COSPLAY Last month we introduced Raychul Moore in our “Tips from the Tomb” section, Raychul is a gamer, YouTuber, Cosplayer & journalist. With all that on her plate, we have no idea how she found time to talk to us, but thankfully she did.... First up Raychul, tell us a bit about your cosplay beginnings, what got you started? I think cosplaying was kind of a natural progression for me since I’ve been gaming my whole life, but it was a friend of mine who really got me started. We were going to SDCC for the first time with a group of friends and we decided to do a group cosplay together. I fell in love with cosplaying instantly. The creation phase is definitely my favorite part, I love figuring out how to create certain weapons or props and then finally seeing the finished product and being like, “Whoa, I made this!!!” You’re also a gamer, what are your favourite games and what are you playing now? Some of my favorite games are Mass Effect, Borderlands, the entire Bioshock series, Uncharted, Dishonored, God of War, Eternal Darkness, Dragon Age, Gears of War, Silent Hill 2, Halo and of course anything Mario. Right now I’m playing a lot of Elder Scrolls Online and the new Witcher 3 DLC, while waiting for Halo 5 and Guild Wars 2’s expansion to come out this month!! Back to cosplay, do you feel that cosplay can be a career? Oh yes, definitely…and even in the bigger picture, I think cosplay can also lead to many very successful careers in stuff like costume design, prop making and even just creative
RAYCHUL
MOORE www.FACEBOOK.COM/RAYCHULMOORE
design in general. I’m always learning new ways of doing things and new materials to work with, cosplay is an ever-evolving skill and art form. You’re also a blogger and a YouTuber - tell us about those roles. I started my YouTube to help myself get over being so camera-shy. It’s definitely helped a lot, and I post mostly video game centered videos, like reviews, top 10 lists and stream live gameplays. I also post stuff of my travels to different cons and being a guest cosplayer at them…and, of course, a lot of videos of my many trips to Disneyland. :D If someone wanted to make a career with their love of pop culture, where should they start? Well, I always tell people if they wanna do something, then just do it…that’s the great thing about YouTube and the internet as a whole, we can now do anything we want. If you wanna be a YouTuber, well, you’ve probably got a cell phone with a camera and the internet…so there ya go! If you wanna be cosplayer,
YouTube has a so many cosplay tutorials to help you get going!
I think the main thing is to not get started on YouTube, or as a cosplayer or as a livestreamer with your goal being to become famous or financially successful. These things take a lot of time, work and money…the most important thing, and the thing that will help you more than anything else is passion. You have to be passionate about what you’re doing, not why you’re doing it. People can see your passion for what you’re doing, even if your skills are still being perfected, it’s the passion people see that will drive them to your content. Cosplay is more mainstream now, has it changed from its roots? I definitely think cosplay has very much changed, as everything usually does the more mainstream it becomes. Like I was saying before, cosplaying is all about passion…it’s about showing your love for a character or a game or a comic that you personally relate to or that you just really, really adore for whatever reason. I do feel a lot of people have lost