Not Interested Entertainment

Yaya Han

1. What is your name, and where do you hail from?
Hi guys! I am Yaya and cur­rently reside in Atlanta, GA. I was born in China and raised in Ger­many and China. I’ve been liv­ing in the States for about a decade now though.

2. Tell us a lit­tle about your­self. Do you have any inter­est­ing hob­bies out­side of cos­play?
Well, I work for myself so I don’t have much free time, but it’s nice to be able to make my own sched­ule. Aside from book­ing com­mer­cial mod­el­ing jobs and con­ven­tion appear­ances as a Pro­fes­sional Cos­player, I do two types of cos­tume design work. One is for full cos­tume cre­ation for pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies, tv shows, etc. The other is hand made cos­play acces­sories which I sell at con­ven­tions. I travel to 25+ con­ven­tions per year, within the USA and inter­na­tion­ally.
When I do have a break, I sup­pose I am pretty nor­mal lol. Maybe because my work is so unusual and “inter­est­ing” already, all I want to do when I have a break is to catch up on books and TV shows and do more laid back things. How­ever, I am a rav­en­ous shop­per and trav­eler and enjoy activ­i­ties like cav­ing and moun­tain driving.

3. How long have you been cos­play­ing?
As of the end of 2009, I have been cos­play­ing for 10 years. It started as sim­ply a hobby and turned into my full time job in 2005. You never know where life takes you lol.

4. What ini­tially drew you to cos­play?
As a fan of Anime and Manga since early child­hood I thought it was a fas­ci­nat­ing way to express my pas­sion for this fan­dom. Instead of col­lect­ing and wear­ing mer­chan­dise of my favorite char­ac­ters, or even doing fanart of them which I was heav­ily involved in, I could actu­ally dress up as those char­ac­ters. How­ever, once I ven­tured into cos­tume mak­ing, I became more drawn to the poten­tial unlim­ited cre­ativ­ity Cos­play pre­sented. I had so much fun with the sewing, pat­tern draft­ing, wig styling, sculpt­ing, jew­elry mak­ing, props etc. that to this day, the crafty aspects are what keep me inter­ested. I love that even after 10 years, I still have new goals and chal­lenges to meet, and thirst for more knowl­edge and skills.

5. What was the first char­ac­ter that you cos­played?
I count two cos­tumes as my first true Cos­play expe­ri­ence, when I made Mill-chan from “Megaburst Maze” and Mana from Mal­ice Mizer’s “Au Revoir” video.

6. What is your favorite thing about cos­play?
Cos­play gave me so much, includ­ing a career path doing some­thing I love immensely, and the life long friends I’ve made.

7. What is your least favorite thing?
My least favorite aspect is the lack of time I have to devote to per­sonal cos­tume projects these days. I have fab­ric for over 4 cos­tumes lay­ing around and no time to make the cos­tumes.
I also wish cos­play wouldn’t be so entwined with drama and rumors. The worst I heard about myself was when some­one was spread­ing the rumor that I didn’t make my own cos­tumes but hired oth­ers to cre­ate them for me. That makes me laugh in dis­gust, because I spend so much time and sweat on mak­ing each of my cos­tumes by hand.

8. What was your most enjoy­able cos­play expe­ri­ence?
It is impos­si­ble to pick just one! Some of the best expe­ri­ences include per­form­ing on stage at the Grand Inter­na­tional Cos­play Ball in Lon­don, UK. and par­ty­ing with cos­play­ers from over 10 coun­tries; hang­ing out at the bar at my favorite con, Drag­oncon with a ton of friends from all over the States; and though it was not really enjoy­able at the time due to stress, one of the most reward­ing expe­ri­ence was to win the Yume Cos­play Prize in the cos­tume con­test at New York Anime Fest 2009. My friend Anna Raper and I won a trip to Tokyo, Japan, a shop­ping spree and invited atten­dance to Tokyo Anime Faire.

9. And your least?
There have been some rare but frus­trat­ing moments involv­ing bro­ken zip­pers in the past year lol. I have no luck with metal zip­pers and will never use them again. Three times I’ve had to scram­ble to fix a cos­tume at an event when the zip­per broke.

10. What is the last event at which you cos­played, and what did you cos­play?
I was the Cos­play Guest for Anime USA 2009 this Novem­ber. I wore Misa Amane from Death­note, my orig­i­nal Steam­punk Madam, and Carmilla from Vam­pire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

11. What is the next event at which you plan to cos­play?
I am return­ing to Lon­don this month as Per­form­ing Guest at the Grand Inter­na­tional Cos­play Ball! I can’t reveal what I’m doing yet for it but updates will be on my web­site asap!

12 What do you have in the works for upcom­ing con­ven­tions or events?
I had to take a lit­tle break after mak­ing Carmilla, but over the hol­i­days I’d love to start on a cou­ple of new cos­tumes. Like I said, I already have mate­ri­als for them. There will always be more cos­tumes in the works for upcom­ing events lol!

Here is one last part­ing shot of Yaya’s amaz­ing work!

To see more of Yaya’s work, you can visit her web­site at http://angelicstar.net.