Motoko Kusanagi is my favorite anime character ever, and I love her for very many reasons. She was also my first official cosplay ever, which I wore to Dragon*Con in ’09. I made her leather combat outfit, and well, I did a pretty terrible job, hehe. ^-^ BUT I’ve learned sooooo much since then. Its not just been about improving my sewing skills, but also learning about new techniques and materials, and also transforming myself to actually look like the characters I’m cosplaying.
So recently Epic Cosplay had a huge sale on wigs, and while perusing I saw a wig that looked perfect for the Major. I convinced myself to buy it by saying I’d make a new Major cosplay next year. And then later Ana Aesthetic was offering bodysuit commissions to raise money for her precious kitty, so I commissioned the Major’s base gray bodysuit. Well, she got it done super duper early, a couple weeks before SeishunCon! So I was like, man, I need to get this cosplay in sooner than I thought, maybe sneak it into my already packed Dragon*Con schedule this year. I looked at reference pics and got an idea for a version that would be easy to do. (I plan on doing her combat outfit for next year, TOTALLY LEGIT THIS TIME!) But then I was at Joann’s the weekend before the con getting last minute things, and my hands started picking out materials her badass long coat! My brain was like, NOOO you don’t have time! But I kept going, and I came home and immediately started making the coat. So there my last minute weekend cosplay commenced!
So the bulk of the construction for this cosplay centered around the coat, since the bodysuit was already made for me. I heavily modified a coat pattern I already had. For the outer part I used a thick black bottomweight fabric (I was rushing and didn’t even look at what it actually was in the store ^-^;), and for the lining I used black garment lining. Basically I lengthened the pattern and cut it where all the decorative seams were. I sewed all the fancy seams, sewed the main pieces together, and added the lining. I then made the sleeves with fake pockets on them, attached them, and then did the finishing touches to get the lining all on properly. All seams were serged for neatness. From there it was just adding the fancy button flaps, button holes, and shoulder armor. I also added hidden pockets after I was done BC I’M A TOTAL DERPSTER!
The rest of the cosplay was just quicky stuff. I already had acceptable black boots. I bought black gloves at Party City and cut off/sewed the tips and added cuffs in my jacket material. The day before the con I went to WalMart and found the rest of the stuff. I had been searching all week for the right sunglasses, and literally at the very last sunglass rack in the entire store, I found the perfect ones (after some light painting)! I also had the same experience looking for an acceptable gun. I somehow managed to find this super cool kids gun hidden away. It was all colorful and deceiving, but once I painted it black it became totally badass. It makes shooting noises and even has an add on silencer!
Honeycolor happened to have a BOGO sale on their Super Pinky circle lenses, so I went ahead and took the risk of ordering them. I chose the wine color because it looked perfect in the pics online. Fortunately the shipment got here just in time. Unfortunately the color didn’t really show up on my brown eyes. Oh well, at least the circle lenses made my eyes pop out.
The wig is an Epic Cosplay Aphrodite in Dark Purple. I had to carefully dissect some wefts out of the bang area and sew them into the sides to get the right length. Then I cut the bangs and fluffed them.
Overall this thing took me less than a week to pull together, maybe 20 hours. I had some great shoots at the con, so I will definitely post those in a gallery at some point.
