It’s undeniable that in a lot of spaces where nerds are going to gather, you’ll find a handful of people cosplaying. What is becoming more apparent is that being a cosplayer can become a full time career. Riot Games invited the professional Korean cosplay team, the Spiral Cats, to be a fixture of the Rift Walk experience for both the Semifinals in NYC and for the Finals in Los Angeles. While in NYC, Amanda Stevens was able to chat for a bit with Oh “Tasha” Go-Eun and Lee “Doremi” Hye-Min.

Interview conductted by Amanda Stevens

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Amanda Stevens: What do you both think of New York?

Oh “Tasha” Go-Eun: When we first came, we thought it be a very loud and chaotic city. That’s what we heard. And then we got here, we realized it was really beautiful city and we had a lot of good feelings about it.

Amanda Stevens: From start to finish, how much time does it take to make something like Arcade Riven?

Oh “Tasha” Go-Eun: Usually it takes us three weeks to make one costume, but for the World Championship we were on a tight deadline, so we ended up making four sets of costumes in three weeks.

Amanda Stevens: That’s insane.

Oh “Tasha” Go-Eun: We do this for a living so we have to be efficient and quick. We have no other choice but to be quick about it.

Amanda Stevens: So, does that three weeks include the planning stage of making a costume?

Oh “Tasha” Go-Eun: We think that’s one of the most important phases of costume creation mainly, because if you look at something like Arcade Riven, it uses a lot of bright colors. Just for finding the fabrics that are the right colors and find the right fabric swatches, all of that takes about three to four days when we go to the textile market.

Amanda Stevens: What were you guys doing before you decided to become professional cosplayers?  

Oh “Tasha” Go-Eun: I was a game developer and  Lee “Doremi” Hye-Min was a college student.

Amanda Stevens to Doremi: You were a college student? What were you studying?

Lee”Doremi” Hye-Min: I studied hotel cooking. Even though I really love to cook, I don’t think God gave me the gift to be a good chef.

Amanda Stevens: At what point did you both realize that this was something you could do full time for a living as opposed to just as a hobby?

Oh “Tasha” Go-Eun: I first started thinking about it when I was a game developer, and I thought cosplay could be used as a good promotional material for games. At the time, I was also a cosplayer alongside being a game developer and I thought putting them together would be a cool thing. I then decided to quit my job and become a professional cosplayer.

Amanda Stevens: What is a character that you would want to cosplay and haven’t yet?

Oh “Tasha” Go-Eun: We both think that the Popstar series, like Popstar Ahri, was an amazing skin and we kind of hope that Riot gives more champions a Popstar skin.

Amanda Stevens: Do either of you have anything you want to say to your Western fans?

Oh “Tasha” Go-Eun: So, currently the Spiral Cats are mainly based out of Korea. The more people who give us attention, the more people who become our fans, the more invites we’ll get to different things in different regions. We keep hoping that fans keep showing us support and asking for us to appear at events.

A special thanks to Barry “KoreanEidelweiss” Lee for being my translator for this interview.