South African cosplayers, don’t panic, but we’re just over three months away from Comic Con Cape Town 2025, which returns to the CTICC for four days, from 1 to 4 May.

That fact got us thinking about the time we got to interview international cosplayer CutiePieSensei, AKA Jasmine, who was a guest at Comic Con Africa 2024. CutiePieSensei has been cosplaying for almost a decade, with her efforts featured by the likes of Disney+, Prime Video, Marvel and more. All this while working around her day job as a video game concept artist, and running fashion line Fira X Wear with husband Vincent.

CutiePieSensei is a delight to talk to if you ever receive the opportunity. Her interview below is full of advice and inspiration for cosplayers – and basically anyone who feels the drive to create or pursue hobbies while juggling the demands of our busy, everyday lives. Enjoy.

Thank you to the organisers of Comic Con Africa and their PR team for facilitating this interview.


Noelle (Pfangirl.com): A question that is very close to our hearts, and we think you may relate: How do you fit in cosplay when you lead a busy life?

CutiePieSensei: Oh, man. Yeah, I’ve actually been asked the question a lot. Like, how do you balance everything? How do you? I don’t, it’s very hard. Luckily I’m in a position where my job is work from home and we run a business together – we have a clothing business.

I’m home a lot. I don’t have to commute. I don’t have to do all that stuff during my lunch break. If I have some free time, I’m like, yeah, I can sew something real quick. So I have time to kind of squeeze cosplay in.

And I think also people make time for their hobbies. I think everybody has a thing that they love to do, and you can’t do everything. Cosplay is the thing that I do.

How did you get into cosplay?

CutiePieSensei: It’s that man’s fault right there; my husband [laughs]. Before we were married, when we were first starting to date, he knew I was into anime and video games and that kind of thing, but I had never been to a convention before. I had never heard of a convention. I come from a sports family so I had no idea that it was a thing that existed.

He was like, I feel like you would love going to a con. You should come with me. And so he took me to my first convention and that was all I needed. It was like, oh, these are my people. I’ve never seen this before.

So, yeah, once I was introduced to the scene, I was like, okay, I need to make my first costume and I need to do this. You can dress up outside of Halloween. You can interact with people who also love these same fandoms. I was obsessed.

Would you say there are certain things that draw you to cosplaying a particular character?

CutiePieSensei: It can be the most random thing; inspiration can come from anywhere. Sometimes I’m watching the show and I just love a particular character and I just resonate with them. That’s how it was when I did Ahsoka from Star Wars. I love her character so much. She is my favourite Star Wars character. So I was like, I have to do this.

And then other times you see a design that you just want to figure out how to make. Like it feels like it would be a fun challenge; I feel like I can bring something new and different to it. I can make it look really cool. So it can be as simple as me scrolling online and I just see something. I’m like, let me do more research; what is this? So it varies.

When it comes to cosplay, is there a particular part of the process that you really enjoy e.g. the crafting, makeup, the photography side of things? On the flipside, is there an aspect you still find challenging?

CutiePieSensei: Okay, so my least favourite part of any costume is particularly when you have to sew, you have to cut out a pattern. I hate cutting out pattern pieces. Putting them together is fine, but having to individually sit and trace everything, and make sure it’s the right size and stuff, and the pattern is all in the right direction and cutting it… it’s the worst thing.

In terms of my favourite part, I really like that feeling of when you’re making, particularly, armour. I like to make armour out of EVA foam mostly, when you’re putting the pieces together and they instantly form the shape that you are trying to make because it’s weird going from something flat to making a whole sculptural piece. It’s just really interesting and really cool. I love that feeling of sticking it together. I’m like I did, it, it looks like something; I could trust the process. Initially you feel like it’s not going to work and then it does!

I did a Hawkgirl and I had never made a helmet before, and I had to make her a helmet for the first time. As I started piecing it together, I was like, it looks like it. Oh my God, I was so happy.

In addition to cosplay and Fira X Wear, we’d love to hear a bit more about your work as a concept artist. Are there are designs that you’ve put your stamp on and/or are especially proud of?

CutiePieSensei: Yeah, I so I’m a senior concept artist on the game SMITE, so I do both skins and I’ve even done some of the original designs for some of the gods in the game. My favourite one that I did, that I’m super proud of, is a goddess in the game called Maman Brigitte. She is one of the voodoo gods in the game, and it was such an interesting experience.

At the time, we only had one other voodoo god in the game, and he was a black character. They knew they wanted to do Brigitte next, but they said she was fair skinned and had red hair. But we don’t have a lot of black women in the game, and I felt like it would have been awkward to put in our next voodoo god, and they are white. It felt kind of weird.

So I asked my company. I was like, hey, I have an idea because there’s a lot of voodoo back home in New Orleans; there’s a lot of Creole culture and that kind of thing. So what if we made her look creole instead? You can still have a fair skinned black person and still have big curly hair that’s red – like still have ginger hair – but have a big afro and stuff.

