Myl, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.”
Hi I’m MylCreates. I’ve been a cosplayer for about 15 years, online for 8. I specialize in cosplaying monsters with an enthusiasm for skeletons in particular. I run a youtube channel with makeup tutorials and cosplay skits. I dabble occasionally in other artistic endeavors like comics, digital art, video fx, and recently videogames.
Awesome – Now then, can you talk about your creative journey that lead up to what you do now?”
My path of creative endeavors has been quite convoluted. I started off on a rather traditional artistic route, competing in drawing competitions and drawing endearingly cringey comics with my friends in middle school. I was quite obsessed with art class and would sometimes go off the deep end when it came to using up all the school’s free art supply. (Back in 4th grade I used to skip lunch to build a 5 foot paper mache statue of a toa Hahli figure from Lego Bionicle, which I’d have to bridal-carry to and from the storage room between classes. I was quite fortunate to have such a tolerable art teacher.) By 14, the only concept of costumes and visual effects I had were movies like Star Wars or the live action Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and thought bringing to life such things was for professionals only. For a time my dream job was working in the movie industry. Around 2008 my dad showed me an animation called Big Buck Bunny and asked if I wanted to make something like that. Enthralled by the possibilities I said yes, and he sent me a link to a program called blender. I booted it up. Welcomed by an unintuitive isometric gray box, I turned to him and asked if he could teach me. He said “nope, good luck”, and left me to it. It was a hair pulling 3 or so years, learning all of the keystrokes, just for the Blender UI to change completely and having to learn everything again from square one. I’m glad I stuck through it though as it’s become a priceless tool in my current projects.
In highschool I joined an anime club where I learned what anime conventions were and the existence of cosplay. It was a brand new world for me, learning that the world of movie FX and costumes was tangible to a layman like me. I soon dabbled a bit in making my own cosplays. Mostly closet creations from scraps, hand sewn and hot glued together. I didn’t get too far with it at the time, but gained many stories from my introduction to the convention scene.
My attention, however, was more caught up in indie webcomics, back when sites like Tapastic and webtoons were up and coming and prior to the tsunami of BL and professional grade manhwa presently dominating the front page. My boyfriend was very supportive of my stories. We used to sit by this window sill in the theater hall long after the last school bell, reading and discussing the penciled comics I drew in a big binder until I eventually moved on to college life. With the encouragement of my friends, in the summer of 2013 I finally decided to make the leap to the online community under an official brand name. I remember sitting in the library after summer class trying to figure out what the name would be. Originally I went with MelArts or MelCreates but a quick google search showed the name already taken on Facebook. I wanted something that wouldn’t get confused with another creators’ work but flexible enough it would still harmonize if I later jumped from comics into something else, so I thought, why not just spell it in an unusual way? So that’s how I came up with MylCreates. I later joined Tapastic as a contributing member in 2014.
