T R I C K S S I

March 2020 Costume Writeup: Seres

Specific for Wig:
When I bought the base wig for Seres, it was because Arda had announced it was discontinuing the style in that color/size and I had enough expendable dough to cover the inevitable cosplay choices I'd make. I thought because of the volume of Seres's ponytail I might do better having a pigtail base at the time. I basically bought it and forgot it. When I unearthed it to finally make Seres in 2019, I realized it was probably one of the worst choices I could have made. The hairline in the back was really hard to pull together into a base stubbed ponytail. Not to mention, all of the wig hair I used was the Classic style, so any amounts of tangling exaggerated the difficulty of the project. For the ponytail, after I stubbed it, I created an armature out of a cut-in-half and right-angled styrofoam circle covered in red foam, then caulked over with red fibers. I then caulked it to the main wig and trimmed any excess... we have yet to see if there will be any issues with straight-up caulking it. Styled the bangs as usual, nothing special.

I already knew I wasn't going to try and dye the gradient from red to greenish to white, so I planned to caulk on white extensions and go from there. But before I did that, I wanted to try making a gradient with copic markers, as I'd recently seen they were a good alternative to sharpies. And wouldn't you know, caulking that part was protective enough that hairspray couldn't disturb the alcohol base! It turned out pretty well.

Specific for Mask:

I had made a Seres mask before, but without the rest of the costume and without sticking to measurement references (nifegun), it was half-hearted, not even painted, and didn't attach to anything. This time, I measured for better sizing, starting with paper, then moving on to a foam mockup, then making another set of final masks. I chose to make three because I wasn't sure how much visibility I'd have at conventions: one had no visibility, one had eye holes, and one was the "cracked" version of her mask that you see in the animated cutscene in the game. I'm very pleased with all three, although I ended up wearing the cracked one and no-visibility one more than I thought I would.

So, the build was your standard worbla-covered foam backed with felt, sprayed with gray primer/filler 3 layers, 2 layers of black, 2 layers of gold. But the real issue here was that there was no easy way to attach the "floating" mask other than to, y'know, spirit gum it on, which was not really an option. I'd spoken with another friend about what they had done, and they said they'd tried magnets, something like a clamp, and a couple other ways to make the wig look like it's floating but had no luck. Then I realized the obvious solution for me: make it with jewelry chains and claws that could switch out masks and be hidden for when the mask is taken off completely. Works like a dream and I highly recommend it! The only thing I'm not 100% happy with is the fit after paint. I don't think they set in the exact dimensions I wanted, despite clamping them into place during the worbla cooling process.

Specific for Earrings:

The earrings were small enough that I was able to make them out of sealed and painted foam, then put a dab of hot glue onto a gold ball chain and secured that end with a tiny square of worbla. The stoppers and hooks were from the local craft store.

Specific for Shoes:

The shoes were totally freehanded in terms of any patterning. I'm probably most proud of the shoes for this outfit over anything else! I basically just used leather paint and sealed them, using the existing shape of the shoes in the best possible way to reflect the fantasy, totally not-existing-in-real-life shoe shape.