Memoirs of a Cosplayer

Suggested by TeddyXKiller

The first thing was of course to watch ergo proxy. This was probably the most time consuming part of the cosplay… but almost the most relaxing. If you haven’t seen Ergo Proxy I highly recommend it.

Having watched the anime in full I then did a bit of googling for some good reference pictures and made my way to spotlight to purchase my materials. 

Unfortunately spotlight had limited shades of purple lyrca (as in there was only the one shade) this meant that under normal circumstance I would have purchased dye to change the shade of lycra to the correct colour. Unfortunately though my funds were also limited so  I decided to just go with the shade of purple the fabric was.

Over all the cost of my materials was around $200 this includes the wig, the eye contacts and the shoes. 

The next thing to do was to make the actual costume. To do this I modified a range of patterns that I already had. The patterns I used were a leotard, a hogwarts cloak and a shirt pattern. I have done a short course in pattern drafting but there are plenty of tutorials on the internet for people who just do cosplay as a hobby. 

Over all I would say that the cosplay took me about three days to make. I didn’t work on it constantly however so it actually took me about 2 weeks (with huge breaks in between sewing). I had to restyle my wig and paint the gun and my boots as well.

Once the costume was finished I organised a photoshoot with Lorenzo and we set up the date and time that we would be shooting. To add extra challenge to the shoot we decided to shoot at night time. I put on my makeup and wig at home so that I wouldn’t forget anything before heading out to the shoot. 

We ended up shooting the costume in Ipswich in a small underground car park and an overpass of the Ipswich motorway. Unfortunately the video was shot without an image stabilizer  hence why it is so jumpy, but considering the circumstances I think Lorenzo did an amazing job.

To decide on poses and camera angles lorenzo and I looked at a whole bunch of reference pictures as well as just “winging” it. for the short video we didn’t use a story board we just went with what felt right. The phrase that I say at the end of the video “mon raison d’etre” was a phrase that was repeated throughout the anime and is french for “my reason of being”

The video can be seen here