Live Magazine September 2014 Volume 9/2014 | Page 154

PHALEURE
cosplay

PHALEURE

COSPLAYER FROM USA!

This month we’re talking to
Phaleure Cosplay who is based in
Baltimore, Maryland. Tell us a bit
about yourself and how you got
started in cosplay.
I am a Chemical Engineer by trade
and spend my 9 to 5 creating power
plant simulators, and day dreaming
about video games I want to play,
confections I want to bake and cosplay I want to make.
I have been an avid video gamer
since middle school playing mostly
JRPGs, real time strategy games,
fighting games and MMORPGs, but
it was my ultimate love for Final Fantasy X that inspired me to get into
Coplay. I created my first costume
back in 2005 and have never looked
back since.
You make a lot of your costume,
tell us what sort of products you
use to create costume items.
One of my favorite things to do when
getting started on cosplay is take a
stroll through Home Depot and let
unconventional materials inspire my
design. I have used everything from
paper mache’, to shower curtains.
No material is off limits! My favorites
which make an appearance in most
costumes are EVA foam, insulation
foam, sintra, resin, and worbla.

You’re using Worbla and featured
a tutorial on colouring Worbla, is
it a difficult process?
I got the idea to try and integrate
color into the material of the worbla
because when armor pieces begin
to rub together, they basically sand
the beautiful top coat of paint off of
your armor and reveal the cardboard
brown color of raw worbla underneath. If you are running around a
convention snapping photos you
probably don’t have time to run up
to your room and touch up your paint
job every time you start to see some
worbla. The thought is that if I can
make my worbla black or purple or
insert-desired-color-here
underneath that when paint inevitably begins to rub off it isn’t as apparent. It
isn’t a difficult process and basically
takes advantage of the fact that worbla is basically saw dust imbedded
in pcl plastic. You can dye and color
pcl plastic to any color, so it would
follow that you could do the same to
worbla. In the tutorial you mentioned
I used a wax crayon, but I have also
had success using powdered dyes
and pigments as well.
Let’s talk about the characters
you cosplay, who are some of
your favourites?
I am a huge, no, SUPER HUGE fan
of the Soul Calibur series. It was

one of the games I played growing
up that I still play and am inspired by
to this day. I have made 3 costumes
from the Soul Cal games and expect
I will be making many more in the future. My absolute-favorite character
to play is Talim, I love her flowy and
playful move set. I have cosplayed
two of her costumes so far and they
are some of my most memorable
and iconic costumes. Sadly Talim
is no longer a recurrent character in
the games, but I couldn’t not cosplay
from the new game, so I decided to
make Pyrrha Omega’s costume instead. I thought it would be a challenge to create her demonic arm out
of silicone, so I used Pyrrha as an
excuse to delve into some SFX work.
While I adore console games I am
also an avid PC gamer, and find myself very drawn to the Blizzard line of
products. I have a T5 Death Knight
cosplay based off of one of my characters in World of Warcraft. I played
WoW for most of my highschool and
college career, and even met my Fiance’ playing the game. So I can’t
help but love wearing the costume,
because it’s like a stroll down memory lane.
But, I think my all-time favorite costume is Sarah Kerrigan’s ghost armor
from the Starcraft II game. I wore my
Kerrigan costume to Blizzcon (A Blizzard sponsored show in Anahiem)