( this is the 95% completed version @ SakuraCon 2011 )
I stumbled across Hylian Jean's Queen Rutela while just researching online and quickly found a treasure of images and behind-the-scenes on her Cosplay.com and DA page. Intrigued, I emailed her to ask her some questions. The words below are a combination of my email conversation with her as well as her writing about her cosplay on different sites.
Yes, it was about two or three months of work, leading up to SakuraCon 2011. There are only two official artwork references of Rutela that I know of, so I played through the game to record video and screenshots. The 3D character model ripped from the game was absolutely invaluable for seeing all angles, and I made everything as accurate to these references as I could, given my body shape
I adore Zoras and after making Ruto I'd been considering another Zora to create. I had some drawings in the works for some original Zora designs, but after playing Twilight Princess through again I fell in love once more with Queen Rutela, and decided to go for it. This costume was my full-time obsession leading up to Sakura Con 2011 and I was able to get enough of her finished that I was comfortable debuting her there.
More photos and descriptions after the jump ....
(The final look)
The hardest part was the bodice. My old dress form has mutated out of shape and I had no choice but to pin-fit the bodice to myself. I think I've put on and removed the thing at least fifty times, and it has no zipper so that's no easy task.
Her skirt was tricky as well. I've never sewn a trumpet-skirt before, let alone patterned one on my own, and I'm not thrilled with the lay of the fabric. The lining, which uses exactly the same shaped pieces as the outside, but a different fabric, turned out smooth and almost perfect. The outer fabric was this monstrous tiger-striped purple tie-dye print I found that happened to have a gorgeous soft gradient on the wrong side. Unfortunately, as I learned while working with it, the tiger-stripes are screen-printed onto the fabric and so they rumple it any time it's even slightly pulled along the diagonal. Learned my lesson with that one. I do love the colors in her skirt, though.
(SakuraCon 2011)
There are easily over 300 hours of work in her, not counting the time spent airbrushing her, remaking her eyes (one melted while I was heat-setting paint), making and applying the dots along her headtail, and adding new internal supports to her head before PAX '11. And I haven't even made her rib gills or pink overskirt yet! I'd also like to make her coral hair falls a little longer.
There was time before PAX Prime to polish her up some more. I finally invested in an airbrush to do her color correction. Ruto was all painted with sponges and brushes, which was a huge trial and a learning experience. Rutela looks much smoother because of the airbrush. I gave her the little, iridescent dots that run along the sides of her head, as well as changes to her shoulder "vents," some corrections to her necklace, and new eyes, since I accidentally warped one of them while heat setting her head paint. I also changed some of the internal support of the head, which you can't see from the outside but made a major difference for comfort.
In order to make my Zora heads fit snugly I had to make a cast of my face and head to build around. Because of my wrapped hair the head form ended up too big in the back, so the first time I wore Ruto and Rutela their heads tended to settle backward and lift up at the front. For Ruto this meant a visible gap around my nose, and for Rutela it meant painful pressure under my eyebrows. Padding partially fixed the problem when I wore them a second time. But Rutela needs more than padding to counterbalance the weight and movement of the tail, so before PAX I added a chin strap, and changed the strap that goes from the temples to the back of my head, diverting it around my ears via large rings to prevent the painful squashing my ears got last time. It's tricky to put on, especially when the lower half of my face is covered in white makeup. I usually need a second person to lift it for me while I hold all the straps and plunge in. PAX was a more difficult venue for Rutela, being hotter, more crowded, and less costumed. The eyes fogged up even worse than at SakuraCon. I was only able to wear Rutela for an afternoon before I had to go home and change.
( SakuraCon 2012)
The third time I wore the costume, and the most enjoyable time, was at SakuraCon 2012, and I was determined to have it finished by then, thinking I would finally try entering a costume contest. The contest filled up before I could register, but I put most of the final touches on the costume that I wanted to. The biggest thing missing had been the wavy, pink overskirt, which I patterned, sewed, and airbrushed to a lighter color at the hem. I replaced her eyes yet again in an attempt to ventilate them better, repaired some worn bits and called her done. (Though, if I ever feel like it, there is more work that I could do to blend the back and give it the slightly raised vertebrae from the game model.)
