By Jason Yu
During Fanime 2025, I had the honor of interviewing VampyBitMe – also known as Vampy. When I first entered the interview room and exchanged pleasantries, I quickly learned we had some mutual friends. Soon after, she said, “I think I’ve heard of your company, Popsori.”
While the possiblity of knowing me is always humbling, I definitely have heard about Vampy before. After all, she made a big name for herself for over 15 years in the gunpla, mecha, cosplaying, and gaming scenes. She’s also a local, Bay Area girl, born in Oklahoma, but having grown up in San Jose and going to college here. So attending Fanime as a guest of honor is akin to attening a homecoming event.
For this interview, I laser-focused on her cosplay origin story and how she became one of the first pioneers of cosplaying in the West. To kick things off, I was particularly interested in learning about her origin story on how she broke into cosplaying.
Vampy’s Origins
“Both my mom and dad were both seamstresses back in Oklahoma and that was their first business,” Vampy said. “Back in the day, in the early 80s, Macy’s and other clothing brands would have their clothing backed up. My parents would sew clothes like Macy’s full time.”
Vampy says that her fascination for cosplay started when she was 4. When she was a kid, she would take clothes apart and deconstruct them andsee how the seams and fabrics held the clothing together. While this would be the foundation for Vampy’s cosplaying career, her family would not be amused at first.
Her brother Danny would shout, “why did you mess up [my Transformer] Soundwave?” Her mom would angerily tell Vampy, “why did you mess up my clothes?” She would shrug and think, “I’m only 5 years, you can’t be mad at me, right?” One family member, her father, wouldn’t be mad and saw potential.
“I like to build things and my dad does too, so I’m kinda like my dad,” Vampy recalls of her childhood. “I’m forever curious,” a trait that would soon launch her cosplaying career once 5 year-old Vampy grew up.
Yet, a major stumbling block to her cosplay career was that Vampy actually didn’t like having her photo online. Instead, she would write about poetry and music on LiveJournal (remember that?) with no pictures of herself. Journaling would be her creative outlet as a kid, as it was hard finding creative friends in the Bay Area back then.
It’s hard to imagine now, but Vampy was very introverted and kept to herself during her elementary school days. “I only had one friend back then and we were both weird. We read vampire and romance novels together and we were in 6th grade.” She recalled being a goth during that time, wearing makeup much to her mother’s disapproval.
Vampy would use another relic from the past, AsianAvenue, to try and meet more Asian friends during her teenage years. (She would ask me, “do you remember AsianAvenue” to my laughter of “yes, I do.”)This would be the first time she would post images of herself, as she admits her first pictures were poorly edited. She soon gained a following, as she was one of the most-viewed bloggers and from there, Vampy thought, “this could work, I could do something online.” Consistenly posting soon became her form of validation.
Her First Big Break
She would soon graduate from AsianAvenue and move onto MySpace, the premiere social media platform back in the early to mid-2000s, to find like-minded groups in cosplaying. She would soon find her first opportunity in the late 2000s.
“My first big break was with Udon Entertainment doing Street Fighter cosplays in books.” The CEO of Udon Entertainment, Eric Ko, suggested she be a full-time cosplayer to the bewilderment of Vampy. “I remember saying ‘What?'”, thinking that back in the mid-to-late 2000s, that being a cosplayer as a paid career wasn’t possible. The cosplaying industry was still young and growing back then.
Vampy decided to trust Eric and take his suggestion of full-time cosplaying to heart, trusting him and started to collaborate often with his company. They would do shoots of Vampy as Morrigan from Darkstalkers and were open to Vampy cosplaying as anything.
Another big break soon came knocking, as Eric asked Vampy if she would cosplay as characters from the upcoming game, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in 2011. She would also cosplay as Juri Han – from Street Fighter IV – at San Diego Comic Con that same year.
But despite these major opportunities, there was a major problem back then: There was no money in cosplaying.
“Back then I played Street Fighter 8 hours every day. I love the fandom so much.” However, the possiblity of making a full-time living from cosplaying was still unstable and not a guarantee.
The Rise of Cosplaying in the 2010s
Yet, as the cosplaying scene matured and developed in the early-to-mid 2010s, paid opportunities and sponsorships soon came knocking to Vampy’s door. EVO, Bandai, Capcom, DC Comics, and Kotobukiya are among the notable companies Vampy has worked with.
These days, cosplaying has become a major business to many creators. Many cosplayers hiring professional photographers to take their photos under high-quality lighting and high-powered mirrorless cameras. The cosplaying teaching business has also boomed since then, as aspiring cosplayers pay to learn about how to best look on camera, costumes to wear, and best locations to shoot, among many other aspects.
Vampy Today
I asked Vampy about a quote she said back in 2013 to AsiaOne about one day retiring from the cosplay scene (the Asia One interviewer went by her real name Linda Le):
Asked in 2013 as where she sees herself in 20 years from now, Le answered: “Cosplay is great, but I can’t be doing it forever … Hopefully, I’ll have my own costume line, come up with toys and do something related to the arts scene.
When I brought up the quote, Vampy laughed, saying, “I think I said that, but I’ll take your word for it (laughs). But I’m still doing cosplaying now in 2025!” Vampy is still majorly involved in the cosplay scene, hosting, teaching lessons, and of course, showcasing various characters from fighting games, anime, and various other gaming series.
She recalls how times have changed, especially with social media, as kids these days use so many social media accounts to promote themselves. “How do people these days keep up with 4-5 social media apps these days,” she wondered. Vampy recalled her days back on AsianAvenue and MySpace and thinking how much pressure it is to keep up on so many social media apps and websites.
It’s been a long journey for Vampy, as she became a full-time cosplayer, making a reality for the once shy-kid destroying her brother’s Transformers and her mom’s clothes. As Vampy continues her cosplaying career – as well as her gunpla, hosting, and gaming gigs – she’s still in peak form, still having that passion in dressing up as her favorite characters and pushing the scene to new heights.
And I, for one, can’t wait to see what Vampy does in pushing the cosplay scene in the near future.
A special thanks goes to both Fanime and VampyBitMe for the interview. It was truly an honor!