Local cosplayer Shattered Stitch displays her Daenerys Targaryen costume modeled off the character on the popular HBO series "Game of Thrones."Some people read about characters in comic books, watch them in TV shows or play them in video games.
Other people bring them to life through cosplay. Short for "costume play," it's a special genre of performance art where players create their own costumes to represent a specific character and interact as that persona while dressed up.
One Chattanooga cosplayer, who goes by the name Shattered Stitch and asked to keep her identity anonymous, has been gaining notoriety across the Southeast for her work. After winning the Ms. BioGamer pageant at the 2013 Con Nooga, she's been asked to speak on panels, exhibited her work at Knoxville Fashion Week and created custom commissioned pieces.
From widely known characters like Daenerys Targaryen on the popular HBO series "Game of Thrones" to more obscure characters like a living version of World of Warcraft's Ranger General Sylvanas Windrunner, Shattered Stitch said what she loves the most about cosplay is the opportunity to create.
"I like the fact that you're taking a two-dimensional thing that defies physics in some and making it a three-dimensional thing," she said. "I like taking something and forcing it to work in a physical realm."
A project she's currently working on is a version of the title character from Disney's upcoming "Maleficent" in her winged form. Two things that attracted her to this project are the difficulty of making large-scale wings and being the first person to do it, she said.
"If I Google it and there's 10 pages of it, I don't want to do it anymore," she said of the projects she picks. "It's kind of a race to the finish line. You want to be that clever person who thought of it first."
Another thing that drew Shattered Stitch to cosplay is the opportunity to develop so many different skills. To create great costumes, players have to problem solve, engineer, understand chemistry, sew, do makeup and sometimes style their own hair.
"It's all about unlimited creativity," she said. "If you don't know how to do something, a tutorial is just a Google search away. With the Internet at your fingertips, there's nothing you can't do."
The cosplay community has also afforded her opportunities she said she wouldn't have had otherwise.
"It's been a really awesome experience," said Shattered Stitch. "If my workshop blew up today and I couldn't never do it again, it would be OK."