TL;DR-- here are some photos of me cosplaying as Erza Scarlet's Heaven's Wheel cosplay from Fairy Tail. The cosplay was completed in spring of 2012 after a whole winter's worth of work. Photos taken by my husband at the base of the trail to Strawberry Lake in the Rocky Mountains. Skip the big chunk of text below to get to the photos ;)
The long version: In summer of 2012, I decided I wanted to do a photo shoot of my Heaven's Wheel cosplay. I had spent hours, blood, sweat, and tears on this cosplay. It was my first "armored" cosplay, and I learned so much from doing it and was so proud of it that I wanted a photo shoot to get some good photos to do it justice. Well, let's just say my photoshoot didn't quite turn out the way I anticipated, but I learned a lot from that experience as well.
Lesson 1: Always bring a mirror, especially if you are going to shoot the photos in the middle of the woods! This should've been a no-brainer, but I didn't own a a hand held mirror and assumed I could rely on the rearview and side mirrors of the car. Well, that didn't quite cut it. My headpiece ended up sitting much lower than intended. Being the perfectionist that I am, I wanted to scrap all the photos we took over two hours and start over, but that leads us to lesson 2....
Lesson 2: Hot glue, craft foam, and wax-based paint do not hold up well in 85ºF weather. My armor ended up splitting apart at the seams, and I'm pretty sure there was more silver paint on my body than was left on the armor by the end of the photo shoot. So redoing the photo shoot is not an option unless/until I re-make the cosplay. I'll admit, it was pretty discouraging to have my cosplay come apart before my very eyes, and I may or may not have cried a little. However, I have since discovered thermoplastic materials such as Wonderflex and Worbla, and any armor cosplays I do in the future will be built from those materials.
I have to say, it is thanks to the encouragement of my husband that I have decided to post these photos. For the first six months, I was adamantly against even looking at them because I felt so silly that I couldn't even get my headband in the right place without a mirror, but eventually my husband got it through my head that the photos still turned out nice. So, here they are and I hope you enjoy :)
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| Don't pay any mind to my melting wing haha |
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| Gratuitous out-of-focus artsy shot |
Thank you for taking the time to look at my photos. I think my husband did an awesome job taking the photos, and the forest was beautiful despite all the horse-flies pestering us. The whole experience with this cosplay taught me a lot, and I'm looking forward to making more armored cosplays. I have another one of Erza's that is really on my mind, in fact :)
As always, feel free to leave a comment or hit me up on email or Twitter!
Sincerely,
Alycia
heartandsoulcosplay@gmail.com
@whimsyAly
Awesome! As always, of course - but still so awesome! :)
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