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Meet DeAnna Davis of Its Raining Neon in Tempe

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Today we’d like to introduce you to DeAnna Davis.

DeAnna, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.

I started out costuming as a hobby, I was always overly enthusiastic about Halloween even when I was little. My mom and I would make my costumes each year and as I got older I started making my own. Right about around middle school I found out about Conventions and, inevitably about cosplay, from my older cousins after telling them I wanted to make the outfits I drew and saw in video games to wear. From there it was a snowball effect, and I couldn’t craft fast enough, I picked up so many babysitting jobs and then further down the road my first retail jobs to fund my hobby! At the time it was a VERY niche hobby to have to say the least and there were very few to no resources to learn from online, but I kept at it anyway and over time I got better at it from asking my sewing Savy Mom and my Aunt for advice and branching out from there year to year.
In all honesty there wasn’t much of what could be considered a “career path” for anyone with an interest in this hobby till very recently, and even then it is still VERY new territory. Out the gates after high school I had to balance my new found passion with school and of course a part time job all through college, though truthfully there were probably better ways to do this, I chose to eliminate sleep from my daily schedule to help get in a little more work time. About half way through College while my Cosplay work was beginning to receive regular recognition online, a friend approached me about designing her a one of a kind outfit for a convention dance performance, I agreed and flash forward a year I had my first look at my hobby becoming a business! For a number of years I focused on continuing to make my cosplay work, while producing custom rave attire and Kigurumi commissions on the side, all the while challenging myself to improve my craft by learning new things like photography so I could photograph my own creations.

Then there was a sudden shift in my online brand, I started making short videos for the first time and rapidly became an established Internet personality through outlets such as Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, and YouTube. I had started creating quirky short videos about my life, cosplay work, bad jokes I love and they struck a huge chord with my fan base. As my work/ name/ brand became more recognized online I also began getting a more and more guest invites from various conventions around the world!
Eventually Patron arrived on the online landscape and changed the potential lives of online content creators finally creating a way for Artists to earn a semi steady paycheck for all the online content they put out. For me it was the missing link, I had been working out of the Mountains in Virginia with satellite internet for MANY years and needless to say it’s tough to run an online business without stable internet or decent upload speed to say the least, but I was determined to keep what I had built afloat over the years. Thanks to that stability Patron established for me, within two years I finally reached the financial stability I needed to stop taking commission work and move out of my Mountains across the country to the Desert here in Arizona! Moving me so much closer to the resources I sorely needed for my work and a perfectly suited climate to create armor in!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It was anything but a smooth road, but the largest obstacle to date has been financial stability. It has taken me about 10 years to become what could be considered financially steady, from the first costume I made till now. That said I didn’t exactly take the easy route, anyone in marketing can tell you sex appeal sells and our community is no exception, I was selling metaphorical broccoli in the candy store and in a number of ways still am hahaha, although some may say I am not as successful as friends of mine in the same field, I have proven there is another way that CAN work if you are willing to put that work in.
Building obscure/ niche huge full body armor costumes, paying attention to detailing and extreme accuracy, over guaranteed market appealing content was a risk roll, and till this day I work myself WAY harder than I likely should to make up a large difference in resources. From making, producing, and shooting all of my own content plus streaming on twitch 3 days a week for 4 hours, it was challenging to prevent from spreading myself too thin. I think my next personal hurdle will be handling the stresses that come with creating and maintaining that stability, then eventually expanding it while finding a healthy balance of workload for myself.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
My name is DeAnna Davis and I created Its Raining Neon!

I am an artist experienced in numerous fields as a Costume Designer, Prop fabricator, Sculptor, makeup artist, model, stylist, illustrator, photographer, and graphic designer. Through combining all of these skills through the past 10 years I used my talents to create and photograph world renounce intricate costume designs based on characters from different popular video games, comics, and cartoons known as “Cosplays”.

What were you like growing up?
As a kid I was a handful, a good kid just….. Hard to keep track of. I was always on the move, exploring, playing dress up or trying to build something, honestly I’m not sure how much actually changed ha-ha has. My mom could probably spin you ridiculous stories of me as a little one for hours, like how I use to sneak downstairs after my bed time when I was 5 to play Dig Dug on our Atari, or that time 4 year old me was super proud of my first kiss… with a large goldfish I somehow managed to catch in a 50 gallon tank downstairs, it lived for many years after no worries but I don’t think my mom would read me princess and the frog anymore after that.

Pricing:

  • You can support my Art here; https://www.patreon.com/ItsRainingNeon
  • Or check out our Print Store here; http://itsrainingneon.storenvy.com/
  • Or by Following us here : twitch.tv/itsrainingneon

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Barbarian photographed by Aryn Jurgensen, Halo Suit photographs by Anna Fisher and Dave Yang, Samus Photographed by Martin Wong, DemonHunter photographed by Josephchilin, All other images were photographed by DeAnna Davis aka. Its Raining Neon

Getting in touch: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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