Cosplay Feature Friday: Maeberry Cosplay

Welcome to yet another installment of #CosplayFeatureFriday! We could not be more excited to have this back in our cosplay column again. Today’s featured pair comes from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Please welcome MaeBerry Cosplay!

About MaeBerry Cosplay

• Cosplay Experience = 4 years
• Favorite Fandoms = Salome’s favorite Fandoms: Warehouse 13, Carmilla, Star Wars,
  Bari’s favorite Fandoms: One Piece, Steven Universe & Alice in Wonderland.
• They can be found on FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND on their WEBSITE.

MaeBerry’s Favorite Costumes

Our favorite costumes we have done so far are Asami and Korra from The Legend of Korra. It is a shipping that we really love from an incredible show. Our costumes really showed the evolution of our cosplay this past year. While they may look pretty simple, there were some very intricate patterns: mandarin collars, knickerbockers, velvet in lining.

A close second would be Five but that is mostly because of the interactions we had with cast members. Very few people knew who we were so the vain part of me felt like our efforts went unnoticed.

A MaeBerry Convention Story

The best convention experience for anyone in costume is meeting their onscreen heroes as the characters they portrayed. Therefore, our best convention experience was attending at the very first year of ClexaCon in Las Vegas. It is a convention for queer women in media. The guests we were most excited about were Zoie Palmer, Natasha Negovanlis and Elise Bauman. We cosplayed our favorite characters from the Syfy show Dark Matter: Android and Five. Zoie was filming the last season of Dark Matter at the time and really appreciated our portrayal of her. Android’s costume involved a dark blue catsuit we embellished with fabric and ribbon. Five’s costume was a jacket we sewed new sleeves onto and hand detailed with fabric paint and metal attachments. The next day we closet cosplayed as Carmilla and Laura from the web series Carmilla. Natasha and Elise loved them, Natasha was even jealous of the wig I was wearing as Carmilla. We wrote some in depth blogs about ClexaCon, two of which are feature in their online press room. We will be going back for ClexaCon2018 as press.

Overcoming Obstacles

From a costume perspective, the hardest costume was Korrasami, it was the first time we had really tackled an animated character and trying to get all the details true and modifying patterns, as well as, the time crunch made it a difficult build. That being said, Korrasami was also our favorite. We love the characters and the fact that they are cannon. It was fun to work with bold colors and create something immediately recognizable.

From a props perspective, I would have to say that the hardest cosplay we’ve done so far was the proton pack for our Ghostbusters cosplay. With so many specialty pieces required and no 3D printer with which to create them, it involved an inordinate amount of trips to every brand of hardware and craft store in town. Power tools were widely used and many parts were purchased online. Modifications were required and several painting and detailing aspects at the end.

Advice for Cosplayers

Screen accurate is not always the same as a good cosplay. As a perfectionist I really struggle with this concept. I scour the internet for all screenshots of the props or costume from the movie/tv show/game and try to do it exactly as it was done. Now first off, this really kills your budget. Without a 3D printer, the likelihood of it being screen accurate without some adaptation is slim. If you approach it as a costume, however, and try to make it appear precise in person versus exactly as it looks on screen you are going to have allot more success in your cosplays. Sometimes on screen designs are not always practical for IRL. It will save you time, money and headaches. Plus, you can add details that may have been absent in the original source. Either way, make sure that you make the cosplay your own and that you have fun creating it. Because why else would we torture ourselves like this?