I am thou...

So now that Colossal is over and things are getting back to normal for me, hopefully I'll be a bit a bit more consistent with posting here... we'll see.

So today, I want to show everyone a cosplay of mine that sadly has gotten no love, and sadly will remain that way. I'm referring to one of my most elaborate cosplays to date, so much so that I scrapped it immediately after wearing it because it was too obnoxious to want to wear ever again. I'm referring to one of the most badass looking personas (which is saying something because most of them look awesome), Thanatos.

I decided I wanted to cosplay something form P3 pretty much as soon as I started playing it, and that notion only grew stronger as I progressed through the game and eventually finished it. Since it was one of the greatest games I'd played to date, I decided to be a bit more ambitious than usual with my choice in cosplay.

I absolutely loved the design and since it was more humanoid than a lot of the other personas I figured it was a bit more doable. The real tough part was going to be figuring out how to get 13 coffins to float around me. I decided to try making a harness out of Plexiglas so it would be clear and therefore not really show any of the coffins. The actual coffins were going to have to be lightweight enough to actually suspend using the connector chain with some strong wire, so I went with foam and paper mache.

I made a base for the little saintly figure, I think it was mostly model magic, covered it in aluminum foil, and paper mached over the front of it. Once it was dry, I peeled the paper mache layer off and voila! Hollow saintly figure. The more angular part of the coffins were made from large pieces of  styrofoam that were cut into coffin shapes (it made such a mess I wanted to scream), and then an extra layer of paper mache was put over the whole thing to give it a continuous surface.

Generally speaking, this idea worked, but it would have been better if the large block of foam hadn't been there because it was still too heavy for the harness. I made it work, it just wasn't ideal. I also cut the 13 coffins down to 5, cause I made them a bit too big, and the harness wasn't going to support that many anyhow. The chains were all plastic with some heavy gauge wire in between so it would support the coffins better, but probably just added more weight and made it more uncomfortable.

The rest was fairly simple. I made the strappy harnessfor my head and attached the two mask pieces to it, plus I used a black knit hood to cover my face. That part was a bit too tight too and so I ended up wearing swim goggles underneath so I could actually see. 

Most of the cloth parts were thrifted, besides the weird skirt thing. I had black tights and a black turtleneck as the base with the skirt part wrapping around over top of it, and using the belt to close. I even thrifted the belt and made a new buckle for it.

The last part was the sword, which was primarily wood that I jigsawed into shape and added some craft foam and wire to fill out the shape. The a simple paint job and it looks great!

This is actually one of the better swords I've made. Shame it never goes anywhere with me.

The shoes were also a thrift store find, which let me tell you finding a pair of platform boots with my giant feet is not easy, but I lucked out. I had to sprak them from black to white and paint the gold on by hand, but they ended up looking pretty good.

Then comes the whole costume! I debuted and retired it at Ohayocon a good 4 years ago or something like that (I honestly don't remember when) and had to have my friend who was rooming with me act as a handler. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, I just wish I had some better photos. I also feel like an idiot because I forgot both my gloves and my sword, but no one really seemed to notice.

As you can see we had a pretty decent persona group, and it was before Persona 4 took over and you saw a big influx of those cosplays. And as much fun as it was, I almost immediately wanted to take off my clothes when it was over. The shoes hurt a lot cause they were a bit too small for my feet, I could barely see or hear anything because of all the junk on my head, and walking around will all of those things hanging off of my back was both unconfortable and incredibly inconvenient. God bless my friend Dan for holding doors open and making sure I didn't fall down the stairs.

Besides all that, the actual coffins were such a pain in the ass to store that I ended up throwing them away, the harness too. I have all of his other pieces intact in case I ever want to do anything simpler like make a cape or something that looks like the coffin design... which actually might be kinda cool. Regardless, I'm planning on taking his sword next time I cosplay as Junpei cause he carries giant swords like that all the time anyway, and it'll be a good test to see who notices that it belongs to Thanatos ^_^

Anyway, that's about all for this incarnation of death. Take care, my dearies!