Jax is a South African cosplay artist living in Johannesburg. He has been cosplaying for 6 years and plans to continue cosplaying for many years to come. Jax is a self taught artist, learning most of his skills from YouTube or trial and error. Jax has been building and making things for as long as he can remember often spending hours in his grandfather's workshop as a young child tinkering away at whatever project it was that he was working on.
Jax is well known in the South African cosplay community for building cosplays based upon Science Fiction and Fantasy. His true expertise is in the field of building armour and props, although he does occasionally branch out into the realm of fabric and sewn cosplays. Jax is also a fan of building cosplays based upon fan art by other artists.
Jax is currently working on 3 builds at the moment. These include Hades from the Disney film Hercules and Clone Commander Doom from Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Jax's major project that he is working on at the moment is the Witch-King of Angmar from The Lord of the Rings, however the character has been reimagined in a Steampunk Universe. Jax is working on these cosplays for the upcoming South African Convention Season. Jax hopes to enter the African Championships of Cosplay hosted at Comic Con Africa once again, having placed in the finals last year.
Jax is a character that is largely based upon myself as a cosplayer. I chose to design a portfolio website for Jax as opposed to another character in order to create an insight into the life of a South African cosplayer. Jax is a profesional cosplayer living in Johannesburg that has hopes to one day become a professional cosplayer. He dreams of one day representing his country at The World Cosplay Championships hosted each year in Chicago at the C2E2 event. This site aims to highlight the issues related to being a cosplayer in South Africa such as lack of access to certain materials, resources and exposure (with South Africa being a country where cosplay is still relatively new).
Jax's real name is in fact Robert Jackson but prefers to go by the nickname Jax, this is due to the fact that in the global cosplay community and in particular the South African cosplay community most cosplay artists go by a nickname or Cosplay Tag. Jax chose to go by the name Jax due to the fact that he feels it is a fast/exciting nickname which corresponds to his personality and his characteristics.
On this site South African and specifically Johannesburg based Geek Culture events will be discussed from the perspective of a South African cosplayer, and the advantages and disadvantages of South African Geek Culture events. Jax is also an advocate for the Cosplay is for Everyone movement which has been gaining traction in South Africa over the past few years. Jax feels strongly about this movement as he feels that everyone no matter who they are, what they look like, how old/young they are, what their sexual identity/preferences are should have the opportunity to cosplay. Jax feels this way because in a world full of so many negative things, he believes that everyone should be able to what makes them happy.
The colour scheme that has been chosen for the website is a combination of blues and purples. This was chosen because the combination of blues and purples strongly relate to the upbeat and energetic personality of Jax. The site is designed to have a high focus and emphasis on visual elements such as images and video, as these aspects are closely related to the artform of cosplay.
