When Diego Montalvan started a project in his Grossmont College sculpture class, he had no idea it would lead to him dawning it as full cosplay during San Diego Comic-Con and that it would lead to a feature and recognition from Marvel Entertainment.
Montalvan is a Grossmont College art student who has always had a passion for art, creating, acting, and design. When he isn’t creating, sculpting, or painting, he is heavily involved on campus through the First Year Experience program and the Spanish club.
In Kaya Rainbolt’s sculpture class, students were asked to create cardboard costumes imagining themselves as heroes. Montalvan, a lover of comics and comic book characters, decided to take inspiration from Spider-Man and his rogue gallery.
“I had no idea what to do,” Montalvan said. “I was looking at my classmates’ work, and it all looked so good. Then I saw one of my Doc Ock figures on my shelf, and I thought, ‘Wait, this could be cool—what if I made this?’ I just started playing with the idea, drawing up designs on paper, and the next thing I knew, I had a whole concept for a Doc Ock cosplay.”
Montalvan experimented with different materials, using cardboard, pool floaties and his imagination to bring the Spider-Man villain to life – including his four extra limbs. The initial project for his sculpture class was phase one as he worked to build out the project into full cosplay, a performance art where people dress up as characters from their favorite movies, video games and TV shows.
“I didn’t have the exact idea of what I was going to do, but I didn’t want to copy anything either,” Montalvan said. “I didn’t look up any tutorials or anything like that. I just wanted to make it from my own imagination. I had a general idea of the structure, but as I started building, little by little, new ideas came to me. It wasn’t always perfect, but that was part of the fun—experimenting and seeing what worked.”
Encouraged by his friends and family, Montalvan was ready to show his creation to the world and debuted his cosplay at this past summer’s San Diego Comic-Con. From the moment he stepped off the trolley, the response was overwhelming with people praising his Doc Ock cosplay, complete with expanding robot arms and brown trench coat.
Out of the many attendees vying for photos of Montalvan was Marvel Entertainment. The comics company asked to take photos and videos to share on their official social media accounts and website. On Marvel’s Instagram, Montalvan’s post has almost one million likes and sits next to posts featuring Hugh Jackman and Robert Downey, Jr.
“I feel really happy and grateful that people liked my artwork,” Montalvan said. “To think that something I created from scratch, just for fun, got that kind of attention—it’s amazing. It motivates me to create more. I usually like to make things at home just for myself and never really show them to people. But after this, I realized maybe I should share more of what I do. You never know who might appreciate it. That’s been one of the best things to come out of this whole experience.”