Cosplay

Nora and Bruce Mai

Nora Mai was President of the ICG for 3 years, chaired Costume-Con 16 & has edited 3 Future Fashion Folios. She was the founding President of the St Louis Costumers Guild & has held SLCG offices on and off for nearly 20 years. A frequent contributor to the Future Fashion Folios, she started making her own Middle Eastern Dance costumes in High School because she couldn’t afford to buy them. She has been costuming for over four decades with experience in Historical and SF & F, and mostly does originals. She & Bruce received the ICG Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. At Costume-Con 30 Nora received the Founders Award for service to Costume-Con. Recently she began collecting and costuming BJDs. And she currently works as the primary photo archivist (digitizing & inventorying) for the Pat & Peggy Kennedy Memorial Library and the International Costumers Gallery.

Bruce Mai’s first “costume” was a Dalek from Doctor Who, nearly 30 years ago. Once he met Nora, he learned to sew. He served as President of the St. Louis Costumers Guild for 5 years and co-chaired Costume-Con 25. He was the Future Fashion Show Director for Costume-Con 30.

He & Nora received the ICG Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. Currently, he is the administrator for the International Costumers Gallery (a website with 20,000+ costume photos and growing) and the video archivist for the Pat and Peggy Kennedy Memorial Library. With Nora, he has been producing content for both the ICG Archives Travelling Road Show and the YouTube channel that features convention costumers and their works from the past 40 years. Together, they enjoy exploring new techniques and styles of costuming. They also like meeting and encouraging new costumers so they have more people to play with. They received the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2010 and in the future, they plan on remaining entertaining.

Kate Daley

Kate Daley is a special effects artist, full-time geek, and evil plant wrangler, originally from Kingston, Ontario. She caught the costuming “bug” over 10 years ago when she cosplayed to her first science fiction convention. In 2003, she began to study special effects make-up and costuming full-time, under the tutelage of Academy Award winner (and recent Academy lifetime achievement award recipient) Dick Smith.

Over the years she has designed and coordinated make-up and costumes for a number of theatre productions, including “recycled clothes” for Margaret Atwood and company for a dramatic reading of Ms Atwood’s post-apocalyptic novel “The Year of the Flood”. She has puppeteered the man-eating plant Audrey II in two separate runs of Little Shop of Horrors.

Past film work includes make-up on three short and two feature films. The most recent of these, the World War I film, 21 Brothers, where Kate was key-make-up artist, now holds the Guinness World Record for “Longest Film Shot With One Camera in a Single Take”. After moving to Ottawa in 2011 Kate began working with her friend and mentor, Guy Louis XVI, creator of FuseFX silicone paints. With Guy's encouragement she began Daley Kreations in April 2012.

In July 2012 Guy passed away from cancer. However Kate continues to work with Guy's wife Denise, the new owner of FuseFX, to keep the company not only alive but thriving.

Through Daley Kreations, Kate currently specializes in making silicone props and costume pieces as well as giving workshops and demonstrations teaching silicone techniques at science fiction, comic book, and special effects conventions. Her current pet project (emphasis on the “pet”) is recreating one of the aliens from the film District 9, as an animatronic puppet and blogging about it at “The Prawnling Project”.

Kevin Lillard

This talented cameko needs little introduction because you've likely browsed his site numerous times looking for cosplay photos from an event while that convention was still going on. He is none other than Kevin Lillard, the brains and brawn behind A Fan's View, a truly comprehensive web site featuring not only photos of cosplayers, but a complete photo-documentary of many, if not most, of the anime conventions in North America.

After a decade of convention coverage, in 2009, A Fan's View closed it's doors. Many cosplayers enjoyed having their photo taken by the jovial Kevin Lillard, and some were even honored with his Convention Personality of the Week. Even though http://www.fansview.com is gone, it's still important to note his contributions to the influence of Anime and Japanese culture in North America.

Mr. Lillard was the 2012 Momiji Award recipient but was unfortunately unable to attend that year. As such we are even more pleased to have him with us for Anime North 2013.