I have too many social networking sites to keep track of T-T


I've been taking advantage of living on the East side of Australian and discount airlines, and so have been doing lots of travelling! This has meant that for once anime conventions like SMASH and Manifest have been easily accessible to me, and I've had heaps of fun checking them out. I've also started attempting to cosplay, and have met heaps of interesting people and (sort of) learned how to sew as a result.

There's tons of photos on my Flickr account [link] and some writeups on my Livejournal [link] but here's a couple of my costumes:


Iris (minor henchman type character) from Reborn!


Princess Yue (Moon Spirit) from Avatar

Cosplaying is so much fun, I'm already planning what to do next

I also have a solo Japan trip coming up in a couple of weeks, which includes and two week homestay/language course and another week and a half roaming around on my own. Can't wait! I love travelling!


A lot of people seem to have a really negative attitude towards cosplay, which is sad I think there are plenty of bad examples of cosplayers in terms of the effort put into costumes, treatment of other people and how many photos they spam DA with; but there's good and bad in everything and I don't think it's entirely fair to judge everyone by the bad stuff. It's not hard to find good examples of cosplay if you look for them.

As for cosplay not being art... well I suppose that depends on what think 'art' is. If it includes things such as fashion design, costuming, sewing, sculpture, woodworking, handicrafts etc. then I'd say cosplay definitely falls under 'art'. There's so many processes and instances where you really need to think outside the box in cosplay, and now that I've started doing my own I have a real appreciation for the amount of work that goes into these things.


Work is fab, and I'm proud that I'm one of probably few people who can say that. There's been ups and downs, crazily busy periods and some quietish periods, but on the whole it's been moving in a positive direction consistently since I started freelancing. I love the freedom; I don't think I'll ever go back to working for someone else again if I can possibly help it.


Haven't been drawing all year T-T But I have some crafty projects I need to photograph and post here!






~pencafe is a manga/doujinshi artists club founded by a group of dedicated artists in Perth, Western Australia.