By Tina Chadwick
You probably wouldn’t recognize world-known cosplayer, Jennifer Barclay if you passed her on the street – even if she was wearing one of her hand-made, hand-molded costumes. She prefers to create the garb of obscure characters she likes versus the more mainstream ones. She is one of a growing number of artists that create costumes to wear at both cosplay and other related conventions.
Cosplay (costume play) is originally a Japanese term for dressing up like characters or elements in video games and animation. These conventions are held across the country and in many other places around the world. Barclay, now a veteran of the performance art style of cosplay, has been invited to speak in Mexico, Costa Rica, Japan and various stateside events as well.
The Cosplay landscape started as small patches of dedicated anime watchers who took it to a higher level by then recreating the costumes and characters in the films. Barclay started going to anime conventions to meet fellow enthusiasts. She said while cosplay is America still makes her feel like a “hobbyist,” in Europe and other parts of the world she had celebrity status.
“It was a great place to get my nerd fix and form a close nit group with others who had the same interests and passions,” she says.
While taking theater in high school helped Barclay lose the inhibition of role-play and dress up, once she attended a cosplay-related convention, DragonCon, she was hooked.
“I taught myself sewing, fabrication, sculpting, vaucu-form, airbrushing,” she says. “I loved figuring out each new thing and then perfecting it.”
With the evolution and popularity of cosplay, when Barclay picks a costume, it must have a new structural challenge.
“If I’m going to bother to do something, I’m going to do it 100 percent so, I invest and spend money and time to get good at it….whatever I have to do to get the perfect item to be authentic.”
The costume she’s had the most fun making to date is “The Monarch” from Venture Brothers. Underneath teh character’s codpiece, body suit and prosthetic brow and chin, everyone mistook her for a man.
Her most technical costume was “The Tali” costume from Mass Effect. It’s her favorite character and her favorite game. Barclay sculpted a helmet, latex arm pieces, airbrushed the fabric, vacu-formed the visor – pushing he boundaries of everything she had learned.
Going all out on costumes, even for just Halloween, can run into the hundreds fairly quickly. Barclay confesses her works of art go a little higher than that. “I could easily spend $2,000 on all materials. As I learn, I waste material on the try, but if I had to range it, I spend usually around $500 to $1,000 for big ones.”
To see more from Barclay, visit idleambition.com.
