Thesis Abstract

Cosplay is a fast growing community, a type of performance art, and an act of recreation in which participants dress in costumes and accessories based on particular fictional characters. These characters are usually from animation, manga or video games. I create new, immersive experiences for Cosplayers and potential new audiences to explore these fictional characters and stories. I facilitate users sharing fictional stories and negotiating these identities by creating interactive and hybrid forms of video, photography, and comic book spreads. I aim to help Cosplayers textually poach the original works and in so doing create an alternative and utopian social community.

 

This page is a brief journal on my MFA thesis journey. You can also
Read the Thesis Book
Go though the Thesis Presentation Deck
Watch the Thesis Presentation at CCA MFA Show Opening night, May 2012 (with live Star Trek Cosplay starring Brenda Laurel and Jane Sohee Yoon)

There are other pages in this website extract the design solution part from this page
MFA Thesis: 1.5 SPACE - Final Design Concept, Prototype and Execution
MFA Thesis: Moving Comic App
Watch Moving Comic - A Hybrid of A Comic Book Page and A Moving Image

 

Index of this page:

Thesis Background	Prototype Three: Moving Comic
Thesis Research	The Experience As a Whole
Design Concept: 2.5 SPACE	The principles of Composing Moving Comic
Prototype One: Facial Expression Challenge	Moving Comic Editing User Interface Concept
Prototype Two: Fantasy Action	Extension product concept: Moving Comic app
Conclusion

 

 

Thesis Background

My thesis in Master of Fine Arts in CCA started with a key word, Cosplay. Something I am very passionate about; something I am proud to be a member of its community; something that's not familiar to the general public; something carries lots of benefits but sometimes misunderstood by outsiders.

 

What's Cosplay?

"Cosplay" is a term translated from Japanese コスプレ(ko su pu re i). It's a English word coined in Japan in 1980s, based on the original idea of Costume Play, コスチューム・プレイ(ko su chuuo mu pu re i).

 

In the Costume Play family, Cosplay is differed from them with textually poaching particular fictional characters.

 

The essence of Cosplay

 

Cosplay involves lots of crafting and photography. Cosplayers do it for free, for themselves, for fandom, for the fact of love. Cosplayers are fans of some kinds, like anime, manga, game, movies. Most of them are middle class, ages from 14 to late 30s, or even younger or older. They are just normal people in everyday life.

A short storytelling video about my experience in Cosplay, played in the thesis presentation with my little performance in font of the projection

MFA Thesis Presentation: Being Another... My Cosplay Story part (CCA April He) from April He on Vimeo.

 

 

Thesis Research

Through over thirty conversations with Cosplayers from different parts of the world about what's Cosplay to them, I've come up with consistent responses such as: coming together to be a part of a huge community, despite geographical differences, languages boundaries, professional background differences.

Findings:

 

Some data of attendance in major conventions in Asia, Europe and America. Huge percentage of attendance is in costume

 

Some interesting perceptions from outsiders

 

Although, Cosplay is a fast growing community, there are some interesting perceptions from outsiders. There are misunderstanding, such as Cosplay means Kinky in Bed to them, or Cosplay is an activity which only for nerds, people have no life. Some are curious but don't know what exactly Cosplayers do. It's hard to understand the essence of Cosplay though images and text. Because, Cosplay is one of the kind that you never understand the fun of it until you experience it.

 

I proposed an experience design, named 2.5SPACE, progressive interactive experience.

 

 

Three prototypes are made and carried out with present cosplayers and outsiders to test and develop 1.5SPACE concept

 

Prototype One: Facial Expression Challenge

Be inspired by McClouds' book, "BACKGROUNDS can be another valuable tool for indicating invisible ideas… particularly the world of EMOTIONS," I created some abstract emotional cartoon backgrounds, brought them to a convention and invited Cosplayers to take the challenge.

Findings:

Most of them found the environment fun. By putting themselves in the same shoes as the character, and thinking about possible events according to the character's original story, they started to act out, saying out loud the scripts. They're photographed on front of these backgrounds, a "take-away" item – personalized small Cosplay "business card" with their various expression photos were distributed to them.

 

Prototype Two: Fantasy Action

The better you perform, the closer you are to magic

2.5SPACE Fantasy Action Probe (CCA MFA Thesis 2012) from April He on Vimeo.

Findings:

They were really excited about it, they think the effects worked well in immersing them into the fantasy world, if possible, they want to see themselves' image on the screen too. They would like to speak the name of the attack in the language they know as well. The projection of the animation and the players shadow merged well together to give the player a sense of playing magical object in the fantasy world, at the same time started to build impressions and have ideas of how a character is framed in a media, such as manga and anime frames.

