We've changed gears from our original plan. Back in December, we had decided to do Iron Companion hunters from the video game Destiny. We hadn't gotten much done on them, though, beyond planning & a couple of pattern purchases. Last week, Brian said he really wanted to cosplay the Kindred champions from the video game League of Legends instead. He was so excited about it, too! So I agreed. Aaaand we've only got two weeks from now to get them wearable for our first convention of the year. Eep!
The kindred are Wolf and Lamb - two sides of the archetype of Death. Those who are marked to die have two choices: embrace their fate, or try to run from it. Acceptance will grant a swift and peaceful death from Lamb's arrows. Running will grant a painful end when Wolf's hunt catches up. The commentary between these two is absolutely hillarious in the cute-but-creepy way. I love it!
Brian is working on Wolf. Wolf is a limbless, floating, shadowy spirit, which of course poses some problems when it comes to creating a cosplay of him! Currently, Brian is attempting a build that will involve him being on all fours, with wheels on his forarms & shins, and with a frame structure attached to a hiking backpack, draped in fabric & equipped with fans & LEDs, in hopes of achieving a flowy, glowing spirit look, while hopefully being able to skate circles around me.
I'm working on Lamb. This is my first time working with fur fabric, creating anything similar to a fursuit, and creating hooves. Hoo boy!
The Lamb Kindred cosplay so far:
When you really want to be sure your costume sketches are to scale:
I like working with croquis while costume sketching. In the past, I've scoured the internet for croquis that come somewhat close to my not-a-model build. But for this cosplay, I'd need to be on my toes, which skews the appearance of the calves, quads, glutes, & low back. And considering this cosplay will require some areas to be padded out for the animalistic look, while other areas stay sleek for the svelt humanoid look & to prevent looking too bulky overall, I needed to know what my silhouette would look like when in heels. And considering scale is going to be important in this cosplay, I wanted my sketches to be to scale. So I made my own croquis.
To make a croquis of myself, I started by putting on form-fitting clothes & heels that are about what I was aiming for in the final costume shoes. (I hadn't found those yet. If I already had them, though, I would've put those on instead.) Then I had Brian take side profile & full front photos of me with my phone, with him sitting in a chair as opposed to towering above me, in an attempt to keep the scale as close as I could. I held a yardstick so that if I need to reference a measurement for something later, I can use that for scale. I then uploaded the photos to Dropbox so I could access them on my computer, then pasted them into a Word document. I printed off the Word document, changing my printer settings to Grayscale & Ink Save Mode. It spat out what you see above, which I was thrilled with! Then I went over my outline with a black gel pen, which you also see above. At this point you can either trace that pen outline onto a clean sheet of paper, or if you're rubbish at tracing like I am, you can flip the paper over & trace the pen outline that bled through to the back. (Go over the outline on the front side with a fine tip sharpie if there wasn't enough bleed-through.) Whenever you end up with your final tracing, do that in bright or pale blue pen or colored pencil. When you go to use your croquis to sketch in black pencil, the blue lines will retreat from notice & not get confused with your sketch lines. The final blue tracing gets scanned back into the computer & saved for reprinting whenever you need to whip up a costume sketch! :)
After a few drafts, these are likely the final sketches for my cosplay:
Following this video tutorial, I've started building the hooves. Wire mesh is a bitch. The annual blood sacrifice to the cosplay gods has been made. Ow.
And lastly, I found a couple cosplayers that have already done Wolf & Lamb, and holy crap am I panicking now! These guys have raised the bar WAY up there! SO good!
That's all for now! Today's goal is to get the wire mesh hoof built onto the second shoe. I'd like to get further than that, but not sure what time will allow, as it's also D&D day with the guys (I am an honorary bro, which I love), and that eats 6-7 hours of my day. Fun, though! Stay tuned for the next update! And check out our cosplay page over on Facebook! (I'm better about updates there than I am here.)
