Dragon Scale Armour Progress: Part 4

I finally got back to work on this cosplay and I got things done which is a great bonus. I finally got around to spray painting the ‘battle dress’ for the cosplay. So let me show you the most hideous dress in cosplay history and then its beautiful transformation into pretty warrior dress.

Honestly this fabric was awful when I first got it, I was so happy when I finally got to spray paint it green. I sprayed the dress outside by hanging it up and then spraying both sides. There are a few patched I have missed but it’s not going to be hard to cover them up.

This is the near final result.. I promise I will have photos again when I’m happy with the color and it’s not patchy. I was so happy the green disguised the really obvious scale pattern the dress had originally. The pattern was not natural at all and because I measured the grain line the front and back of the dress just looked awkward with the scale pattern was just horizontal and awful looking. The dress still needs to be shortened but I’m not going to do this until the armour is all wearable and I can see where it finishes, because the dress vaguely ends 1-2 inches after the armour ends.

I made this dress in my Fashion and Textiles Technology (TFT) class so I’m very happy to be getting credits for this cosplay.

We will just ignore how awfully I hung the armour on my dress form too. Holidays are starting next week so when I get back from Toi Whakaari in Wellington I will actually make a start on making the armour wearable. Who needs to study for upcoming exams anyway.

To make the dress more alike the one in the game I made a few adaptations to it. I made the neckline higher to accompany the high neck collar and made the sleeves longer by one inch (act as seam allowance) so that I could add cuffs to the sleeves and a thumb hole. Now the original design has gloves but I can’t stand wearing gloves for long periods of time so I just made the thumb holes instead. Below are close-ups of those adaptations.

So glad the dress is no longer metallic… But you can really see in these photos the pattern and how damn obvious it is. The dress is close-fitting when worn and looks great. I will defiantly have photos of me wearing it in the next post, hopefully wearing at least some of the armour with it!!

I have started weathering the armour and I’m pretty please with the progress considering its my first time making cosplay armour. I did have a slight bad experience with it though. I left my armour to dry outside and because it the being of spring here there are loads of wasps around in our garden. So when I went to retrieve the armour pieces I was attacked by wasps, luckily not stung.

Below is the full armour set: Breastplate, back-plate, left/right hip, left right thigh, back piece, front piece and the gauntlets. Not the technical terms, I know!!!

I’m still debating what weapon I will make with this cosplay, its between a Daedric Sword and Auriel’s Bow. Daedric would be a hell of a lot more recognizable but the bow is so pretty… Whatever I end up making I will start making it these holidays. Both pictured below.

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More slow progress on this cosplay. I will be working on it a lot these holidays and am hopping to have the armour wearable by the end of the two weeks.

Thank you for reading

-Nivera

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Temple Priest Robes cosplay: Part 1

Another cosplay from Skyrim which I totally forgot about for a few months. I was originally going to be wearing this to Armageddon Expo Auckland in October this year but got side tracked with other costumes and my portfolio so I decided to make it when I had time to. I did get started on it which is great. I only really have a few touch ups to do so it’s not going to need a lot of time on it to have it finished.

Here is how the robes look in-game.

I love the robes so much and will always make my character carry a set of the robes around with them despite my characters never being mages. It’s so pretty and looks so cute on female characters

Because at the time of me making this costume I wasn’t working on my portfolio I haven’t got a lot of progress photos of me making it. I do have a few though.

The materials I used were 5m of white fabric (I can’t remember what sort it was but it was heavy so that I would drape and was reasonably thick) I also got 5m of lining material in the light blue color I wanted the robes to be. 2.5m of black cotton (I think it was a blend of something) which was to be used as the scarfs. End of the roll shiny gold material (same sort of material as the lining just not as transparent) I think the gold was about 1/3 of a meter and had a small stain on it so it only cost $2. I also bought a lot of gold bias tape to be used on sleeves, hood, cape and scarfs. And of course I bought a pattern (pictured below) it was a men’s pattern  so I had to do a lot of adapting to make it fit me. To dye the white fabric needed to be dyed so I had to buy 5 packets of dye to dye it all. That process can be seen in the second photo below.

My weapon of choice for this cosplay (when I eventually get it finished and photographed) was the Dawnbreaker. It just seamed fitting and would look nice with the robes. I used Pepakura to make the sword and below is an unpainted comparison.

The similarities are awesome I absolutely love Pepakura for making prop weapons. The link to the download of this Pepakura file is here.

Because I don’t have any photos of the making process I’m just going to post pictures of the robes in the near finished condition they are in now.

