cosplayer cosplay: All the colour!

Monday, April 19, 2010

All the colour!

Oh yeah, it’s not even June yet and we have rather many finished items for our cosplays! It's really refreshing to be ahead of the schedule. Usually we have made the last, finishing touches to our costumes minutes before heading to a con. Even if things are looking good now, I think I’ll go with the presumption that we will stretch the completion to the last day as always. But I don’t really care. I enjoy working on these current costumes.

Why? Because I can use my expertise and imagination with them. The great thing about Joxter and Muddler is that we can lean on many sources. More than copying the appearance of the characters from the animated series, I use them as inspiration. Usually we try to copy the design of the character as exact as we can. With these Moomin characters there is a lot more “feel” to them than any other costumes we have done. Using Tove’s writing and all the visual sources available we try to bring them to life in a way which would honour the original work, but also satisfy us as fans and me as a costume creator.

When we were searching for the fabrics we didn’t only look based on colour, but also feel and texture. For us Moomin world is all about nature, so we chose only natural materials from cotton and linen to wool. These materials would also be easy to weather to suit the mobile and carefree lifestyle Joxter and Muddler have. Because Moomin world isn’t modern, I used old folk clothes as inspiration for the designs on the clothes. Most of the details aren’t visible, like Muddler shirt which I patterned based on type of a peasant shirt and the robe attachment on Joxter pants. It just matters that they exist, because it brings more “real” to the characters.

Here are some real and almost ready stuff. Next I’m going to start dyeing and weathering and Yoki will start knitting Muddler’s scarf. We also need to solve the footwear issue as soon as possible.