Looking through the blog I realized I have never written a blog about our crazy experience that was the making of two complex Trinity Blood cosplays. Now is better than never I suppose. This series will be split into three blogs, part one Abel, part two Seth and part three will be about our contest experience.
The beginning...
We decided in late 2013 we wanted to push ourselves with a big project. Trinity Blood is one of my all time favorite manga. Nicolas has watched the anime and has read most of the published manga. We both really enjoyed the characters and art-style. Trinity Blood is known in the cosplay community has being one of the harder, most detailed series you could cosplay from. It was a risk. I had only sewn four cosplays before this and they were all very simple. Even with that in mind, we took the risk.
I chose my favorite character, Empress Augusta (Seth Nightlord) And Nicolas decided on Abel Nightroad (Nightlord) The pictures below are the ones we went off of.
The goal was to have both cosplays done by Sakura-con 2014. This convention turned out to be very emotional and one of the best cons ever. But I'll go into that later. We had seven months to finish these cosplays. That includes Abel's cassock, cape, armor and to style his wig (plus props). Seth has a underskirt, dress, ballet shoes, wig and hat.
Supplies
Eleven yards of black broadcloth and two yards of firm interfacing made up Abel's cape and cassock. (Also pictured tulle for Seth's underskirt.)
I wound up having to get more black fabric as my first pattern for the cape didn't turn out as I had wanted.
What no one knows is the second fabric was more brown than black. But no one can see it or has never told me. It's my silly little mistake and I still find it funny.
Kona Broadcloth black 6 yards (I believe that includes my mix-matched fabric.)
Daphne poly/cotton 3 yards
Metallic gold trim 6 yards
Red broadcloth 4 yards
Casa Silver satin 5 yards (made into bias tape.)
This doesn't include all the prop supplies, beads, interfaceing, ect. I didn't keep track of those.
The cape: A bias tape nightmare.
Nicolas was in charge of making the bias tape. We used Simplicity's bias tape marker machine. Which worked pretty well. It made the bias tape making process faster.
The last picture is what almost five yards of bias tape looks like. This was used on the cape and cassock.
Cassock
The worst part was fitting in the zipper into the pattern and sewing bias tape near the zipper.
Note: I was working on a sewing machine that was older than me. I was around 21.
The cassock itself didn't take too long to create. It was all the details that took forever. I spent roughly...three months on Abel's outfit.
The awesome cuffs. I made the pattern myself. These turned out so good. The firm interfacing really helped hold the shape even during wear.
Accessories
As you can tell, Abel is a man of many accessories.
The best part of creating Abel was his accessories. This was the first time I had used muslin to make a pattern. This was the start of Abel's scarf. I hand drew the shape with a fabric pen.
The scarf turned out so well. The cross appliques, not so much but I know what to change next time.
The way I created the crosses was by using tape to create the shape. This worked out amazingly. I wish I had rotary cutter, it would had made the process a bit easier.
In total I made four cotton crosses. Two small for the gloves and the two for the scarf. Each cross was lined with gold pipping.
Next time I'll be sewing down the crosses as the glue soaked into the fabric a bit too much.
Daphne was the perfect fabric to create the scarf out of. It was soft and flowed nicely in the Seattle breeze.
I made these by casting my own mold and using hot glue to create the finished pieces. Overall we had about 150 of these bad boys. That's a lot hand painting....
The clip part (not pictured) were made out of wonderflex and worbla and were also all hand painted and primed.
My test pieces. The yellow part is a mold, created with something I bought at a local art store. The very first piece used to create the mold was made out of wonderflex (It is on the bottom left, slightly more blue than the others.)
Remember to always test your methods to make sure paint and primmer will stick to them!
Armor!
There are many different styles of Abel's armor. From the anime, to the novel and the manga. We decided on doing the manga version but took some inspiration from the novel as well. Nicolas made and pieced all the armor together himself. I painted all the armor.
The armor was made out of a variety of items. From Wonderflex to worba and hardware store installation foam.
To create the long strands that drape down from the back piece we used tubing you can find at any hardware store.
The armor process took the longest for Abel. We wound up working on it up until the week of Sakura-con. There was a lot of painting to do.
The bottom of the tubs are pointed, we used pen caps to create it!
Finished cuff plates. These were rather to make. We would heat the wonderflex then mold them around Nic's wrists. To make sure they fit over the cassock's cuffs, Nic would put his arm in the sleeve and we'd test the fit.
This was Nic's first armor piece. He did really well. This was also our first time using a thermoplastic. I was terrified of using the the mini heat gun (you can get these are Joanns.) that I didn't work with Worbla until the very end when I was working on Seth's hat.
Shoulder piece. Almost painted. We didn't take many pictures of the armor building process as Nic often did it while I was working on the costumes.
Although this isn't truly armor, Abel's rosary is a huge part of his character. You can find out more about that on the Wikia or read the manga.
This center piece was very tricky for me to make. I remade it three times, using different mediums. Finally decided on using model magic, which was covered in layers of Mod Podge. This means the center piece is still very soft but it lasted two cons. I'd love to remake it out of worba.
The rosary itself was made out of oven bake clay and model magic. And lots of hot glue and wire. Surprisingly the rosary wasn't as delicate as i thought it might be. Which was good.
The finished piece was painted in layers of gold acrylic and rub and buff.
By the way, rub and buff is REALLY hard to get off skin. What I did, especailly for small parts I used a Q-tip. It works so much better than a finger or paint brush. You will need a lot but you can get a pack at the dollar tree.
The finished piece is my pride and joy. I'm really excited to remake this some day and to improve it! The rosary really bought the cosplay together. And from making it I've found a love for making jewelry pieces.
Finished
Overall the creation of Abel was quite the process. We both learned a lot. Nicolas learned how to create armor out of plastics, while I learned how to sew on bias tape and to put in a larger zipper. Abel is one of those cosplays I may never be able to sell. I'm really proud of what we created. It was worth the hassle and stress, blood and tears. But it was just the first part on a very long road of creating two Trinity Blood cosplays. Part two will talk about Seth's process.
Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, I'd be more than willing to help you out the best I can. You can contact me by commenting below or posting on our Facebook page wall.
Equus Cosplay
Thanks for reading! Part two should be up soon!
-Jessica.
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