Creator Interview: Nonomy [2/2]

Recently, we interviewed Nonomy, a skilled cosplayer and TOM Special Creator who is known for his stunning cosplay of female characters. If you haven’t read the first part of this interview, you can do so here: Creator Interview: Nonomy (1/2)

TOM: How do people respond when they see your cosplay and find out you’re a man? Are there any instances that stick out in your mind?
Nonomy: One type of instance that comes to mind is when I use the restroom at conventions such as Comic Market (the men’s restroom, of course), and I use the mirror to check my makeup and hair and a man comes in. They will look at me and immediately go back outside to check to make sure they didn’t go in the wrong bathroom, and then they will re-enter... Things like that happen.

Or, on the flipside of that, even if I cosplay as a male character, there are people who will ask, “Are you really a guy?” That kind of shocking experience also happens. It seems that even at those times, my makeup looks feminine, so from that I learned the importance doing my makeup to appear more masculine.

TOM: What do you want to do in the future? Do you have a cosplay that you want to do?
As a cosplayer, what I want to do is cross over the boundaries of photography to create and publicize cosplay graphics as digital art. Things like depicting characters from anime and manga flying, or an explosion behind them - I want to calmly pull off things that can’t be done in real life. After all, cosplayers are just flesh and blood humans. There are limits to what can be expressed from the world of a character by only using a camera.

Therefore, I want to utilize both the power of pictures and CG to create graphics that make the character the cosplayer is dressed as look as if they are actually in their manga and anime world. Here is a good example: http://nonomy.co.uk/img/img_sample4.jpg
（Photographer: Kenji Miura, 2D Graphic Design: mashana yuki）

That is what I mean. If there are any creators out there who would be interested in creating this type of work together, I would definitely like to hear from you!

TOM: Do you have anything you would like to say to our worldwide users?
Nonomy: Even for males that want to cosplay as females, I must say there are big walls to cross, such as being built differently and having different facial features than females. However, if your love for the character is large enough, through passion and dedication - weight control, makeup, clothing, and polishing posing techniques - I believe that you can leap over these walls. When people look at my cosplay, even if it’s few or many, I hope they would come to appreciate the expression of male cosplayers posing as female characters.

Check out our picture collection of the talented Nonomy, and don’t forget to SUKI him! Keep it here for even more interviews with some of the most prominent creators in the otaku world!

Creator's MyPage:
http://otakumode.com/nonomy

This is a TokyoOtakuMode original article.