Saber Alter Cosplay

So! It has been a while since I have written anything, and advance warning, this one may be a little long. Because, you know, all my blog posts are just studies in brevity.

Anyways. This is about my cosplay of Saber Alter. Those of you who know me may remember my previous Fate/Stay Night cosplay of Saber herself, but what can I say. I adore this anime and Saber in all her outfits is my favourite. Now, this was an even more ambitious cosplay than Saber, because Saber Alter has an awful lot more armour and it's all full of spiky death spikes.

First, materials. The over dress is a dark indigo wool suiting material, and the underdress is plain black polycotton. I chose these because the suiting material is amazing for draping elegantly and being swirly when I spin. It also has an undeniable look of quality to it. The underdress, on the other hand, just needed to be comfortable and, as usual, cheap. Polycotton is great for lining things or for part of a cosplay of which very little is on display

One of my biggest problems with the dress is that I was 100% unable to find any pictures of Saber Alter without her armour. So I had to kinda imagine it, based on the other Saber outfits, and what you can see of it. I knew that the armour might fail, or simply be uncomfortable for a whole day, so I wanted to be able to go armourless if necessary. Particularly because I had done such a botch job with the original Saber dress and had been forced to wear armour all day.

Photo taken by Manga Girl Photography

If I had more time and money, I would have lined the whole dress (wool suiting is pretty but can be a tad itchy - also, lined outfits just look better) and would have made sure the sleeves were more pointy. They were a lesson in frustration and almost made me give up the project entirely at one point! In the end, I use a fabric stiffening spray to help them stay up. But I think when I rework the outfit, I will put something, like card, inside to stiffen them, in the same what that collars are stiffened. Also, the neckline wasn't 100% perfect and needed some tidying up that I unfortunately failed to do in time.

Now for the armour! One day I will have the money for a full worbla set of armour. But for now, I am still sadly bereft of such funds, and so am forced to make do with my trusty craft foam method. I actually really like working with craft foam, and while the pieces have a ridiculously childlike look until painted, the colour coding of different sides of the piece can be incredibly helpful

Shown here almost all the armour including armour for Saber Lily

The bracers made me feel somewhat like a childish dragon warrior!

This is the tutorial I always use for armour making, so do check them out. The one thing I tend to do differently is the 'sealing' of the piece. I use a 1:2 mix of PVA glue and water, and the number of coats depends on the piece. The large pieces, like the tassets (the skirt armour) got about eight coats in order to ensure they would stay shaped and would be safe from dents and all that. The smaller, fiddly bits like the gauntlets and the bracers only got about four. Partly because time was running short, but truthfully, four was enough. The bracers were made separate to the gauntlets, but in such a way that when worn together you can hardly see a join. For the gauntlets I sacrificed a cheap pair of leather gloves and gluegunned the pieces directly onto them. The pieces were all very much trial and error, but one day I may do a walkthrough of them.

Top view of gauntlets

Showing full articulation of gauntlets

First, the thing that looks like a bend in the foam on the thumb is just shadow. Annoyingly I didn't notice on the photo at the time. The white dot is 3D fabric paint which is AMAZING for rivets, line-based detailing etc. Just remember to leave it for a LONG time to dry fully. Overnight at least. The gauntlets were basically my favourite part of the whole costume - they were articulated enough that I could do anything normally possible with gloves. While also being spiky doom armour.

In the first picture (sorry that's the only one I have that shows them) you can see my boots. There were just normal (unfortunately brown) boots of the right height, with covers made for them. They would need a little tweaking to be reworn, but were super cool, and slotted easily onto the boots, with the help of elastic and velcro

Breastplate, painted

The breastplate was the most difficult piece of armour. I tried really hard to make it big enough, but I learnt a valuable lesson with fitted breastplates - always make them bigger than you think you need. Particularly when you're going to wear multiple layers underneath. It wasn't bad for a first attempt though. It attached at the side via velcro - next time I will use a corset lacing system for more security. The pieces all have scraps of spare polycotton between them, to give the two levels needed, and to make it a bit more flexible. The spare material around the bottom has velcro on for the tassets to attach to

As you can see, not quite all the foam was painted - we were rushing towards the end and some of the edges got missed. Still looks cool though, right?

