ICDS 2012: Insights from Cosplayers Yaya Han and Jerry Polence

Yaya and Jerry on stage for their panel

Originating initially from the world of manga, anime and games, cosplayers are now a staple of almost any pop-culture convention.

In recent years, interest in cosplay has been gaining ground with Red Dot Islanders. Even some senior citizens are getting into the fray!

While a high percentage of cosplayers still focus on  anime or game characters, Red Dot Diva thinks that there have been more cosplayers who are getting into the "Western" characters. For example, the superheroes and supervillains from comics, or iconic characters in popular TV series and Hollywood movies.

Whatever they choose to dress up as, cosplayers sure liven up the geek culture scene in so many different ways.

Q&A With David Abramowitz - Screenwriter of "War of the Worlds: Goliath"

From ancient immortals to aliens and detectives, David Abramowitz has been writing for various projects in the competitive Hollywood industry for over 30 years. This includes an internationally much-loved fantasy TV series called “Highlander”.

The veteran screenwriter, who has a deep interest in Norse mythology and war stories, recently went steampunk-alien-invasion with a new 3D animation movie called “War of the Worlds: Goliath” (WoTW:Goliath). 

“WoTW:Goliath” is a creative collaboration between Malaysian-based media company Tripod Entertainment and various American creators like director Joe Pearson, a veteran of animation, co-founder of Tripod and owner/ president of Epoch Ink Animation and Executive Producer Kevin Eastman (CEO, Heavy Metal). Plus a list of well-known genre voice actors - Peter Wingfield (Highlander/ Caprica/ Sanctuary), Adrian Paul (Highlander), Adam Baldwin (Chuck/ Firefly), Mark Sheppard (Supernatural/ Leverage/ BSG), Elizabeth Gracen (Highlander) amongst many others.

This animation film is an epic about the fight by a group of multinational soldiers from war machine Tripod Goliath, in their fearless attempt to ward off the relentless Martians returning for a second round of invasion.

And all the characters in “WoTW:Goliath” would not have voices if there wasn't an interesting story to tell.

Red Dot Diva - who loves things cerebral - had to find out what made an experienced writer like David tick: