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Bringing Lady Death To Life: The Rise of Australian Cosplay

Bringing Lady Death To Life: The Rise of Australian Cosplay

Katyuska MoonFox is a 22 year-old games development student based in Brisbane and she looks like Death.

Lady Death, that is -- the fictional goddess from the 90s comic book of the same name.

MoonFox was initially inspired to dress up in the style of her favourite anime and video game characters whilst in her early teens. She has since become one of Australia's best known cosplayers.

"I've always been a gamer since I was really young. Our house always had consoles and we used to play them as a family." Katyuska told HuffPost Australia during a photo shoot at Sydney's historic Newtown cemetery.

"As I got older, I started exploring them more. I would rather be at home gaming than go out socialising. It brought life to these different concepts and worlds."

Her popularity eventually led her to start her own dedicated social media accounts, attracting a million followers and helping turn her hobby into a profession, one which which has helped pay her bills through university.

"I'm really lucky that this has been such a big, important part of my life and that I've been able to do this professionally in order to support the things I really want to do."

"We contacted Katyuska because she has a profile out there and a fan base keen to look at her work. For a creator like myself, having that existing fanbase is really exciting." Beattie told HuffPost Australia.

"I remember going to fan conventions when I was a kid where maybe 1 in 500 people would dress up."

"Today there's about 20 cons going on nationally and all of them have a huge cosplay component. It's become a integral part of the pop culture experience."

"We're just trying to blur the line between professional content creators and the fan base."

Prints are available for sale at Kobayashi Inc, the home of Beattie's fan creations.

Check out Katyuska MoonFox on Facebook and Instagram.

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