Zizo as she is known to friends is an established Saudi cosplayer who has been hand making her costumes since 2014. Her journey began collecting pictures of internationally recognized cosplayers for a very long time, all the while thinking cosplaying was an impossible dream to achieve until she attended “Egycon” Girls Only gaming convention in Riyadh back in 2013. It’s there that she saw cosplayers in person for the first time and instantly knew her dream can be a reality.
Her first cosplay came about in 2014, she dressed up as Yuna from the game “Final Fantasy”
A major challenge she faces is finding the right materials. The shipping cost associated with buying online is prohibitively expensive. At the end of the day though, once completed, wearing her costumes are relatively easy since she uses a lot of velcro tape and rubber.
Zizo has found a second family in the budding cosplay community both in Saudi Arabia as well as the GCC as a whole who are very supportive of the art form. The general community however, try to bring cosplayers down by labeling them as “weirdos” – however she doesn’t care! What matters is that they are all creative and full of life.
While Zizo would love to attend every convention in the world, she follows a very well organized schedule in her life which divides her time between her job, local community and other activities. Conventions themselves she says have their own pros and cons so she doesn’t have a favorite one in particular.
“I would like to make something huge. A challenging cosplay of my own design but I haven‘t decided on the particulars yet”
In one of the conventions, a group of girls asked me to come and meet their friend who happens to be one of my followers on social media. I was told she loved me so much, it turned out that she was physically impaired. I went up to her and I noticed how emotional she got, her tears running down her cheeks.
We talked and she thanked me for cosplaying characters from her favorite games. This incident made me realize how positively this type of art can affect people.
iCosplay as Ashe
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“I won 6 prizes, did a speech on stage, been a judge in 2 conventions (Jeddah & Kuwait) and did a panel about Cosplay Basics”
All my costumes are hand-made so highlighting the details requires photos, but let me say for example the (bandlock logo) on Ashe‘s shotgun, The blue pattern along Fang‘s sari , nails on Lady‘s bazooka.
I make sure to color all buttons, strips, inner-side of the foam even though it won’t show but I like the feel of a wholesome costume. I also design and create pieces to coverup parts of my body I don’t want to expose and I make sure they don’t effect the rest of the look.
The Team
- Cosplayer: iCosplay
- Photographer: Ibrahim Ansari
- Visual Effects: Adrijana Cernic
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