April Edition Live Magazine - April 2014 Issue. | Page 110

cosplay

Tarah-Rex Cosplay
Cosplayer from Canada
Tarah-Rex is a Cosplayer based in
Canada. Tarah-Rex started out cosplaying in 2011 and makes all her
own costumes, read on to find out
more..
Tell us a bit about yourself - where
you are and how you got into Cosplay..
I’m based in Victoria, BC, Canada. I
always admired and envied Cosplayers and their skills but it was never
something I thought I could do. In
2011 a neat opportunity came up that
involved cosplaying a character that
all my friends told me I resembled,
so I went for it on a whim. I came
pretty close to getting the opportunity, but in the end someone else
got it. The whole experience gave
me the drive to just make a cosplay
anyways, so I pieced together what
needed to be done, taught myself
the very basics of sewing, learned
some crafting tricks along the way,
and then my Lilith cosplay was born.
After that I never turned back.
Who are your favourite characters
and why?
I don’t have very many Cosplays
under my belt yet, but my favourites
would have to be my Lara Croft Cosplay and my recently completed Cosplay of Elsa from the Disney movie,
Frozen. This is mainly because I
relate to both of these characters

extremely well. I have had (and still
occasionally do) a lot of trouble with
bullying because I am a very different sort of person with different
hobbies and interests. For years I
struggled to figure out who I was as
a person, and when I started Cosplay everything just kind of clicked.
I feel like Cosplay was my “let it go”
moment so to speak hahaha! Both
these characters initially struggled
with insecurities and personal demons but ultimately embraced themselves and accomplished more than
they thought they were capable of.
Tell us about the costumes - do
you make your own and if so how
do you start a project?
I make all my own costumes myself.
Each costume is a learning experience with new skills to pick up and
master. For me, a Cosplay starts
with the right character. There are
plenty of characters out there with
amazing designs, but something
needs to click for me to Cosplay a
character. That can either be that I
relate to their story or it can simply
be that I find their costume a “doable challenge” for my current skill
level, but there needs to be some
passion behind it for me to Cosplay
them. I have plenty of unfinished
costumes because I just wasn’t that
into the character from the start. After that, I evaluate every part of the

costume and collect as many reference pictures as I can find, then I
build an action plan for the tougher
parts of the costume so they won’t
be a huge speedbump in the whole
process. Once that’s done, away I
go into the making of the costume!
The various “cons” are a big part
of Cosplay - what are your favourites?
I actually haven’t had a lot of opportunities to attend many con’s. It’s
extremely expensive to fly to the US
from Canada and there aren’t many
big cons in Western Canada. So
far I have attended PAX Prime 2012
and Dragon*Con 2013, as well as a
few smaller local conventions. As a
Cosplayer, Dragon*Con is easily my
favourite to attend. It’s like a giant
gathering of all the coolest people
in the world and I feel more at home
there than at any standard house
party. I met so many amazing people and got to meet some of my best
friends in person finally! It was an
amazing experience.

The Will Box | www.facebook.com/thewillbox

How important are photo shoots
for you as a cosplayer and do you
do them regularly?
Photo shoots are very important to
me. Not for the element of getting
“prettied up” or feeling like a model,
but for closure of the costume. I feel
like it’s a necessary part of the Cosplay process, like an official closing
of each costume saying “This is now
100% finished and documented”. I
try and do a photoshoot of every
Cosplay I make to give myself that
closure. I also consider it a part of
the creative process because once
the costume itself is done, I get to sit
down and think to myself “Okay, how
can I make an epic photo shoot for
this? What location and which props
will set the tone for the character?”.
I get to write a mini story in my head
and build it up to create the scene I
want for the shoot and really get into
the characters head.

Tell us a bit about the process of
getting ready for a photo shoot. Is
it a lengthy process and how do
you go about it.
I am a very low maintenance person,
so I try and limit prep time as much
as possible. Usually I do a trial run of
makeup a few days before to make
the process faster before the shoot
itself. Depending on the costume,
sometimes I need to have the wig on
first, and if the wig is inconvenient to
wear it means I need to have parts of
the costume on before the wig goes
on, etc. To plan the process out for
each costume, I