And they were totally on board. Everyone on the team was like, oh my God, that’s an amazing idea. And they really trusted me to kind of take a different direction with her design. That was the first time I feel like I’ve had that much input into the game, so being able to kind of put my little, little stamp in the game was really awesome.

Do you ever design with cosplayers in mind? Or, put another way, do you design thinking about how a look would translate to reality?

CutiePieSensei: I try to. I know a lot of cosplayers complain because there’s a lot of characters where you’re like, that doesn’t make sense. I do the best that I can. Sometimes my art director is like, no, do this instead. But I try, and I think it’s been a cool experience because my leads and others are like, we can tell you cosplay, we can tell you know about how to make clothes and how things work. Because when you put it in the scene, it looks like something that can actually exist in real life. And I think they appreciate me for that.

So cosplay helps my actual art job and, in contrast, my art job also helps my cosplay. I figure out the design, and how to put certain elements and things together in a way that’s cohesive and has an eye-catching silhouette. So they both kind of work with each other.

It takes immense courage to put yourself out on the public stage, and the Internet can be very cruel sometimes – especially towards women of colour. How do you deal with negativity, especially in relation to gatekeeping around who can and can’t cosplay what?

CutiePieSensei: It’s hard. I recommend anyone who really wants to get into cosplay, like regardless of who you are, what you look like, make sure you have an amazing support system, and people in real life that aren’t online that you can talk to, or who can help even moderate your comments – who can kind of help prevent you from getting absorbed in it. Because you can get a bunch of positive comments but it’s very easy to focus on just the negative ones.

My husband does a great job of, sometimes if I have a particularly spicy post or something where people are going a little crazy in the comments, he will literally take my phone. He’s like, I will go through and delete stuff and that kind of thing because honestly, sometimes people are just kind of miserable in their own lives and they find being negative to others their way of feeling better. And you have to understand that it’s not you; you’re not doing anything wrong.

People are just, you know, they’re safe behind a screen. I’ve never had negative interactions in real life, face to face. No one has ever said I shouldn’t cosplay any character. They have never been brave enough to. So once you know that they’re just cowards, it does make it a little easier.

What’s your advice to people, especially girls and young women, who are getting into cosplay and are afraid to put themselves out there because of A) unsolicited criticism, and B) feeling intimidated by the talent out there?

CutiePieSensei: In terms of being intimidated, understand that we all had to start somewhere. My first costume was put together purely with hot glue and a prayer. So we all struggle. You don’t see the constant failures we make. I say sewing is 50% me seam ripping [laughs]. There’s a lot of mistakes and you have to understand that it took many of us years to get to where we are.

So just understand that it’s going to take time to grow, and you don’t have to have the most giant fanciest mechanical thing going on to be a good cosplayer. You can start small and start with what you’re comfortable with. Just make sure you’re having fun and you’re passionate about the character, and you’re going to have a good time.

Now, in terms of being afraid of criticism, again, it’s about remembering these other people are going to have other negative things going on in their life. So as long as you understand that it’s not you, it’s them, and you have a good support system, it makes it a lot easier to just be able to handle the bad stuff and focus on the positivity.

I guarantee you that most people get way more positive than negative feedback. It’s just negative hits your brain a little harder. You have to be cognisant of that.

Do you have a favourite cosplay of yours, to date? Anything that stands out as particularly special?

CutiePieSensei: Okay, I will say right now, my current favourite cosplay, I really love my Gerudo cosplay from Breath of the Wild. I feel like Urbosa is such a strong and powerful character, and I feel something about the colours – it’s like the red and the green. She is my favourite.

The wig is giant, the costume’s colours pop a lot. And I feel like I’m a tall girl. I’m used to towering over a lot of people and it’s an awesome character because she’s also very tall. Her whole thing is that she is a warrior and she also towers over people. So I feel like it fits as a character. I feel at home wearing it; it just feels right.

Building on that, do you have a dream bucket list project/build that you haven’t got around to yet?

CutiePieSensei: I have so many. I feel like I’m a little bit different than other people in the sense that I don’t necessarily make a bucket list because I’m inspired so randomly at any given time. There might be a moment, like now I want to make something, and then two weeks from now you’re going to ask me the same question and I’ll be like, no, I need to make this particular thing that I saw.

As an example, they just released a new Wonder Woman design. I am a Wonder Woman cosplayer. I have cosplayed three different versions now, and that one is about to be my fourth. I literally just saw it yesterday and it’s already on my list.

So, yeah, I’m inspired by so many things. I try not to – I have a long running list – but I try not to have that one thing because I know it’ll get pushed down the line.


In 2024, Pfangirl.com was fortunate to interview various fascinating creators and industry professionals, including actors, filmmakers, comic writers, bestselling authors and even the head of Disney in Africa. You can find these interviews collected here.