Community Spotlight - Tim

Meet Tim, long time Rare fan and master cosplayer!

One thing that’s come to light through our series of Community Spotlights is how creative our community can be. Fans such as Jackie, Liz and Rodrigo have all shown us how a passion for gaming has helped fuel their creativity.

Arts, crafts, animation, cookery – we’ve seen a host of talented fan creations that stretch across multiple media. There’s more where that came from in our latest Community Spotlight as we chat to Tim who is not just a big fan of Rare and Sea of Thieves but an avid cosplayer, and a very good one at that!

You can already tell that Tim has a fiery passion for videogame cosplay!

[Q]: Tell us a little about what got you into gaming?

[A]: Whoa, that was long ago! I think I got into gaming because of my parents, my mother played stuff like Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island and Star Wars: Dark Forces back in the early ’90s and of course I played them too.

Since the Xbox age I really enjoy playing with friends together, all kinds of games – it’s just fun and a good way to relax after a workday.

[Q]: Were you a Rare fan before Sea of Thieves and do you have any favourite Rare games?

[A]: Of course, what a question! My brother and I had a SNES and in my opinion Donkey Kong Country and Battletoads in Battlemaniacs were some of the best games for that system, same with the N64; I really love Jet Force Gemini, GoldenEye and Perfect Dark. You could definitely say that Rare games have always a place in my heart.

[Q]: What games are you playing currently? Any favourites?

[A]: At the moment I play a lot of Elite: Dangerous and Forza Horizon 3 with my friends, and I’m trying to finish Mass Effect: Andromeda.

[Q]: What was it that first drew you towards Sea of Thieves?

[A]: The E3 2015 trailer was just amazing and I sat there watching the live stream and thinking “oh my god, what is this?”. I instantly loved the visuals and the pirate setting. At the moment I realised that it was a co-op game, I was immediately on board. You killed me when I first saw the ship on the sea! I instantly called my brother after the trailer ended and told l him that we need this game.

[Q]: Our team know you best for the awesome Sea of Thieves cosplay you showed off at Gamescom. How did you get into cosplay originally?

[A]: First I need to say thanks a lot for all your compliments and your amazing support at Gamescom 2017. I first got into cosplay in 2015 because of some really good friends who took me to an anime convention and it was amazing! It’s still a lot of fun for me and it’s an amazing community.

A little comparison of how Tim's cosplay of one of our pirates stacks up. Pretty well, we'd say.

[Q]: Can you take us through how you put your costumes together?

[A]: That’s not easy to tell but I’ll try. At first you need to get all the references together that you can find, like pictures of clothes, hairstyles, details, weapons and props. Then the hunt for the perfect fabric and a sewing pattern begins.

When the treasure hunt for all the materials is successful, well, it’s time for some sleepless nights till all comes together as planned... hopefully.

For props like weapons or the treasure chest for example, it takes lot of work to figure out the right size and proportions. There is also a lot of trial and error involved in figuring out how you could build something like a wooden chest out of soft foam, but it’s a lot of fun and very rewarding when everything turns out well.

[Q]: What is the most difficult cosplay you’ve ever had to pull off, and why?

[A]: I think the most difficult cosplay I made was the Cerberus Mass Effect armor, because it was the first time I worked with EVA foam and building armor out of it was a challenge, but it wasn’t too bad in the end.

[Q]: Having now played Sea of Thieves, do you have any standout moments?

[A]: Nope. Just kidding! Every session I’ve played has been a lot of fun and I’ve had many amazing moments with my friends Dragon, Gomi and Steuer. But if I had to choose one moment: we battled two ships at the same time and we were able to sink one of them, but we ran out of cannonballs so decided to flee and outrun them. After 20 minutes they were still there and chasing us, so I thought it would be a great idea to trick them because we were already near the edge of the map. I remembered that there is a small gap at Devil’s Ridge where the ship can get through at the south end, and while we made it almost unscathed, our hunters crashed badly.

After some minutes next to the edge of the map, we hit something with our ship. We didn’t know what it was but had a lot of fun after one of us said “Oh, I think we just hit the kraken and killed it!”

These moments make this game a lot of fun.

Tim was kind enough to share a few work in progress shots of the treasure chest too!

[Q]: What are you looking forward to most in Sea of Thieves?

[A]: Co-op gameplay with friends, and making new friends of course!

It’s also just amazing to sail. Since Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag came out, I’ve wanted to play a game like Sea of Thieves and Rare has delivered it perfectly. Thanks!

[Q]: If you had to choose a pirate name, what would it be?

[A]: This is a hard decision, maybe something like “Saskeks the Muppet”, because dumb and funny ideas are my thing.

[Q]: What kind of hobbies do you enjoy outside of gaming?

[A]: Gaming and cosplay play a big part in my hobbies, but I also enjoy watching movies in the cinema with friends and I like to edit photos with Photoshop.

And that closes our next chapter in the Community Spotlight series. We’d like to thank Tim for letting us be nosy and find out more about him. You can be sure that those store-bought Halloween costumes currently invading supermarket shelves are going to seem a little bit underwhelming after this…