Filipina-German Cosplayer Jessica Ouano

Alodia Gosiengfiao isn’t the only Filipina cosplayer rising to international fame. The upcoming photobook Otacool 2: Worldwide Cosplayers features not one, but two Filipinas on the cover. Joining Alodia on the cover is Filipina-German cosplayer Jessica Ouano.

Cosplay is a portmanteau combining two words: costume and roleplay. Hailing from the island of Cebu, home of many a beautiful Filipina, fifteen-year-old Jessica shows great promise as a cosplayer with her amazing costumes and captivating portrayals.

As with many anime and game cosplayers, Jessica’s immersion in otaku culture adds to the enthusiasm of her portrayals. She counts Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection among her favorite games, and Gundam Seed’s Lacus Clyne among her anime idols.

Check out Jessica’s renditions of fictional characters both modern and classic: Sheryl Nome from the anime Macross Frontier, Gwendolyn from the role-playing game Odin Sphere, and Alice from the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She even reprises Alodia’s portrayal of Haruhi from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Click here to continue reading “Filipina-German Cosplayer Jessica Ouano”…

February 10, 2010 · 17 Comments (with 5 Conversations)

Otacool 2 Cover Cosplayers Revealed

Otacool 2 Cover

When top otaku culture blogger Danny Choo needed cosplayers for his upcoming photobook, Otacool 2: Worldwide Cosplayers, he didn’t seek them out in the traditional way. He didn’t set up geographically limited auditions or prohibitively expensive photoshoots. He didn’t fly in cosplayers from around the world or conduct time-consuming local contests in various countries. No, he didn’t indulge in any such offline prefiltering.

Being a tech industry veteran who’s worked with the likes of Microsoft and Amazon, Danny did something smarter, something more scalable, something more disintermediated, something that completely bypassed geographic cosplay cliques. He leveraged the Internet for crowdsourcing.

Danny made a public call for cosplayers to post photo entries on his hobby site, Figure.fm. Thanks to Danny’s considerable fame within his niche, hundreds of entries piled up in a matter of weeks. Some of the world’s top cosplayers even contributed to the blogger’s book project. Click here to continue reading “Otacool 2 Cover Cosplayers Revealed”…

February 6, 2010 · 6 Comments (with 1 Conversation)