MoPOP's Cosplay Virtual Student Club: Get To Know Featured Teaching Artist Abigail Gardner
MoPOP's new virtual student clubs offer an opportunity for students to connect while remaining safely apart! Ages 11-18 are invited to engage with fellow students who share interests, solve creative challenges together, and explore MoPOP's content wherever they are.
Be sure to check out the details for our next student club offering: a virtual Cosplay Club launching in February 2021!
If you're passionate about costumes, crafting, fandoms, or learning new skills, MoPOP’s upcoming cosplay club is the opportunity for you!
Join us biweekly beginning February 10 for six weeks of collaborative creativity as we explore the art of cosplay. Each meeting will focus on a different element of cosplay: costume building, makeup, wig styling, and more. At the end of the club, participants will have a fully formed cosplay costume and themed PPE facemask as club members learn from professional cosplayers leading demos and answering questions on the elements of cosplay.
Today, we get to know one of the professional cosplayers students will learn from in MoPOP's club: Abigail Gardner, who on March 10 will lead a workshop on making a PPE mask themed for your cosplay.
Abi Sue has been sewing for over 25 years, and got into cosplay more than 10 years ago when her brothers invited her to an anime convention. The experience was so enjoyable that she continued making upwards of 30-plus costumes for herself and more for friends and family over the years. She enjoys posting ‘work in progress’ photos often and loves to help people find solutions to costume problems. More recently she has started to make historical costumes from different eras, and has started a YouTube channel to share her journey.
(photo by Eurobeat Kasumi)
Materials that she has worked with range from worbla or craft foam armor, jewelry, wig styling, and wefting, sewing a variety of fabrics, specializing in bodysuit creation with spandex, creating patterns from scratch or editing existing patterns. She learned the basics of casting resin from Jerikandra, leatherwork, hand embroidery, corset making, and even learned how to make chainmail.
Having won first place in the Rose City Comic Con costume contest in the comics category years ago, as well as placing in a few other contests, she now enjoys judging costume contests more. She has a love for a variety of characters and has a huge list that she keeps adding to. She makes costumes from historical fashion, comics, Disney movies, sci-fi, games, anime, movies, TV shows — the list goes on! She loves choosing characters that she can relate to, or that have really challenging or beautiful costumes to create. She feels cosplay and costuming has such a positive influence in her life and believes that everyone who is interested should give it a try!
Whether you’re an avid cosplayer or you’re just dipping your toe into the world, we invite you to explore MoPOP's Cosplay Virtual Student Club.
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