Local cosplayer to appear at this weekend’s Horror Con

St. Petersburg native Sky Lineberger has loved cosplay – creating and modeling replicas of garments from pop culture – since she was a teenager, using it as a method of self-expression and a way to help her community.

This weekend, she’ll be doing just that, judging cosplay contests, hosting fan panels and leading a costume creation workshop at Sunshine City Scare, St. Petersburg’s second annual horror convention – Saturday and Sunday at the St. Petersburg Coliseum.

The 32-year-old is a social media coordinator at local nonprofit Empath Health, but has been working in costume creation for 15 years, bringing designs from popular movies and TV shows to life. Her costumes have won over 20 awards across the southeastern U.S., including a third Best of Show award at the 2023 St. Pete Comic Con, where she cosplayed as Nadja from the popular HBO show What We Do in the Shadows.

 Nadja is an eccentric vampire with a wicked fashion sense, bringing fresh elements to a traditional Victorian style. One dress from the show in particular caught Lineberger’s eye, a vibrant, billowing, red plaid dress with a Vivienne Westwood-inspired neckline. “As soon as I saw that dress, I thought, I need to wear that. I need that on my body,” she recalls.

To create the extravagant dress, Lineberger had to make the fabric herself, designing it in Photoshop and getting the pattern custom printed before even beginning to sew the yards of fabric. “There’s a lot of research and planning and budgeting that goes into it … there’s no room for error, because it’s pricey.”

Each costume takes thousands of hours of work and hundreds of dollars to make, Lineberger says. She starts each costume with intensive research into the character, studying the styles, methods and materials each costume designer used. Then, she begins to sew the costumes, sometimes making five or 10 mock-ups before she creates a final product.

“Cosplay,” she says, “really an art form. We spend a lot of time honing our craft … [cosplay] has an intrinsic value to our community at large, because it’s giving people another way to express themselves to find other people. And isn’t that what all art is?”

Despite the work that goes into designing and creating her costumes, Lineberger loves the work that she does. “It’s hard to find the words to really describe how happy [finishing a costume] makes me, especially since I only tend to pick things that I relate to on some kind of emotional level, or characters that I see myself in.”

Lineberger says that the cosplay community can also be a safe and supportive place for people who might feel isolated. “It’s such a welcoming place. There’s people from all walks of life, all genders, sexualities, backgrounds, and everyone gets to come together and bond over nerd stuff … we’re a little bit of an Island of Misfit Toys, so to speak.”

Teaching classes on cosplay, as she’ll do this weekend at Sunshine City Scare, is just one of the ways Lineberger feels she can give back to the cosplay community. “It’s so great to have one one-on-one time with other crafters and be able to give them feedback to take their work to the next level … I really see these competitions as valuable venues for other people to gain that same competence. I love being able to add that value to these events.”

Sunshine City Scare at the St. Petersburg Coliseum: Saturday, May 11 (12-8 p.m.) and Sunday (10 a.m.-5 p.m.). Visit the website for details about events and activities, and to purchase tickets.