Things left to finish for this cosplay to be complete

• Make the scarfs and add the gold detail to them
• Sew the white trim onto the cape
• Sew the blue/white triangle symbols onto the front and back of the cape
• Sew the gold bias tape onto the cape
• Make the baggy pants which I will wear white jeans under (a lot of this cosplay has layering this is just one way of creating it)
• Some how make the shirt to go under the cape, I have been given some leather scraps so that will come in handy for this
• Attach a hook and eye set to the top opening of the robes, under the cape so it wont be seen to keep the robes together and give it a little more shape

Now I’ve listed all of those things out it looks like I do have a lot of work to do but really those are all small touch ups I need to do. It’s not a big job and could probably be done in a weekend with the right materials.

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Another costume I can add to my portfolio yay! I could have this finished this year and it will be my priority after I have completed the current costumes I am working on. I want it to be done this year so I can take all of my official portfolio photos before I go to England in December. I can’t wait to be in costume and have them photographed.

That’s all for now I will be continuing work on my Dragon Scale Armour cosplay this weekend and hope to make some serious progress.

Thank you for reading

-Nivera

Toi Whakaari Costume Design Workshop

I recently found out about a costume design workshop being held at New Zealand’s national drama school, Toi Whakaari in Wellington from the 28th – 29th of September. Because I only found out recently I was really worried that there wouldn’t be places left in the course (which was only accepting 15 people) so as soon as I found this out I emailed the department of the school running the course to see if there were spots still available. I received and email within a few hours notifying me that there were still spots available. So I immediately filled out the form, scanned it and sent it to the workshop department at Toi Whakaari.

The next day in my second class of the day which happened to be my drama I checked my emails and found that I had been accepted into the course. I just about cried in class and my drama teacher was so happy for me.

At the moment I’m trying to plan how I get to Wellington I’ll probably end up going on the ferry, thank god I don’t get sea sick.My main concerns at the moment is the possibility that I get lost while walking to Toi Whakaari from my hotel in the mornings and evenings, my navigation skills are awful.

I’m really excited for this course and can’t wait to go. It will be a great experience and I think I will learn so much from it. It’s also going to be an amazing thing to put in my portfolio as something I have attended. And it only two weeks away too!!!

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Toi Whakaari is New Zealand’s National Drama School and it is such a great opportunity to be able to attend one of their workshops.

-Nivera

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Dark Brotherhood Armour Progress: Part 3

This weekend I was determined to finish the body suit for my Dark Brotherhood cosplay. And I did!

After making the torso part of the body suit I only had to pattern the legs and sew them on. Which didn’t take that long.

Above is a picture of the leg with the red knee detail sewn on and the hip/thigh red detail pinned on. This was all really simple to pattern. I decided to ignore my original plan of having the whole leg red below the knee because I released that the spandex would be limited at how much it could stretch with the lines of stitching on the red detail. Without the stretch of the fabric it was unlikely to fit my legs and sit nicely. Because of this I put on the boots I would be wearing with the body suit and marked a point on the red 2 inches below the top of the boot. I then cut of all the red below this mark, hemmed it and sewed it onto the spandex.

And then there was the hell of sewing the legs onto the main bodysuit. The sleeves were probably worse but it still took me about an hour and a half of sewing and un-picking to have them both on. Please let my next projects not be as tedious~

Front and back of the body suit. Yes the back picture is awful but it does enough justice to show off the red. There are still a few more things that need to be made for this cosplay but I’m more concerned about my Dragon Scale Armour at this point so that will be my priority.

• The hood, which is black and quite close-fitting
• Face mask, which is red and also close-fitting. It needs to reach the collar of the body suit so there is no skin showing.
• Boot covers, should be easy to do…?
• Gauntlets, I’ll just use craft foam as a base and then cover that with the red material.
• MAKE THE BLADE OF WOE AND MAYBE A DEADRIC SWORD

And I also have to add the buttons to the body suit. There are so many and I haven’t even started counting how many I will need.

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And that is the bodysuit for my cosplay done minus a few things. I’m really pleased with how it has turned out even if it is a little hard to bend over and crouch in. But that’s fine!

Thank you for reading and I will be posting pattern pictures in an up coming post.

-Nivera

Dark Brotherhood Armour Progress: Part 2

I was really hoping to get this cosplay finished this weekend but ran out of time unfortunately. However, I did get a lot done anyway. I finished sewing the front of the bodysuit together and started patterning the red back details.

