A New Adventurer Has Joined the Party

I built a new cosplay!

I cannot begin to tell you the number of times that I have finished a cosplay, and thought to myself “Man, I really enjoy this, but I hate that I had to rush through this build!” Raise your hand if you are also familiar with any of these promises:

“Next time I’m going to give myself more time.”

“Next time I’m going to be more organized.”

“Next time I’m going to make a mockup and test the pattern first.”

“Next time I’m going to order my supplies earlier.”

“Next time I’ll be better.”

It’s that last one that gets me. It’s so very easy to look at all of these comments we make to ourselves, and find that they twist themselves up into meaning that we are bad or lesser artists. You spent hours on this project — but not enough hours, because that deadline crept up when you weren’t looking. There is something you didn’t finish, some detail you didn’t get to or isn’t perfect. Now, there are plenty of other cosplayers out there who can offer better advice than me on time management for long projects, and on proper techniques if you are looking to learn about specific costume making mediums. That’s not what this blog is going to explore.

For me, the fact of the matter is that when “next time” comes, I’m still going to have ADHD, and I’m probably still going to get last minute ideas and hyper fixations, whether that is for a new character as this one was or for a new craft or a particular color or something shiny. For you it might be other neuro-spicy tendencies, or outside commitments like work or school, that make your deadline appear faster than you’d like it to. And if that sounds like something you relate to, well, today I am pleased to present my guide to

Cosplay On a Deadline

aka

Being Both a Cosplayer and a Chaos Gremlin Simultaneously

(What? A lot of us are.)

Throughout this post, I will be referring to my process for building my first version of Alanna the Lioness, which I had photographed at the Cosplay Supershoot by Jeff Zoet in April of 2023. Did I have the date for this shoot about two months in advance? Yes. Did I still decide what I wanted to make for this shoot about a week beforehand? Also yes. And somehow this is still the result that I got out of it:

Now first off, credit is due to Jeff for being an amazing photographer. I knew going in that I could show up in a potato sack and Jeff would make me look good. But that isn’t the point I’m getting at here.

When I made the decision to make Alanna, I did it knowing that I was only going to pull this off if I worked within a set of boundaries and ignored my usual perfectionist tendencies. Easier said than done. So here is what I learned during the week I spent building this cosplay: I had to find ways to make my ADHD and what it does to my brain work for me, not against me.

I’m going to go ahead and repeat: easier said than done. I know.

Trick #1: Make a task list ✅

This is  straight up ADHD advice that I’ve been working on since my diagnosis last year. Admittedly I am better at it some days than others. But I knew it was going to be important here. So before I started cutting, before I even started getting my materials together, I sat down and made a series of lists: What I needed to buy, what I needed to make, the steps involved in each. I broke down each of those steps into as specific, minute details as I could think to.

I cannot stress enough here that specificity is key. That there is a difference between putting “make bracers” on a check list, as opposed to “cut out bracers, form bracers, attach pieces, prime bracers, paint bracers” each as their own bullet point. I did this because it’s easier for me — and most people who struggle with time management —  to think about how long it will take you to do an individual task like cutting than it will complete a whole piece, and also because the more check boxes you get to fill the more small dopamine hits you get to give yourself. Knowing how much time each task will take will help you determine which tasks and how many you can manage in a given time frame. Since my work schedule can be sporadic, this let me gauge questions like “Do I have time to do this next step in the morning before I go in, or should I buckle down and do it tonight?”

It was in this stage that I also determined that I needed to pare down my list to the bare essentials for the look I wanted: a breastplate, bracers, pauldrons, and greaves. (Don’t see pauldrons on my final look? Yeah, that’s because they didn’t work out and I simply had to accept that it was better to take three finished pieces than to take 4 pieces that would now collectively look unfinished. More on that below.)

From there, I put those tasks in my planner, a few at a time; when I completed my checkboxes, I reassessed whether I had time for more or was calling it a day. I have personally found the physical act of putting pen to paper to be most effective at giving me the happy brain chemicals as I check them off, but if you prefer digital there are myriad of options out there that I’d be happy to discuss in another post. I have tried a lot over the years.

Trick #2: Stashbust 📦

If I were a dragon, I would have a fabric hoard. Particularly a hoard of shiny silks. And I was only able to get this project done in the time allotted because I had plenty of fabrics and notions that were either left over from previous cosplays, or purchased on a whim with “someday” in mind. You can read my last blog post, Breaking into the Fabric Stash for a more in depth look at why I keep one. And I’m not saying it’s for everyone; if you are capable of being fiscally responsible and exercising some restraint over craft supply shopping, that’s probably best. But that’s not what we’re talking about here, we’re talking about being on a deadline, and not everything is available for one-day shipping. Sometimes you absolutely need to have those things on hand.

As I assembled my armor, I went through two phases. First: Wow, I actually think I prefer working with just worbla! Then: Wow I wish I had foam on hand because this front seam feels flimsy. Also, there is no way in hell this breastplate is going to close.

(As an aside, this was probably the closest I came to panic that I would not get this cosplay done, because it was very discouraging to not have this fit around my chest and waist.)

So that left me with two choices: remake it, or hide it. I chose to hide it. Textiles are significantly more in my wheelhouse, so I broke into the fabric stash and found a red upholstery velvet I had grabbed at a tag sale, and a gold-and-purple dupioni that I had bought because. Well, those are Alanna’s colors, so I blocked them into two (very roughly) matching rectangles, grabbed some coat weight hook-and-eyes, and made myself a cloak! Huzzah, take that body image issues!

And I need to stress this: I was down to the wire. It was late when I got to this point in the build, even if I had wanted to buy a specific fabric the stores were closed for the day and I was working the next. I wouldn’t have been able to finish this cosplay if I did not have a hoard of potential fabrics on hand. More over, I might have just stopped and given up if I’d felt like I didn’t have readily available options to redirect myself.

That success gave me another idea. I didn’t have foam for armor building, but I did have foam chainmail that I bought because it seemed like a cool thing to have. Now that I had the back hidden, maybe I could use this to cover the wonky seam at the front of my armor.

By the way, you can get this sweet chainmail here!

I was very unsure until I painted it. I had reached the stage at which you question every design choice that lead to that point — ah, the blessing and the curse of book cosplay, creative freedom.

Trick #3: Make your peace with imperfection 😌

This is less about the craft of cosplay and more about my mental state at the time.

After scrapping the pauldrons, my armor was done. I had 24 hours to go before leaving. The last thing I had to tackle was what went under my armor. Historically, this would be a gambeson, a quilted soft armor that protected against the plate armor itself as much as against opponent’s weapons. I did not have time to make a full gambeson.

I did have time to fake it.

I didn’t want to fake it. I hate the idea of faking it. It has been deeply ingrained into my psyche that faking it is bad bad bad (and that’s something to explore in therapy another day). But my final fit tests with the armor just looked… incomplete. So I did my best WWMTS (what would my therapist say?) and asked myself: what was wrong with “faking it”? Could I rephrase what I needed to do so that I didn’t get stuck on such a negative word? Does it matter if this one piece looks — frankly — unpresentable on its own, if its never going to be seen on its own?

Yikes. Talk about unfinished seams.

So yes, I faked it, and it worked. I dug back into the fabric stash for some pre-quilted brown cotton and a gold bias tape for trim, I drafted a shape based on this tutorial, and that’s all I’m going to say about that because I do not recommend free handing your pattern, especially when you have a limited amount of material to work with and less time. Seriously, don’t do that. At the very least freehand on a piece of muslin first. Anyway, I made the lower part of the gambeson, and attached it directly to an old long-sleeve tee that conveniently matched the leggings I would using, and I was as ready to go as I was going to be.

I think the end result was worth it, don’t you?

I may add to it in the future, make the armor pieces that were on the original wish list but had to be cut. And oh, I cannot wait to add in some effects for Alanna’s Gift. But first I have some other important work to do in the Tortall universe.

Stay tuned!