Hundreds of cosplayers descended on the High School of Art and Design over for its annual Fanfaire festival – with a homemade Grim Reaper getup winning the gold for best costume.
The two-day event hosted over the weekend in the high school’s gymnasium rivals the much larger and more popular New York City Comic Con — but zeroes in on the young professionals who are making their creative dreams a reality.
“Our goal here is to make sure that if they have an idea, they can express them with confidence,” Principal Maximillian Re-Surguira told The Post Sunday.
“People need to know that arts education is holistic, and it’s a human education. It’s connecting people, and sometimes we forget that in the technocratic mix-up of the moment. and I think we do a really beautiful job of reminding folks of the humanity of what’s all about.”
The weekend bonanza marked the eighth annual Fanfaire at the Manhattan arts school, which boasts uber-famous alumni like late singer Tony Bennett, designers Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs and living comic book legend Neal Adams.
The weekend-long event included dozens of workshops led by leading artists in their fields — and encouraged the 1,400-strong student body to set up shop in the cafeteria and pawn their own art, fashion and board games.
The school for young professionals implemented an internship this year run in collaboration with Etsy that offers students the opportunity to run their own businesses.
The highlight of the event, however, was Sunday’s cosplay contest, which featured superheroes, princesses and anime characters but the Grim Reaper stole the show.
Quinn, 21, stepped onto the stage with an original take on the mythological character, which included a cane, a blue-painted face and even sidekick, Lucifer.
“I made it in 18 hours straight,” said Quinn, who identifies with they/them pronouns. Quinn’s feathery tie alone took about eight hours of work and they were still working on their platform boots the very morning of the festival, they said.
Quinn, 21, is a self-described comic con fanatic, and has attended every “con” to hit the Big Apple since their father took them to their first one a decade ago.
“It’s just very powerful, but I like to enjoy rich natural culture and ask ‘What can we create that hasn’t been created yet?’” Quinn said. “So bringing original characters from paper to life is always something that I enjoy, it’s my essence in full. Which causes me to create all these things and then create the way that I look today.”
Michael Nagle
Quinn was up against 22 other costumed competitors, a range that included a Renaissance woman, Navia Caspar from the anime “Genshin Impact” and two Spider-men — one of whom dramatically leaped from the stage.
It was Quinn’s originality that awarded them the top spot — the character came to them in a dream, and they found themselves obsessively drawing the long-nailed Grim Reaper for three months before translating it into a real-life costume.
They even brainstormed Lucifer as the Grim Reaper’s servant, embodied by friend Luciano Perez, 21, who was encouraged to pursue cosplay two years ago after meeting Quinn.
In a victory speech, Quinn encouraged others to act on their creative ideas: “Never stop creating. Whether it’s an image or a drawing or just some little thing, just stay on it. Go out there. Bring it to life and make it happen.”
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