I continued that up through college until I traveled abroad, the same year Undertale came out, in 2015. I recall sitting in my hotel room in the dead of Christmas week on a desolate Greek island, trying to beat Undyne’s fight, not realizing I was supposed to flee the battle to progress the plot. I was quite enthralled by the game, and wanted to build a cosplay of my favorite character, Papyrus. It was spring by the time I returned from studying abroad and I began working on the costume. I was struggling to figure out how to build Papyrus’s cartoonishly bulky boots when a random worker from Joann Fabrics suggested I make a post to Instagram and tag it under #cosplayhelp. So I set up an IG account and got to it. Little did I know that post would initiate my move from the webcomics community to the cosplay community. Undertale was still garnering massive hype at the time and my Undertale cosplays gathered attention online and at conventions. I soon began to make many new friends, online and locally, and unravel many new experiences in a rapidly expanding community. This naturally led to me hosting panels, making YouTube videos of vlogs, tutorials and skits, and picking up sponsorships for various cosplay and color-contact shops. I faced a few harsh challenges from getting put in the spot-light, challenging if I even wanted to continue putting myself out there, or to give up entirely for a more peaceful existence. But the bonds with my friends that kept strong through the turmoil, and the random confessions I’d get from fans who said seeing me inspired them quell their insecurities and set forth on their own creative adventures, confirms that continuing to share my passions are worth it. Since the pandemic the rush has cooled down quite a bit. I’ve been trying to keep a healthier work-life balance and find a way to work around my ongoing struggles with eczema. It’s quite difficult to work face paint on a canvas that is always peeling away… So I started going a more 3D print route. I also slowly dabbled back into non-cosplay pursuits like making animations and video games, seeking that same spark of inspiration I had before. I was never much a fan of exposing my plain face anyways, (hence why cosplaying monsters or full-body-coverage type cosplays were my forte). Perhaps I’m once again in the middle of a change of current, but we’ll see how it plays out.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
The pandemic was a big pivot of change for me, from how I wanted to treat cosplay and my life, to working around the re-vengeance of my life-long battle with eczema. I could no longer rely on the compliance of my skin to reliably plan out makeup-based cosplays, but I had recently added on a new avenue of skill sets in 3D printing. The kigurumi and furry community provides many cutting edge ideas in cosplay building, puppetry, animatronics, and material utilization. I often point aspiring cosplayers in that direction for technical inspiration. I used the gear line up of articulated fursuit heads, for example, as guidance for the build of my skeleton masks. I updated my Papyrus cosplay into a more sleek and clean look and built a couple other masks of AUs and Undertale characters such as Horrortale Sans and Spamton.
Due to the pandemic, the crowded cacophony of conventions no longer incited the same appeal to me. Perhaps I’m just getting older, or perhaps each convention is starting to look the same, but I’m not having as much fun as I used to anymore. There’s a few paved paths, but not many, for enjoying cosplay outside of a convention.
Having a masked cosplay allows me to take a portion of my cosplay off and thus appear less threatening when moving through the public environment. (In the past when I used to wear makeup, I’ve had security come up to me and ask me to “remove my mask” only to be stumped and unsure how to proceed after I explain that I can’t since it’s makeup. I was often let go to continue about my day if they’ve seen me being respectful beforehand or with a ‘designated normal person’. Regardless, it’s often a pain when you run into new security who doesn’t recognize you.) I’m still waiting with fingers crossed for Haccostadium, like Round 1, to make a splash in the Western market. (But it’s hard to believe the photo sets would remain respected and in good condition for long by Western standards…)
I still love cosplay, but I needed a new avenue to explore it. So, I combined cosplaying with my other passion: travel. As the pandemic started to cool down and travel opened again, I used my free time in-between jobs, to travel across Europe with my Papyrus mask in tow. In order to be respectful to the public I’d take photos within the accommodation or go to empty spots early in the morning. This rule was broken a couple times though, once in Santorini as the morning went late, and another in Paris on the night of Halloween. Thankfully though I was greeted with laughs and smiles to locals coming up and asking for a photo with me. It was quite an endearing experience that left me full of hope for the quiet majority of humanity being a lot more accepting than their online counterpart. On a more recent local road trip I had similar success cosplaying as Horrortale sans, though, this was also during the Halloween season so I could always spout some class project or Halloween party as an excuse for why a skeleton was strolling along the local beach on a Thursday afternoon.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
When you have the moment, leave a nice comment. Toxicity can be rampant and vibes fickle. You never know how many years of experience nor where along the road of creativity an artist is at. But, regardless of the following they have, it’s quite likely they see almost every comment on their page and are affected in some way by the response of their audience. There is certainly a silent majority out there who enjoy an artist’s work, but it is difficult for that artist to see that behind sterile numbers and the go-go-go churn out rate demanded by the algorithm, lest they fall into obscurity hell. You never know if your encouraging comment will spark their next project or remind them that their work is seen.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mylcreates/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MylCreates