Dragon Kid Cosplay

This cosplay was a LOT of work. It must be the most difficult cosplay I have done, construction-wise. There was also armor-making involved, which really is not my cup of tea, but I really liked the structural challenge of this cosplay and, overall, I love the results!

Now... there was so much work put into this cosplay, where should I even start? I am going to try to explain it as much as I can, however feel free to ask more questions if you are interested!

My favourite part of this cosplay was probably making the shirt and the shorts, mainly because pattern-drafting was involved, which let me take the entire control of how my garments would look. I've drafted everything myself, tested out the patterns, butchered my prototypes and modified my patterns until I obtained the wanted look. All the details on the shirt (the dragon, the tiny wings, the motifs, etc.), altough not really visible in this picture, were made using machine and hand-made appliqués, and the red borders are hand-made bias tape. I've also made the kind of red cords Dragon Kid as on her shirt. There are also cushions inside her pants to make them round and fluffy.

The socks are pretty straight-foward: I've draped the fabric around my leg and added fabric motifs on it. There is also hand-made elastic piping on top of them, and the little knee armor things are separate pieces that I've pinned on the socks with safety pins to try to avoid making big holes in my socks.

The leg and arm armors are made using various paper mache recipes, craft foam, carved styrofoam balls and tons of modpodge. The tubes on them are actually regular, transparent plastic tubes you can buy at hardware stores that I painted using yellow glass-stain effect paint. The red cushions are made using foam and red vinyl fabric.

The staff was probably the easiest part; I've re-used an old broom stick, to which I paper-mached two dragons. I've painted the dragons a golden color and withered them with black paint to make them look more realistic. The red part of the staff is painted using metallic paint, and the black parts are electric tape (I tough that it added a little more texture to the staff).

The hardest part to make was, without a doubt, the entire headpiece. Even the way I made it stand up is weird. The two huge panels are made using foam circles, plastic tubing and LED light garlands (the kind you can get in the wedding section in craft stores). The decorations on them are made using cloud clay, craft foam and decorative curtain fringes. They stay on my head using wire from a coat hanger and some kind of felt hat I found in a dollar store, which are placed under my wig. I had to remove both panels several times because they were extremely heavy and had a tendency to fall off if I wasn't careful, so I wouldn't recommend using this method to anyone! The wig itself was made using one long green wig, which I cut short with the help of a friend to be able to use the fibres for the ponytail (it is a separate piece).

Due to the fact that the headgear is a pain to wear, I probably won't be wearing this cosplay again anytime soon (that is, until I find a better way to make it stay on my head in a comfortable way).

As far as the hard construction goes, that pretty much covers it. However, do not hesitate to ask more questions about it! I'll try my best to explain further how I made my cosplay .

As Dragon Kid from Tiger & Bunny
The picture was took by my mother.

Awards won: best craftsmanship in the artisan division award, judge's choice award