Project brief

In my spare time, I indulge in cosplay as my hobby. Cosplay started in Japan and is basically dressing up and acting as a particular character from either an anime, manga, comic or film. There are now cosplayers who attend conventions all over the world.

The interesting thing about cosplay is that it breaks down boundaries between the animated world and the real world. During the convention, a good cosplayer is the character for that day. A lot of research goes into acting as the character for the day, like adopting little mannerisms and speech that the character would use. It is related to a theatrical performance, yet at the same time is distinctly different. I consider cosplay to be a breaking down of the fourth wall and I want to show this in my work. I'm very interested in the paper on "Re-Animating Space", and I want to use this material as a springboard for my project.

The other thing about cosplay is the research involved and the effort expended for little to no reward. While there are professional cosplayers out there, most of us are doing it because we love the material we are representing. A lot of research goes into a costume, into making it as accurate as possible. There is a dedication involved that exceeds that of creating costumes for a theatre production, for example. The costumes are very detailed and the cosplayer goes to extreme lengths to make it perfect.

For my project, I want to represent how cosplay is breaking through the fourth wall in a way. I want to use a combination of anime shots, soundtracks from anime and animated stills of cosplayers. Because I am currently designing a group of Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler cosplays for Armageddon in Auckland, I will use this anime as the base. The group I am setting up is doing an Alice in Wonderland theme, which I think would tie quite nicely with my project, as Wonderland itself breaks many barriers. The cosplays that I am making are as follows:

Ciel Phantomhive as Alice and Sebastian Michaelis as White Rabbit

Grell Sutcliff as Cheshire Cat and the Undertaker as Mad Hatter

Ronald Knox (on right) as Dormouse

I cosplay myself as Grell Sutcliff, I have a few different designs for what I wear when I cosplay him. This is me at Hamilton Armageddon as Grell:

I found this picture of a sculpture called "Freedom" - I want to use this example as kind of the effect I am looking for with my project.

I really want to make it so that it looks like the characters have come out of the anime itself and are enjoying a pot of tea at the Mad Hatter's tea party.

Extra-cinematic Animation

Today's readings on Extra-cinematic Animation reminded me of a news story I saw on the Vivid Sydney Festival, in which light, sound and audience participation were melded together:

The official webpage is here: http://www.vividsydney.com/

The thing that I mostly think about when watching this sort of thing is the magic and spectacle of a performance, the only thing of which is comparable is a fireworks production.

I was also thinking about band performances such as Gorillaz and Vocaloid where animated characters hold concerts, tying this back to my main field of anime, as Vocaloid is very popular in Japanese animation.

"Re-Animating Space"

The reading "Re-Animating Space" made me think of an anime called Gintama. Gintama is mostly a parody of most other animes, particularly the genre it is supposed to be in (shonen - teenage boy genre which is very popular overseas, the big animes such as Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach and One Piece fit into this genre). Gintama likes to play with the conventions of animation - there is a running gag that the animators are sometimes lazy, etc. The characters will break the fourth wall to indicate their disgust.

The following clip sums this up: