Hello!
Here's the Build Log for Priscilla from Dark Souls. Priscilla is one of the more appreciated and loved characters in the game, and I'm very happy with my cosplay of her. I've upgraded and changed things between each build, however I don't have a ton of photos for it all. I originally made her for the Master tier cosplay competition at NärCon Summer 2016. It may not have been the most brilliant move to make a costume entirely out of fake fur for a summer con but hindsight is always 20/20.
The materials for this cosplay was white fake fur, green fake fur (because black was impossible to find), three wigs, white feathers, styrofoam, wooden stick, soft mattress foam, white fake leather, duct tape, spraypaint, acrylic paint and worbla. Most of the fur for the costume itself was leftover fur from making my Charr (and I STILL have tons of white fur left with no idea what to use it for...).
The costume for priscilla is very simple in the way it is patterened, what makes it hard is using fake fur for everything. Most machines can't handle sewing fake fur, and even if they do it can come out quite odd. So this entire cosplay had to be handsewn. I used different types of fake fur for the top of the dress and the sleeves, the skirt parts and the "hems" of the skirt(s). And then another type of fur for the tail.
Anyways to start out with I ordered three white wigs of different lengths, the only shared trait being that they had no fringe. Then I simply stacked them ontop of eachother (the same way as I did with inuyasha) and sewed them together. This made up for the intensely fluffy volumous (if that even is a word) hair that Priscilla has.
All wigs merged together to be one solid huge wig.
The way I made the dress was to have a "top dress" and then layered skirts. This allowed me to have the tail on a belt that I could also use to keep the skirt parts up, without having to make an additional hole in the dress. I also put a lace collar bit for the top to avoid having to make a latex collar with the scales on.
Testing out the base top part, and later on testing when the sleeves were sewn.
What's important when working with fake fur is to take into consideration the direction of the pile. Pretty obvious I guess, since you usually want the fur to "go" in a certain direction. But this also makes the amount of fur that you need to buy for a project quite substantial, since you can't always place your patterns on it to simply use the least material possible.
This is from a bit further in the process when the tail was already finished, but it shows off the base dress nicely. Here you can see that for all the black parts I had to use green fur, since no stores sold black fur with long pile in the summer.
As for the green fur, I sprayed it black with spraypaint because I didn't have the time nor the experience using fabric dye for synthetic fabrics and testing my way on how to dye fur without ruining it.
That's all the WIP photos I have for the dress, so let's move on to the tail!
In order to make the tail I first made a pattern out of newspaper, and then transferred it onto soft mattress foam. I used three layers of foam glued together and wrapped with a cord while the glue dried. When using mattress foam it's important to let the foam sit unwrapped for a few days for it to expand to its full thickness before working with it.
After the glue had dried I went to town carving out the shape of the tail, and then duct taping it. The duct tape is to make sure the shape stays the way I want to and making it easier to glue the fake leather and fur onto it.
Adding the white fake leather to the bottom of the tail. I chose to have this leather at the bottom to at least try and reduce how dirty it would become from wearing. Fake leather is a million times easier to wipe clean than fake fur is, especially when wearing it outside.
The finished tail furred up!
The final thing I did with the tail was to add a belt through it so I could fasten it.
Last but not least we have some WIP for the Scythe! It's made from styrofoam with a wood core and covered in worbla.
The styrofoam base cut with the wood core glued in
Carving process
More carving!
Adding all the worbla and random thermoplastic leftovers to cover it up after sanding the styrofoam
I don't have any photos of the first version up close, this is after repainting the entire scythe later in the same year.
That's all the photos for everything regarding this costume, as usual here are some stuff in bulletpoints that aren't pictured:
* Adding soft foam to the scythe to resemble the "roots" going down from the top part * Adding cut feathers to the front of the dress to kind of resemble scales * Making the tiny horns for the makeup out of thermoplastic pellets
* Adding the white fur edges to the skirt parts of the dress after dyeing all the green fur black and sewing it together * Making the little bottom "knob" on the scythe out of styrofoam and worbla
The dress itself also doesn't have a zipper or any other type of closure, it's made to slip-in.
Priscilla was originally a very rushed build, and while I'm happy with how she looks I am considering refurbishing this costume and improve upon it further. I have no set plans as to WHEN that will happen however, as of writing this.
In any case I hope you've enjoyed this post and as usual don't hesitate to ask me if you have any questions. For the proper photos of this cosplay, head over to the dedicated page for Priscilla