Local cosplayers bring the big guns to London Comic Con

Friday 25 May 2018

Two islanders will be walking the halls of ExCel London this weekend as part of the ComicCon - but you wouldn't recognise them as they will be wearing very elaborate costumes they have been building out of EVA foam for the past 18 months.

Matt Le Marquand (40) and Leigh Thorne (38) have been cosplaying for 12 and 20 years respectively, under the names of Bluejam 77 and Dax79.

Cosplay, a contraction of costume and play, sees participants attempt to recreate costumes of movie, comic or anime characters.

Leigh, a ICT technician at Media Technician at FCJ Primary, has been making his own costumes, whether for school plays or Halloween, since he was a child. His first costume was that of Dwayne Hicks, a character in James Cameron's Aliens. 

Matt, a facilities manager at PBB, also grew up under the influence of theatre. So much so that he went on to study Theatre Design Technology at university and learned how to build sets, soundscapes, lighting and costumes. He departed a little bit from his track and went into cinema. After meeting Leigh at Cineworld, the pair started making short films together but it soon progressed into "fancy dress." 

Pictured: Some of Matt's most recent costumes. 

"We challenge ourselves," says Matt. "We always try to get bigger and better. Each year we are more and more ambitions. But the first time I went out with my costume, it was a complete disaster. There was a huge storm and I was walking around town under the rain. There was no real appreciation although I had been working on it for months."

As Leigh says, however, cosplay is not just about "creating a character from stuff you found and made," you also have to play the part. "You find a picture of the character and try to replicate it at home. Then you have to perform the costume on stage, you have to walk exactly like the character does and put a performance piece together yourself."

Pictured: Cosplay is not just about dressing up in a fancy costume, it also involves playing the part like Leigh does at conventions.

To find likeminded people, the pair have been flying away frequently. As Leigh says, "you have to get off Jersey to go to a real convention." Yesterday, the pair jumped on a ferry with a crammed van - their costumes are quite bulky - to travel to London for the MCM Comic Con, Leigh's favourite. While he is a seasoned convention attendee - he has been as a guest, a judge and a competitor, even bringing several awards home - it is only Matt's third one.

"There were 110,000 people on the Saturday, the first time I went in 2014. I didn't know what to expect. I was dressed up as the Witch King from Lord of the Rings. It is quite a tall character, like Leigh's, Pyramid Head from Silent Hill, and we both stood out a lot.

"I was impressed to see the massive amount of attention we got while still being anonymous. You are walking around with your face in the costume so people can't see you but they know your character. You are famous for what you are wearing, not who you are."

Video: Matt trying on his Full Raider Power Armour with the help of Leigh.

"It is the ultimate escapism," says Leigh. "You can be hugely popular without having to be you. When you are in big costumes, you sometimes have more people taking photos with you than with celebrities. I was once standing next to the Power Rangers actors in my Iron Man MK1 costume and there were more people talking to me. Some people even knew me before I walked in because they had seen photos of my costume online."

They have each taken three different costumes to London, including the Full Raider Power Armour from Fallout for Matt and Iron Man MK1 for Leigh. Each costume takes about a year and a half to build and with inspirations coming from "anything you want" as Matt says, they have quite the selection to pick from. Matt's latest creation for example was based on a single steampunk poster. Leigh says: "You have to choose something you love cause you will be staring at it for a year!"

Video: Instead of building the red and shiny Iron Man, Leigh chose to build the MK1 model.

With travel costing quite a bit - who said excess baggage? - the pair tries to keep the costs down by using one unexpected material for their costumes, EVA foam. Using this, each costume comes at around £200, including extra material and tools required for special effects. "I really enjoy the building part," says Leigh. "When you put the last piece on and look back at it you see you have created something you have seen in a film and dreamed about seeing in real life."

"The build is certainly one of the best parts," adds Matt. "You have to be creative all the time. Recently I have had to make fake barbed wire or try and apply real rust to foam. You have to get inventive about things for little money but still with a good result at the end."

Pictured: Matt and Leigh's van ready for London.

What the pair enjoys the most though is going out to conventions and meeting other cosplayers as well as the general visitors. "It is always funny when they start quoting lines from the movie or ask to pose like in the film," says Matt. "Once, someone asked if we could pose like they were stabbing me in the eye like Éowyn."

"We also meet up for photoshoots with characters of a same genre," says Leigh. "The best thing is when someone from a movie tells you that you have done a good job. It always give more of a buzz. Jodelle Ferland, who plays Adessa in in Silent Hill, once told me I was the best Pyramid Head she had ever seen."

Pictured: Leigh as Pyramid Head with Jodelle Ferland, who plays Adessa in in Silent Hill.

With only a handful of cosplayers in Jersey - although extremely talented ones says Leigh - the pair would like to see more join in the fun. To inspire more, Leigh and some of his friends are planning to host Jersey's first Gaming and Pop Culture Convention. But in the meantime, Matt and Leigh say the whole cosplaying community is hugely helpful and everyone helps each other with tips and advice. Leigh himself has been posting templates on his website for free and regularly posts tutorials on his Youtube channel to explain how he builds his costumes.

Matt says: "Anybody can do it! Don't ever look at someone else's costumes and think you can't do it. You develop your skills and learn as you go. Do with what you know what to do. You can do it at any level!"