Which looked like this. I used the same technique I used when making the patterns for my Dragon Scale Armour. First I pinned the back patterns onto my dressform then covered the parts I wanted to make a pattern of in glad-wrap and covered that with painters tape. And of course I drew the design onto the tape. Once the design was drawn I cut it out. NOT while it’s still on the dressform, I did this and cut the black back piece pattern. Which meant having to whip stitch it back together, luckily the cut in the fabric wasn’t that big. After cutting all the patterns out I pinned them onto the red fabric and cut them out including a 1cm seam allowance.

After I have completed this costume I will make a post that includes shapes of all the patterns I made for this cosplay. I will do the same for my Dragon Scale Armour cosplay.

Sewing the patterns on was a slow process as most edges had to be hemmed and had to be sewn on in order so that everything layered correctly. Below is the first set of red I sewed on which is the back shoulders.

I had three separate patterns for the back and like I said before most edges had to be hemmed this took about 3 hours to do, including sewing the patterns onto the back panels. The back looked like this with most patterns either sewn or pinned.

I was happy with the look so I continued and sewed everything on. The next step was to sew up the side seams but before doing this I made four patterns which sit on the hip in another arrow shape. I made the top half of these patterns and then sewed them on. The lower half will sit on the pants seam (if that makes any sense) I don’t have any photos of this process but will mention it later.

After making those patterns and sewing them on I sewed up the side seam so the sleeves could be attached. Again I had to make another arrow shape to sit on the shoulder seam. I patterned this on the dress form and then cut two out of the red fabric.

Once made, I sewed it onto the sleeve and then sewed the sleeve onto the body suit. This took so many attempts as there was a lot of fabric layers in some places so it was hard to tell if it had bunched or caught. This happened on both sleeves, apparently I never learn!

After the sleeves were sewn on I realized I had run out of time and it wasn’t worth starting on the legs for the body suit. Because it was late the lighting inside was poor so I took my dressform outside to get some photos.

I’m really happy with the progress so far, I should easily have it finished the next weekend. Also so that I actually get things done and so both cosplays will be finished by the end of October I have decided that I will work on my prop weapons in the week and leave costume making until the weekend. I’m still really confident that I can get everything made before then. But no doubt I will still find myself furiously making things the night before the convention.

I hope to have this finished next weekend along with some possible prop progress because that is another thing I haven’t started yet. Everything is going well so far and I should finish in time, just.

Thank you for reading.

Nivera

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Future Costumes

I decided I would make a post similar to the posts you find about cosplayers and their upcoming cosplays. My only difference here is that I will be making a historical costume as well.

So in no particular order, the costumes I am planing on making at some point before I move to England. These will be to build up my portfolio and practice the skills of sewing ect~

Young Girls Evening Dress, I found this design in a collection of historical costume books I bought recently. The book being “Patterns for Fashion 3” by Janet Arnold which shows many dresses and gowns from 1560-1620. I love the simple design and they way it drapes along with the beautiful sleeves. 

Cordelia (character from the game Fire Emblem Awakening), I love this game so much and really want to make a costume from it. I really like the medieval fantasy style along with bright colors style the game has. Another character I considered was one of the main protagonists Lucina but I decided Cordelia would be more fun.

Original Design, This one is kinda vague because I haven’t a set plan for it just yet. This is because its unlikely I will start on it this year. So really at the moment I only have a few sketches in my book and inspiring pictures I found on the Internet. I’m excited to start this but it won’t be for a long time yet.

Other Costumes I will be making for competitions,

In 2016 I plan to enter 2 competitions (at least I have found two I can enter so far) that involve costume design/construction. The first one is the ‘SGCNZ/Bernina Shakespeare Costume Design Competition’ the winning design from this competition will be displayed at Shakespeare’s Globe, London. The design has to be for a character from one of Shakespeare’s plays and can take on any style or time period meaning it doesn’t need to be Elizabethan in appearance. This is a definite competition I will be entering because I will suit my portfolio wonderfully.

The second competition I am thinking of entering something for is ‘The Trash Fashion Show’ which promotes recycling in the community. This competition is held locally to me which is a plus. There are a few categories to enter in one is specifically for ‘teenagers’ (please read as sarcastically as possible) this categories theme is “Rock & Pop” Ooh what a fascinating theme that has been so obviously directed to an age group that it is not funny. I will probably enter one of that categories directed to adults. A, because I have never really had a passion for music and it is not a big part of my life and B, I don’t think I could produce anything to fit it properly.

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I think that sums up all that’s in my head at the moment but I’m sure things will change, my plans always do. I will probably realize I have forgotten something tomorrow but that can be added in later.

Thank you for reading

-Nivera