Interview with Quicksparrows of The Dangerous Ladies
Interview Conducted by Aesthel
Photography by Sorairo Days
Quicksparrows, one of the founders of cosplay group & shop “The Dangerous Ladies” talks about running her business, the making of their pieces, and her love for Fire Emblem and Edelgard!
Photography by Sorairo Days
CRM: Hello Jenn! Can you please introduce yourself to the Cosplay Realm readers and tell them a bit about what you do?
Jenn: Hi! My name is Jennifer Rezny, and I’m a cosplayer and leader of the Dangerous Ladies. I’ve been making costumes for just over fifteen years -- I’ve long lost track of how many I’ve made, but I’d guess over three hundred at this point. I’ve been in costuming full-time professionally for three years now, which is wild considering fifteen years ago, cosplayers were at the bottom of the fandom food chain.
CRM: You are the owner of a super successful cosplay business, The Dangerous Ladies. Can you tell us about how this cosplay collective was first started?
Jenn: The Dangerous Ladies started as a Deviantpage for myself, Emmy (@chickenbabby) and Diane to post our cosplay pictures back in 2008. We were into Avatar: The Last Avatar at the time and cosplayed Azula, Ty Lee and Mai, so “the Dangerous Ladies” was picked without any discussion. In 2011, Diane retired and Christine (@minakolabelle) joined us, and that same year we started using Tumblr, where we started doing a lot more educational content, like tutorials, build threads, and community outreach. Kat (@angathol), Shazz (@ashazzminscreed), Gina (@podgekinn), and Tam (@weirdtakoyaki) joined us over the next couple years, and when we did our Madoka Magica group in 2013, we got a lot of requests for the resin pieces Christine made for our soul gems. We started offering them to other cosplayers as a means of funding our builds, and that practice continued through Fire Emblem: Awakening in 2015. By 2016 we were doing kits of characters we weren’t even cosplaying ourselves, and then I went full-time in 2017. By late 2019, I was talking with Christine like “well, if you take a shot at full-time and we can’t fill the hours, you could get a flexible part-time job at Starbucks, maybe?” and then four weeks later we were talking about hiring a third person. January 2020 we moved from my dining room table to a dedicated studio space with two full-timers and six part-timers. None of us ever imagined doing this as a career and I have literally no idea what a timeline is anymore, but I’m excited.
CRM: The Dangerous Ladies shop specializes in custom parts and kits for cosplays. To name just a few of the products you make there are 3D prints, resin items, custom fabrics, and patterns. We love the range that you guys have! How did you start learning all of these different skills?
Jenn: Necessity drives so much of cosplay! At some point I look at every build I plan and go “okay, what can I do to really elevate this? How would this be made if it was a real garment, and not something passable for a weekend? What would this look like in a big budget movie?” I almost always walk away from those questions with a list of things I need to research and learn in order to meet my personal goals. There’s a huge wealth of information out there, it’s just not necessarily easy to find in the cosplay community (yet.) The Replica Prop community is full of people who have been doing this for thirty, forty years. I learned a lot about sewing working at Fabricland and talking with my 70-year-old auntie, coworkers, and customers. I learn a lot working with Christine, who is the only person on our team with formal education in pattern-making, or Shazz, who is a graphic designer by trade and knows Illustrator in and out. I’ve trained myself to stop thinking of any of this stuff as intimidating, because if I let myself be afraid of new skills, I’ll put off developing them. And truthfully, I’ve never found any of this stuff to be even 1/10th as hard as it’s cracked up to be as long as I do my research and give myself permission to not be an expert right out of the gates. Being a beginner is actually kind of fun, too.
CRM: 3D modeling seems like it would be super intimidating, but 3D prints are a great way to create detailed cosplay work! What are some of the benefits you have found of 3D printing pieces or props for cosplays?
Jenn: 3D modeling is much easier to get started with than it looks,, you just need to find the modeling program and style that works for you! I slogged through a single 3D modeling class in high school and absolutely hated it, and then many years later I realized that specific software just wasn’t intuitive to the way I think or learn. That said, the biggest benefit of 3D printing is symmetry and dimensional accuracy. Getting sharp edges and superfine detail with thermoplastics or EVA foam can take a lifetime of practice and technical skill. (But then again, so can bodyshopping prints!)
It’s also much less expensive than other methods after start-up costs. Even $250 printers on the market these days produce decent work with minimal maintenance, and after that, you can print a 46” sword for something like $4-5 worth of material. If you do a couple builds a year, a printer will be cheaper long-term and save you a whole ton of time.
CRM: You sell both on Storenvy and Etsy. What are some of the pros and cons that come with each platform for you? Is there one that you prefer over the other?
Jenn: Oh, man. Storenvy has almost no internal marketplace and relies almost entirely on our own advertising steam, but that grants us a much closer control of who our audience is; our clients on Storenvy are generally familiar with us as cosplayers and as a company, and I really like that closeness. Storenvy is also more than a little buggy and… quirky, sometimes, in its design and utility decisions.
On the other hand, Etsy has a lot of great seller tools and is always trying to improve, and it has a thriving marketplace that can drive a lot of traffic. On the other hand, their algorithms are difficult to predict and the audience is more than just cosplayers. We get a lot of clients who are parents looking for gifts for their kids and they don’t understand what they’re getting, and so they need a little more hand-holding. However, it allows direct downloads of digital files, and it’s nice to not have to manually email digital patterns and 3D print files.
If I had to pick one over the other, I’d stick with Storenvy, but ultimately I’d like to move to a shopping platform on a custom website.
