This artist paints on her body to transform herself into trippy 2D comic superheroes
Pike has been a skilled painter since she was young, but she started cosplay body-painting (or "cospainting" as she calls it) in December 2015. She sharpened her craft with the help of fellow cospainter Lianne Moseley, she tells BI.
She now live-streams her process twice per week on Twitch. Below is her rendition of She-Hulk.
Marvel's She-Hulk.
Pike uses a water-based face paint and a special makeup to help it stick. She needs 10 to 15 bottles of paint to create just one character.
DC Comics' Two-Face.
Pike owns 10 brushes, which she uses create characters like ThunderCats' Cheetara.
ThunderCats' Cheetara.
Before she starts, she finds head shots with different angles of the character online.
Ms. Marvel.
For Golden Frieza, she needed to hide her nose, eyes, and chest to create the illusion. It look her two hours to sketch the outline of Frieza on her face, and another week to build the tiny ear cups.
Dragon Ball Z's Golden Frieza.
Most of the characters take three to four hours to complete.
Marvel's Spider-Man.
But Pike will often make a whole day out of it and invite her friends to chat or paint beside her.
Marvel's Thanos.
Hundreds of thousands of followers later, Pike says she never could've predicted that so many people would connect to her work.
DC's Robin
"Honestly, there's the initial clickbait of it," she says. "But then when people realize it's not a skin show and that I enjoy the art and the live performing, they see there's a lot more to a book than its cover and can identify with that."
Convincing Disney that her work was safe for their audience was one of her prouder moments, Pike adds.
All of the comic characters come to life.
Popular Right Now
Advertisement