Two sisters who grew up in Iola and now live on opposite sides of the coast were both recently honored for achievements in the film industry.
Allison and Eileen Chase are the daughters of Bob and Jacki Chase, formerly of Iola who now live in Lawrence. Allison graduated from Iola High School in 2006; Eileen in 2009. Both credit their experiences learning about theatre and the performing arts as students at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
Allison now lives in Orlando, Fla., where she creates larger-than-life cosplay characters as part of a “maker space” group and has a TikTok account with nearly 270,000 followers and 12 million likes. She recently returned from the movie premiere of “Transformers One,” in New York City, which featured her design for an 8-foot tall live-action Bumblebee character. The movie opened in theaters on Sept. 20.
Allison Chase
Allison Chase calls herself “a maker.”
And when she looks back, she realizes she’s always been one. Perhaps it started with her grandmother, the late Donna Talkington.
“I come from an arts and crafts family. My grandma was a very crafty person. She spent quite a bit of time in her basement craft room, just making stuff,” Allison said. “She was a maker before we realized what a maker was.”
So what is a “maker”? It’s just what it sounds like: You make something. Anything.
“You don’t need to be creative — or think you’re creative — to do stuff. You just need the will to do it. Don’t think about it too much, just start doing something. It’s harder to fail completely than you might think.”
Allison’s approach to creating is to jump right in and learn as she goes.
“I can’t emphasize enough that every time I start a new project, I have no idea what I’m doing. Truly. I just keep messing around and it keeps working. It would be very hard to make a tutorial because my process is 90% thinking about how I’m going to do something and 10% doing it, messing it up and redoing it,” she said. “I think part of an artist’s process is that you spend a lot of time observing, thinking, contemplating and planning before you put brush to paper. But everybody is different.”
It’s a process that works for her, even though she describes the cosplay universe as more a niche hobby. News reports show that the cosplay industry — or “costume playing” — has millions of participants and brings in about $4 billion annually. Allison is known in the industry for her larger-than-life costumes.
“At the Orange County Convention Center they know me because I’m the only person that constantly needs access to the freight elevator,” she joked. “Each year my cosplays have gotten a little bigger and a little more difficult, to the chagrin of all the people around me.”
Her largest build, the “Cart Titan” character from an anime series, was 14-feet long.
Her reputation as a cosplay builder attracted notice from the team behind the “Transformers One” movie premiere. When they needed someone to build a giant costume on short notice, they called Allison.