Finally, the black face stuff. I was super happy with this. It's a sports balaclava, which I wore while my boyfriend drew the outline on, then took off and we cut to size. The thin pointy bits are kept in shape by being stick with tiny bits of spirit gum to my face. Not the most elegant solution, but it looks super dramatic, was exactly what was needed, and made the unarmoured version look a tad cooler too. (also, please forgive the tiny bits of my blue hair you can see trying to break for freedom at the front - the wig is too small for my head and I had no wig cap)

IN CONCLUSION:

Things I liked about the cosplay:

• Gauntlets/bracers. Those things were awesome
• The face thingy
• How cool it looked even unarmoured
• I succeeded in an armour cosplay! My most ambitious project to date and it looked amazing!
• The wonderful sword made for my by my incredible boyfriend

Things I will change for the next outing of this cosplay:

• Better breastplate, with corset lacing at the sides
• Pointier shoulders
• Fix that neckline!
• A wig that fits and doesnt give me a headache
• Actual black boots so they blend with the boot caps better

And finally, here's a couple of photos of me and Askaluna, my amazing cosplay partner, as Saber Alter and Saber Lily

Both armoured! That didn't last for long though...

Back to back poses are the coolest thing still, am I right?

Dark Saber likes hugs just like everyone else!

Saber Cosplay

This post would have been about my Harley Quinn dress, but I haven't gotten round to uploading the photos yet... so I decided to do one about another past outfit. This was my first ever cosplay that I actually made. All my other cosplays have been bought. Saber, from the anime Fate/Stay Night is my favourite character pretty much of anyone ever, so it was worth the effort to make her outfit myself. And here's the final product!

You need to ignore the wig, because the correct one didn't get delivered until the day after the con, so this was a normal blonde one that I tried (and failed) to style. Still, I look snazzy, right?

The outfit, although designed by the creator of the anime was patterned and made entirely by myself. This was one of the first times I did a proper mockup of something in cheap fabric as a test. I think I used the lining material from some old curtains. The white you can see in the skirt is actually an entire underdress because, even though other people couldn't see it was there, I needed to make the outfit as authentic as possible, and the character occasionally doesn't wear armour, allowing me to figure out that it was a separate white dress.

I tend to be fairly detailed orientated/a perfectionist, so all round the bottom of the white dress is that weird ziggy pattern with the yellow detailing, because that's what the character has, so even if no one sees it round the back, I was not going to risk that, or let it not be as perfect as I could.

There were so many bodged bits of this outfit, and 'make do' bits. Like when I ran out of gold ribbon the night before the con, and so used green for the rest of the edging then painted it gold...

This all taught me a lot about starting early and not wasting time. It was alright for cosplay to have only the look of the thing - it was only ever worn once, but for actual clothes I realised I'd have to do a lot better.

The armour was made following a tutorial which can be found here. It's a really brilliant tutorial that I would definitely recommend to anyone looking at trying to make their own cosplay armour. Foam is easy to work with comparatively to some materials, and if you follow the tutorial properly (which I did not) then it ends up looking amazing.

The tassets (skirt armour) made it highly inconvenient to sit down, and the breastplate was a nightmare with all the fiddly bits. When I redo this outfit, I will make a full breastplate out of black foam, then do the silver over the top, rather than trying to attach silver armour pieces to black fabric.

The gauntlets were awesome though, and came out looking so brilliant and made me super happy and proud. Though the finger armour was weird and ended up being sewn piece by piece to black knitted gloves. The look worked, but it was tedious.

The boots were supposed to be armoured too, but I was running out of time, and had no money to buy a second pair of boots that could be sacrificed to the gluegun. The plain boots looked alright though.

So, what were the flaws in my armour? Well, as usual, I was rushing to get it all done,and ended up not having enough days to properly seal the foam, which made it harder to spray paint and more flimsy than I would have liked. That meant that two years and three moves later, it is all completely destroyed. Which is sad. It did look awesome on the day though.

This was actually the bit of my cosplay I was most proud of. I like making cosplay swords, and Excalibur came out looking amazing! The sword is pine, with airdry fimo for the detailing. Seriously proud of it :)

In Summary:

I need to start things a LOT earlier to make sure I have time to finish things properly

It's always best to make something as durable as possible - imagine you're making it to be worn every single day for the next two weeks - it's not enough for it just to look pretty for one day. It has to survive life, and be comfortable.

I can do this whole patterning thing. It will just take a bit more practise

I love making swords. I want to make more swords...

Making mistakes is good - I learnt a LOT from all the mistakes I made with this outfit. And very few of those mistakes are ones I have repeated. Which is good.
Next time I make armour I will try out Wonderflex. Which is apparently amazing and awesome and creates very pretty things.