I spent the majority of this week starting the prep work for Mira, the Neopets Space Faerie cosplay! Mira was my absolute favorite Neopets faerie growing up because, well… space, duh. Her design is a unique blend of 80s sci-fi and ethereal fantasy, and I really want to bring those elements together in my personal interpretation! I use Pinterest to organize all of my costume inspiration, tutorials, etc. Click the button to check it out! CustomizationFirst, let's figure out the details of the design! The Space Faerie has evolved over the almost two decades (!) that Neopets has existed; she's been featured in numerous comics, articles, and events in the website’s history. She even has several clothing items in the website's customization mechanic! While the main parts of her outfit stay the same (blue body suit with a red V, starry tights, red puffy trims), subtle things about her change (wing shape, neckline, hip roll placement, etc). Here's a few examples! With so many options to choose from, I can pick and choose small alterations that suit my body shape and the design feel I’m going for. It's closest to the modern artwork (bottom right).
Restocki- I mean, materials gatheringI’ve had materials for Mira for over a year (like I said, I’ve been planning this cosplay for a while)! Let’s start at the top and work our way down. The wig I chose is an Arda Magnum in Indigo Blue. This is a fluffy, dense wig that spikes well and has the potential for TONS of volume — perfect for an 80s sci-fi inspired fairy! I'm going to use Mehron paradise paints to achieve' Mira's unnatural brownish-yellow skin tone, with lots of sparkly highlights on the high points of her face. Contouring and definition will be added with matte eyeshadows and eyeliners to achieve maximum space-elf.
I'm combining a BUNCH of different fabrics for the body suit!
Let's Get Started!All right, that's enough planning! Let's start actually making things! The first thing I did to order the leggings fabric. I’m custom printing via Spoonflower, which usually has a 10-12 day processing time (before shipping). As a general rule, I don’t expect the fabric until three weeks after I checkout. The sooner I order it, the better! So I downloaded a picture from Hubblesite.org of the Pleiades cluster (thanks for helping me choose, ya'll)! Confusingly, this picture was not taken by Hubble, but by a Palomar Observatory, a ground-based telescope located in the California mountains. After taking some measurements, I concluded that the legging would have to be 24” long and 50” tall. Unfortunately, the Pleiades image is only about 40” tall, so I had to do some photoshop magic. I mirrored the image and flipped it, which should gives me enough fabric length even though the inaccuracy makes my astrophysicist heart sad. Then it was time to upload it to Spoonflower! I created a vertically tiled design on their Sport Lycra, a heavy spandex that is both flattering and opaque. It’s currently waiting to print and should be shipping out sometime in the next two weeks. In the meantime, I started work on the bodysuit! I have a body suit pattern that I love to death and have used on several occasions: Simplicity 1036. It’s not a /true/ bodysuit pattern, that is, the pieces are separates, but it’s pretty easy to splice them together into a full body suit. I placed the shirt and underwear pieces together on tracing paper and sketched around them to get a single body suit piece, then transferred it to a spandex fabric for my first mockup! After a round of pinning and re-sewing, I had a decent mock-up! I sketched out the shape of the red designs on the bodysuit for later color blocking. Unfortunately, this is probably where Mira will have to stay until C2E2! I was accepted in to the Crown Championships of Cosplay, which means it's back to work on Katara for the next few weeks.
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