Cosplay Live Magazine 2017

In a previous issue of Cosplay Live
(2 years ago almost to the month)
we spoke to Harley’s Joker, a brilliant
designer, photographer and
Joker themed cosplayer who goes
to incredible lengths to create art
that shines in the world of cosplay. If
you’ve ever thought about undertaking
a cosplay project that is complex
but ulitmately worth it, this is the artist
to follow. We caught up with him
recently on his latest project...
Your latest project is a wonderful
tribute to the original, did you do the
graphic art too?
Of course I did, and thank you very
much. I’m extremely protective (and
a bit obsessive) of my projects, and
typically wouldn’t feel comfortable
letting anyone else handle them. If
it’s something I put out there, well
over 90% of the time I’m the one behind
the whole thing. I think my obsession
over details simply comes
out of the premise I apply to these
projects, which is “if this were real,
and a camera was simply there to
capture this moment, what would it
look like?”. I want the pieces to feel
as if the original comic book art to
which I am paying tribute is actually
a drawing based on this photograph,
instead of the reality which is the
other way around. I hope that made
sense.
You’re doing brilliant and complicated
art projects, does that cut into the
time you’d perhaps spend at Cons?
Not at all. Keep in mind none of this
is employment - these are all just
different hobbies that occur in my
spare time.
Let’s talk design for a minute - the
comic covers - how long does it take
to do one?
Every project is different in terms
of scope and time, though each
is approached the same way. I approach
them a bit like film making.
Most of your time is spent in development
and pre-production. A very
small, dense, but occasionally costly
amount of time is spent in production
(shooting the material). Lastly
a large chunk of time is spent in
post-production, editing. Recreating
“The Killing Joke” cover took a couple
weeks. “Trophies” took about a
month. “Five-Way Revenge” took
over three months, primarily because
I had never done any sort of
3D design before, so I had to teach
myself as I went along, running in to
MANY roadblocks and speed-bumps
along the way.
How do you source the additional
graphics such as fonts and images?
There’s no sourcing going on, I want
to create everything from scratch.
That’s why I photograph as much as
possible. In “Five-Way Tribute” I photographed
the Joker, Batman, the
playing card, the sky, phosphorus
streetlamp lens flares, automobile tail
lights & headlights, and even bits of
graffiti. If you look VERY closely you
can even see a poster on the side of
one of the buildings for “Amusement
Mile in Old Gotham”, styled like a vintage
circus poster complete with a
clown painted on it. I actually painted
that with watercolor, scanned it
in and shrank it down. However I will
confess to using some stock images
for things like asphalt and concrete
textures. And all the fonts in this image
aren’t “fonts” technically, they’re
illustrated letter by letter, just as Neal
Adams himself did when he drew the
original in 1973. I used to do playbills
for theaters and would do all the lettering
by hand. I even worked for a
while when I was much younger at
a Trader Joe’s as the store artist
creating the signs. The truth is I’ve
been drawing since toddlerhood.
Art and design come very naturally
to me. This isn’t to say that they’re
easy tasks that don’t require a lot of
effort, simply that given enough time
and focus I’m determined to achieve
it “baking from scratch”.
For readers who didn’t read our first
interview 2 years ago - tell us how
you got started in cosplay and cosplay
art creation and where does
your partner Joker’s Harley fit in?
Cosplay happened sort of by accident
for me. Halloween was always
my favorite holiday, and (to make a
very long story quite short) I spent
about a year off and on working on
a Joker costume intended for Halloween.
I decided instead to wear
it to San Diego Comic Con in 2012,
and the internet went kaboom. The
art pieces were a natural way for me
to connect my lifelong passion of art
and photography to something else
I love that had developed an online
following: the cosplay. Joker’s Harley
(or “Alyssa” as I’ve always known
her) is not only my partner in costume,
but in life. We’ve been in love
for five years now and counting. She
is a very talented artist and designer
in her own right and we really have
found a great way to support each
others projects. I know I can always
trust her eye on something, and I’m
fairly certain she feels the same way
about me.
Ok, a bit of a personal question if I
may, when I’m working on photography
post processing I usually have
headphones on and blast music,
what do you do? Also what equipment
are you working with? Some
of those projects would be memory
intensive so I’m guessing you’ve got
some sort of system that can handle
moving all those pixels around?
I will usually listen to music. Often
if I’m editing I’m home alone, so no
need for the headphones. Until recently
I have been using the same
computer since 2009. However this
Christmas I got myself a new present:
debt. I applied for a credit card,
discovered I have a dangerously
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