The Rainbow Six Community has a lot of outstandingly creative people that continue to amaze us with beautiful, funny and creative contributions. In this new series, we want to highlight some of them.
We continue our series with the amazingly talented, Team Eight
Hello Team Eight! Thank you for taking the time and answering a few questions for us!
Please start by introducing your team!
Team Eight: Hi, we’re Team Eight! A bunch of nerds composed of Doro-tan, Weakman, Furan and MeruKitsune, who love video games, cosplay, art and filmmaking! We've been friends, and have been doing cosplays together for a long time already, and the group name was just so people can have something to call our little clique collectively, especially during collaborations!
Who is the leader of Team Eight and what effect do they have on the rest of the team?
Furan: Meru, I think!
Doro: It's like whoever has a plan is kind of the leader for that plan.
Kitsune: I am honored with that, Furan bows but yeah, I agree with Doro’s statement above. I think it comes from the fact that at the very core, we really are just a group of friends who love to hang out and do nerdy stuff together.
Weakman: The number 8 has no definite beginning and end. It flows seamlessly. raises a thumb
Everyone: collective groans
What are the different roles that come with doing cosplay in a group like your team does?
Furan: Mel does the crafting, I do some of the fabric work, and Doro does hair and makeup.
Kitsune: I also like to do photo manipulations, and do film editing and visual effects for the cosplay photos and video projects. It’s cool being in a team because it's like we cover each other's weaknesses in our fields of cosplay.
Doro: what does Weakman do?
Weakman: Immoral support.
Doro: But for real he's in charge of gimmicks and choreography! HAHAHA
Doro: He’s like the shifu with the infinite wisdom!
How do various tasks get delegated when working in a group?
Kitsune: It depends on the skillset needed for a certain project, and who's available at the time.
Doro: Most of us can draw and have backgrounds in the art industry, so drafting costumes, pubmats, storyboards, photoshoot ideas can be delegated evenly.
What kind of pros and cons do you experience cosplaying in a group?
Furan: AH! We fight over the bathroom! Lol
Doro: For pros, It's definitely great to always have people you can rope into group cosplays!
Kitsune: It's actually hard to think of cons cosplaying in a group because when you're in a group, your cons as an individual are, more often than not, covered by your buddies.
Looking at your recent project: “A Mother’s Resolve”, how much work goes into creating something as extraordinary as this?
Kitsune: Well, it was quite A LOT of work, as we found out. I’ve always had this vision of a Mothers day tribute with Zofia and her withstanding ability, that no matter what, she has to come back to her daughter. We usually work with fight choreographies, and I was very much inexperienced as a director when it comes to filming drama, so we had to prep a lot for this project.
Weakman and some production friends, JPR and Benjo, jumped in and helped flesh out the scene specifics and choreographies. We were excited, but we all had either day jobs or schoolwork, so we can only meet weekdays. Sometimes we had to sacrifice extra days for pre-production. It was so bad that I was cramming the cosplay while editing the shotlist 4 hours before shoot.
We also had troubles financially as we realized how costly film making actually is. We had to get creative with a lot of the pre-prod materials to make ends meet.
The filming proper was shot and crammed in a day, and everyone was so exhausted by the end of the shoot.
It was heartwarming to see the support of the R6 Twitter community and devs though. (shoutout to Shyshka for being awesome with the voice lines!)
Post-production was another challenge altogether. We had to finish editing everything in 1 week!
We encountered numerous setbacks and I was so worried about disappointing people with the output that it almost made me want to just stop the project altogether, but I’m so proud of the whole Team Eight and our prod friends who pushed through despite the difficulties!
I truly learned the value of "withstanding” during the whole course of this project!
Doro: It was crazy! What started out as Mel’s plan for Mother’s Day turned into full blown conceptualization sessions with Dom, our prod friends Rex and Benjo, and Mel about the cinematography and overall story, logistics, etc., especially since we were on a pretty tight timeline!
What kinds of things do Team Eight look for to draw on inspiration to create that next innovative project?
Doro: We draw inspiration from a ton of places to be honest. Like, we’re martial arts nerds and a lot of people in the industry really inspire us!
Weakman: There are the trailblazers, like Bruce Lee, Hideo Kojima, etc.,who are in a league all on their own.
Kitsune: There's also the people who started small on the internet and opened up the path for other aspiring content creators like Thousand Pounds, Corridor Digital, and Rocket Jump. Then when it comes to cosplay, Aspira is a huge inspiration as she raised the bar when it comes to quality of cosplays!
Furan: I’m a big fan of takeomeow myself.
Doro: As for projects in general, it's usually like when a random thought hits you and you start to think more about it until it becomes a solid idea. Like, “Hmm, what would a straight up fight between Nokk and Vigil look like?” “I wonder what the SMB’s are like towards each other?” Etc.
Mel: Yeah that’s true! The lore within the Rainbow Six universe has so much going on that there's a lot that’s pretty interesting to expound and speculate about through fanarts, shoots and films, etc!
What drew the team to focus on Rainbow Six: Siege for cosplaying?
Doro: It’s normally really challenging to find characters that fit you particularly, but I started really getting into Siege and I couldn’t help but feel it would be such a blast for Team Eight to cosplay the characters. The designs are also a great balance of things you can acquire easily, and things you have to meticulously craft to really pull off the whole look.
Kitsune: We also love how each character has a really good story behind them, some of which were very inspiring to us. Makes for really good inspiration for fanarts, cosplay shoots, and fanfilms! <3
Moving more toward an individual basis, what are each of the team members favorite operators?
Kitsune: I love Zofia(best mom!) and Caveira! They’re also my mains in attack and defense respectively. Closely behind is Nomad because I admire her positive outlook! (I also love Doc with all my heart <3)
Weakman: Montagne and Caveira, I like stealth a lot.
Doro: How is Montagne stealth?
Weakman: I become the wall.
Furan: Team SAT and the whole GSG9.
Doro: Oh no, I love so many people like, Dokkaebi is my spirit animal, Vigil is my precious boi, but surprisingly my most played is Fuze and Mute.
If each team member could be an animal, what animal would you choose to be? Why?
Weakman: I would like to be a chameleon, because they're very adaptive.
Doro: You're more of a dragon though but I guess they don't count as animals? I still want to be a cat, I can eat and sleep all day but I'll still be extremely quick and agile!
Furan: I am a cat. I am moody. I sleep a lot and eat a lot.
Doro: Cat friends!!!
Kitsune: My screen name is kitsune which means fox in Japanese, so I’d be a fox!
**Thank you so much for answering our questions, Team Eight! Please check them out using the links below to see more of their projects and cosplays, and give them a follow:
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MeruKitsune Twitter - Duro Twitter - Furan Twitter - Weakman Twitter
