Emma (Vancouver, BC)
as Aria T’Loak from Mass Effect
The cosplay I’m submitting for the contest is Aria T’Loak from the Mass Effect series. I’m a HUGE fan of Mass Effect, but had never cosplayed from it before. After three games, I really wanted to show my love for the series, and at the same time wanted to expand my horizons and learn more about monster makeup and latex appliances.
I picked Aria because she’s an amazingly strong and powerful woman in the Mass Effect series; she runs her own little section of the galaxy, and no one crosses her. And, let’s face it… her clothes are fantastic!
The headpiece was initially sculpted out of clay, molded in gypsum cement (Ultracal30), and then was cast in latex and painted to match my makeup. I actually have a whole blog post about how I made the headpiece here. In total, the headpiece took about 80 hours to make! I spent 60 hours sculpting it, and another 20 to mold, cast and paint it. Most likely someone more experienced with monster makeup could have done it faster, but since this was my first time sculpting I wanted to take my time and do it right!
The makeup takes about 3-4 hours to apply each time I wear the costume, in order to blend the seams of the headpiece in to my skin, as well as body paint!
The rest of the costume was all completely patterned, drafted and sewn by me as well! There’s a black spandex body suit with cutouts. The armor is all sewn from carbon fibre vinyl. The “bodice” was sewn in the same style as a bra (fully underwired) in order to provide support, and to look flattering, since a bra can’t be worn with the costume. I spent 9 months working on this costume to make it as accurate as possible! I even made my own set of buckles (approx 35 pieces) to match her hardware, since nothing existed in real life that was close enough!
The boot covers were also drafted and sewn by me using the phenomenally helpful “duct tape drafting” technique ;) More on that here.
The gun that I’m holding in the pictures was made completely out of EVA foam, and was the first space gun I had ever made! I made it by layering pieces of EVA foam together, sealed the foam with PVA glue, and then painted it with rattle cans.
My favourite thing about cosplay is learning new crafting techniques, and this costume was FULL of them. I made my first latex prosthetic, I worked with resin for the first time to make my buckles, and I worked with EVA foam for the first time to make my gun. My love for cosplay has always been driven by learning new ways to do things, and learning to work with new materials. 
Published: Mar 4, 2015 01:30 pm