Photography by Sorairo Days
CRM: You have made designs based on many different fandoms, but are probably most known for your Fire Emblem designs! You have made products based on characters from Three Houses, Fates, Awakening, and more! What is it that draws you to the Fire Emblem series so much?
Jenn: Me personally, I’m a medieval history buff who likes a series that lets me think about whether Fodlan has developed the printing press yet. (Canon answered this recently, I was very delighted.) Truthfully, though, it’s the character designs. We started in Fire Emblem with Yusuke Kozaki’s designs. We’d been making his costume designs since No More Heroes, so we were already familiar with his design sensibilities, and to date I've never seen a Kozaki design that wasn't grounded in real-world logic. Characters like Sumia and Cynthia end up extremely straightforward to break down just because their costumes are already designed with particular seaming in mind and their armor has some sort of understanding of movement and flexibility. His details are so consistent, too. Pretty much every “ruffle” in his designs is actually a box pleat trim, which has such a sharp visual effect! We’re also very happy with the new designer for Three Houses, Kurahana Chinatsu -- I love that I can look at them and immediately know how I’d make it real.
CRM: With the boom that is Fire Emblem: Three Houses we have seen a major surge in cosplays from this game, and of course we have seen your shop mentioned in the credits of many of these cosplayers! What has it felt like for you to see your items used in such prevalence around the fandom?
Jenn: I’m still excited every single time I see them used. When the wholesale industry found cosplay and started churning out mass-produced costumes, we saw a lot of people who otherwise loved to craft stop making their own costumes because it was more intimidating than just buying one, and we hoped kits would inspire more people to take on those costuming projects, knowing we could help them on the finicky little parts. It makes me incredibly happy to see so many people still making costumes, or using our kits to decorate and personalize bought ones.
CRM: We absolutely love your Empress Edelgard cosplay, it is stunning! You perfectly captured everything from the attitude of Edelgard, to the silhouette of her dress, to the little details of the cosplay itself. How long did this cosplay take you to complete?
Jenn: Thank you very much! I started right as the game came out (despite weeks of telling myself I wouldn’t commit to the project until I finished the game and knew I loved her) and then chipped away at it over the months. I try to do a little bit every day, even if it’s just 15 minutes, but I’d estimate probably 200-250 hours overall including research and shopping.
Photography by Sorairo Days
CRM: What are some things that drew you to Edelgard as a character? Is the Black Eagles your favorite house?
Jenn: I love complicated women, and I love that she can be blunt and ambitious and compassionate all at once. I love that she doesn’t apologize for standing up for her beliefs, and that she inspires her people to stand up in the face of tyranny and oppression, even though it comes at great personal sacrifice. She’s wonderful, and possibly one of the best-written characters Fire Emblem has ever had, she is absolutely my favourite character. Black Eagles forever.
CRM: On that note, do a lot of the products from your shop start as things you are working on for your personal cosplay projects? Do you make things specifically for the shop?
Jenn: It used to all be personal projects, but oftentimes now we do things based on what we think would be useful or popular, or based on commissions clients bring to us. Sometimes we aren’t familiar with the source material at all, but a client will ask about something and we’ll ask ourselves “what could we do with this that we’ve never gotten to do before?” We’ve had some great projects that way, like Yshtola’s pendant from Final Fantasy XIV; I got to learn digital sculpting techniques, and we got to offer aluminum cold-casting.
CRM: What are some upcoming products that will be available through your shop in the future? How do you choose what types or products to design next?
Jenn: Definitely a lot more Three Houses pieces, including the armor from my own Edelgard build, but we’re itching to get Final Fantasy VII Remake into our hands so we can revisit Midgar. We try to focus on things we are personally passionate about (clients can tell when you’re not interested!) so we spend a lot of time “theory building” everything we see. I don’t have the personal budget or time or desire to wear everything that interests me, so when I see an opportunity to make something I’m passionate about that someone else might find useful, I take it.
CRM: What are some upcoming personal projects you are working on? Do you have any convention plans coming up for the rest of this year?
Jenn: I’m working on school uniforms for Ingrid and Edelgard from Three Houses, as well as Ingrid’s Timeskip outfit. The rest of the team is in the same boat for a half dozen other Three Houses characters, too! I’d also like to do another Rey build from Star Wars when I’m feeling a little less raw over episode 9.
For conventions, we’ll be at Yeti-Con in Ontario, and Colossalcon East in Pennsylvania.
CRM: Thanks so much for taking the time to answer our questions! Is there anything else that you would like to say to the Cosplay Realm readers?
Jenn: You’re most welcome! If I could only say one thing, it would be that you should never stop striving to develop your art. Whether you sew or build armor or make props or style wigs or do make-up or do skits or do modeling, whether your interest is sewing or 3D printing or resin casting or leather work or latex or wigs or make-up or corsetry or ballgowns or full suits of armor, you should pursue it with an open mind and passion and diligence, because cosplay is an art form and art is one of the most fulfilling pursuits you can undertake in life. It doesn’t really matter how you do it, or how fast you do it, or even how well you do it; it just matters that you do it, and that you enjoy yourself. It can take you some pretty wild places if you go with it.
CRM: Please let the Cosplay Realm readers know where they can find more of your work online!
Jenn: You can find our social media on Instagram, Twitter, and the rarely-used Tumblr.
We also have our stores:
http://dangerousladies.storenvy.com
https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/DangerousLadies
And our team members on twitter:
Adriana