 

Prototype Three: Moving Comic

It's the real fun time, and to challenge cosplayers if they meet the essence of Cosplay, "be in the character," be fully immersed themselves in the character. It's time to act.

Refer to the photo booth probe (link) I made during the early phrase of my thesis: Thesis Research and Development, meanwhile, most of Cosplay ends in static photographs, I decided to push the form of the outcome and allow users to create a video: moving images in comic panel.

This new form is a hybrid of a comic book page and a moving image.

 

The experimental Moving Comic

Moving Comic: Girl Who Leapt Though Time ( April He CCA MFA Thesis 2012) from April He on Vimeo.

Moving Comic: Bunny Hero ( April He CCA MFA Thesis 2012) from April He on Vimeo.

 

The Experience As a Whole

Through the making process of these two samples, I'm developing a constructive way to compose the Moving Comics, tested it in the next two prototype set up. I set up all the three games together as a whole experience, instead of inviting Cosplayers, I invited two outsiders to come to experience 2.5SPACE.

They put on costumes, started with the two warm-up exercise.

 

In composing the Moving Comics, we brainstorm a shot storyline, within a minutes long, rehearsed with the camera, made storyboard, shoot the video, then edited the footages.

 

Moving Comic: Eric as Mr. Rabbit in Wonderland (CCA MFA Thesis 2012) from April He on Vimeo.

 

Moving Comic: Little Alice in Wonderland ( April He CCA MFA Thesis 2012) from April He on Vimeo.

The prototype proved that the progressive process also works for them, and they had fun while got the idea and feeling of what Cosplay is.

Star Trek fans: "The stage set up is really cool… getting in the character, and try to acting with the emotions and getting comfortable with the environment and the costume, and then doing magmatic stuff with the movement, understand how you being framed visually when you are doing the stuff, and then you act out something else in the frame, so the progression is kind of nice, it worked. But I had a bit self-facing awkward at the beginning, because I've never tried to act like someone else that's not me, but I think that's how the Cosplay experience is… a nice attempt to tied the emotion and the understanding of behind the Cosplay… I understand it a little bit more now…"

Insight:

Moving Comic is challenging and crucial for users who are coming for fun, it requires extra sequential art skills. The filming and acting part was very fun, but with the technology we had today, composing a Moving Comic is a difficult job to offer. Making traditional comic, order of the Five Arenas varies depends on different artists, while, making Moving Comic suggests take these five arenas in one specific order. (The five arenas: Choice of Moment, Choice of Frame, Choice of Image, Choice of Word, Choice of Flow, Scott McCloud's Making Comics)

 

The principles of composing Moving Comic are listed below:

Editing User Interface Concept

Here are the preliminary user interfaces, which I envision the process of creating Moving Comics. This is aimed to ease the editing process, making more people to be able to create their own Moving Comic, and attracting more participants.

1. Users drew a very draft storyboard quickly, rehears it, whenever requires camera changes to tell the idea, a new frame is suggested. If an event or action needs two different point of view to tell the idea, or, two or more things happen at the same time, the storyboard will need to be drawn parallel to each others.

2. Scanned the storyboard.

3. Drag and drop the story boxes, make your own decision. [add on dragging graphic direction and behavior text]

4. The Frame View in the UI automatically resize and adjust the story boxes to fits with the comic spread.

5. Shoot the video according to the Rehearsal View, camera doesn't move until one frame is done.

6. After shooting, drag the footage down

7. Edit footage length or cut out not-needed parts, set zoom in or out to fit the comic frame

8. matches backgrounds, adds effects

 

 

Extension product concept: Moving Comic app

Once we open the door to writing software to compose Moving Comics, hardware will be involved to better the experience. With the integration of big user interface and high-resolution camera, iPad is an approachable hardware to integrate with an app of composing Moving Comics.

User can create the comic frame on iPad, shoot the video within the frame, edit and share it right away.

 

This extension concept is made after the final thesis presentation, for more Moving Comic app wireframe

 

Overall, 2.5SPACE is a fun experience for the Costume Play community, bring more interaction to cosplay than just dressing up and taking pictures, as well as a tool to better communicate with outsiders.

 

Chair of CCA Grad Design: Brenda Laurel

Thesis advisor: Scott L. Minneman

Secondary advisor: Rachel Strickland, Long Jiao

Thesis writing advisor: Leslie Carol Roberts

Special thanks to, my cosplay friends and community, my writing coach Calder Yates, my family