Sean and Amanda are joined by Ringer contributor Brian Raftery to discuss his miniseries about the Sony hack, running next week on the Big Picture feed (1:00). Then, they discuss two recent releases—Sean Wang’s coming-of-age movie Dìdi and the Matt Damon and Casey Affleck vehicle The Instigators (14:00)—before launching themselves into the Matt Damon Hall of Fame (34:00). Finally, Sean is joined by Wang to discuss making Dìdi, the path to his first feature at just 29 years old, the particular time period of the movie, and more (1:36:00).
Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Brian Raftery and Sean Wang Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner
We post galleries from major cosplay shows all the time, and they’re always excellent, but for the recent New York Comic-Con one photographer wanted to do things a little differently.
Wanting to try something beyond just taking nice photos, veteran photographer Andrew Boyle (disclaimer: I wrote the foreword for his book) thought that for this year’s show he’d try and make the cosplayer “the sole focus” of his work.
“After my cosplay photo book ‘Heroes & Villains’ came out in 2017, I thought I’d relax it up a bit with the subject matter, but it kept pulling me back; the effort, the enthusiasm and the sense of community amongst the costumed fans”, Boyle tells Kotaku. “I shoot in a uniform style inspired by the portraits of Richard Avedon, so that the sole focus is the subject without background distraction.”
“I also work in collage pieces and motion I wanted to integrate a unique hand made feel for each selected subject. For some, I used cut out pieces that referred to the character, others were repetition of shapes, or color blocking with paper and textures. It was a way to differentiate from other cosplay photography, all of which has it’s own approach, and take a different feel to celebrate all the effort and energy the NYCC crowd brings. Plus I love reading the reactions people have to seeing themselves portrayed in such a way.”
The result is this heavily-stylised gallery which, by removing the usual convention background, really lets each cosplayer, their outfit and their performance shine.
