Convention Fans

I recently had a chance to interview Dany from Cosplay.com, who has a wonderful collection of costumes.  When I saw her Vampire Hunter D cosplay, however, my jaw hit the floor! It has so many details, and different materials. I wanted to give Dany a chance to share the costume with my readers, as well as give some details about how it was made.

Dany, thanks for doing this interview! First question, one I always ask cosplayers: what was your first convention?

Dany: The very first convention that I actually did what people would consider to be “cosplay” was Costume-Con 22 in Georgia. […] I entered my Lucius Malfoy costume for the scifi/fantasy masquerade, and somehow walked out with a couple of awards.

How did you get into costuming?

Dany: Very gradually. I never mind[ed] dressing funny, and when I realized there were outlets for such things, I latched on quickly. First it was Halloween, then it was Renaissance festivals. Conventions, especially masquerades, finally gave me a real reason for dressing up other than just walking around in an outfit. It also gave me a community that could be a resource for ideas for how to do it even better. I couldn’t ask for anything more awesome.

Tell us a bit about your Vampire Hunter D costume.

Dany: D is probably my biggest mix of things I did for the first time. I’d never made armor or weapons, and I had to figure out how to do both for this, which required me picking up resin casting and basic woodworking skills, let alone sewing. It was also one of my biggest challenges with patterns on the fly for accessories.

Can you take us through some of the steps required to make the Vampire Hunter D costume?

Dany: Firstly, I had to give myself a time frame. I knew for what I wanted it would take longer than other costumes, so I started a lot earlier than I usually would. To give you an idea, I think I started in November of ‘04 to prepare for the first wearing in April of ‘05.

The next step, of course, was research. Researching D was easy because between the two anime and the Amano art, there is a lot of places for inspiration. I had an advantage with using Amano as an influence because he never drew D the same way twice, but he always had consistent elements…the hat, the sword, the cape, the long hair…all I needed to do was pick out the more decorative items that I caught my eye. There is one particular piece of art that is a profile that I always enjoyed which inspired my shoulder armor, for example, as well as part of the chest piece. Another inspired the belt, a third, the shell element on the hat.

After you know what you are going for, that’s when the building process begins. For me, it started with a lot of drafting so I could get a sense of the scale and layout of everything, and reduce the chance I’d waste more expensive materials. This was especially important with the non-fabric parts of the outfit, as I was resin casting or otherwise sculpting it and I didn’t have it in my budget for a huge amount of that stuff. There were also trial runs and tests because I was learning to work with resin for the first time, as well as this stuff called Gapoxio, which is very similar to MagicSculpt (both are two part resin clays).

Once the drafts were done, I could start working on the real stuff. Fabric was cut and assembled, resin was cast for the shoulder armor, followed by painting and detailing. Most of the detail was done with a custom mix of black and gold puffy paint to create a sort of “antiqued” gold result, painted on with a toothpick, as a regular paintbrush would get too gummed up. I also did a lot of black and white detailing, which was an element that I saw in the Amano art quite regularly (looking back, I don’t think I did enough).

The handle for the sword was sculpted first in clay, and then coated with Gapoxio (another thing that, had I done the costume in more experienced times, I would have done differently!). The detailing was probably the most fun part, because I could just look at the art and play around with some idea[s].

What was the biggest challenge, and what was the easiest part?

Dany: The shoulder armor was the most complicated because it was new territory and was pretty advanced for a first-time project. Each piece has 5 sub-pieces, all having to hook together so that they hang correctly when on my shoulders, which meant that not only did they have to be cast, they also had to be curved while curing, and the curve had to be right in order for all the pieces to assemble correctly. The sword was right behind it, followed by the wrist armor.

The simplest? The sewing. The machine and I are longtime friends, and that was familiar territory to me.

To see more progress pictures from the Vampire Hunter D costume, and more of Dany’s work in general, check out her Cosplay.com profile!

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