flair cosplay is a way of connecting with your favorite communities through creative expression which is something we could all learn to embrace in our own way see you later bye guys press a like i also have a mask you can try on if you want okay okay do you know the game silent hill yeah absolutely so this is one of the bubble head nurse masks oh my god that's so this is a latex mask you're not claustrophobic or anything are you yeah okay you just pull it over okay i made you a 10 when you were a six

Channel: AnthonyPadilla

Views: 5,418,643

Keywords: anthony padilla, padilla, anthony padilla youtube, youtube anthony padilla, anthony, smosh anthony, anthony padilla smosh, cosplay, cosplayers, anime, comic-con, stella chuu, jackie goehner, jacqueline goehner, roleplay, overwatch, fortnite

Id: iX2jixDUlTE

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2019