With the addition of her ruffly pink overskirt and some more airbrushing in time for Sakuracon 2012, Rutela is pretty close to finished. Still a few more things to do (including repairing or remaking one of her fins which was lost and trampled before my hero husband recovered it), but I feel like she's completed enough that I'm happy wearing her for photoshoots at this point. She is much more comfortable to wear than when I first made her but she does need some more adjustments to make my life easier at conventions. I've been able to wear her ~5-7 hours before I have to get free. She also gives me a lot of extra height. I wear 3 inch platform shoes under the skirts, and the top of her head is at least six inches taller than the top of my head. Kind of fun since I'm only 5'1" to start with!
( 95% completed version @ SakuraCon 2011 )
This photo shows the opal iridescence of her eyes. There is also a fog in them which was the condensation that was trapped in there all day, but it looks really interesting in photos.
The eyes were tricky, exacting work even with lessons learned from my Princess Ruto costume's less satisfying eyes. They're made in mostly the same way, of very thin plastic tinted with permanent marker and set into a thin, sculpted mask quite close to my real eyes. The iris is a second piece of iridescent plastic behind the first. They were tough to align to the same forward angle, so pictures often catch the light reflecting off one of the irises and not the other. But when it works right, the glowing effect is really cool. When the eyes aren't fogging up I can see about as well as through dirty sunglasses.
Gathering her currently completed elements (besides bracelets and pendant - one arm fin is hanging on the door behind her) together for a self-motivating progress shot. There is still a lot of painting and some detailing to be done, though
This is cardstock from the back of some packaging, flat marbles, Crayola Model Magic, twisted paper cord, puffy paint, craft foam, and two shades of gold paint. ::dusts off hands:: Closes with a magnet.
The part that took longest was her head-tail, since I went through a couple of iterations of its skeleton, but I have a better knowledge of how to do it now so the next Zora I make will have a much smoother head-tail. Shaved foam and polyester batting start to round off the shape of the headtail while I build up the face with Claycrete. It's kinda like sculpting with thick oatmeal.. The packaging says Claycrete doesn't shrink, but this is a liiiiiie. It doesn't crack, but it definitely shrinks. This was all covered in custom-fitted fabric that came down over the forehead ending at the eyebrow ridge.
For the head-tail I experimented with a couple of skeletons and settled on a segmented structure of upholstery foam, attached to a rigid face-mask and covered with soft batting and fitted fabric. Her coral hair falls are made of the same foam, sculpted with scissors.
I've been costuming since I was a tiny kid. The first ones I can really remember were made by my mom: a little horse costume for me and a little dragon for my brother. I promptly stole the dragon from my brother and wore them both often. High school was when I started making serious costumes every year for Halloween, with mom at the sewing machine (thanks, mom!) and me with the scissors, paper mache, wire, paints... I took them quite seriously! I did a posture-correct velociraptor, an Ewok, Scooby-Doo, and a winged gryphon. At that time and where I lived, costuming conventions were far-away, unheard-of things, so Halloween was the best excuse to make a costume and show it off. Naturally, it is one of my favorite holidays!
Cosplaying as I know it now probably started for me in 2007 when I moved to Washington and went to my first SakuraCon at the encouragement of a friend. I threw together an outfit to wear but REALLY wished I'd been in a proper costume. Everyone around me was a cosplayer! In 2009 I was finally able to attend again and put together some last-minute cosplays for me and my husband to wear, and the great response only increased my drive to make something proper for the next year. I wasn't able to get Ruto done in time for SakuraCon 2010 but I debuted her at PAX that year.
Every time I attend a cosplay convention it makes me want to do better and more complex cosplays -- characters and creatures I love that haven't been done yet the way I want to see them done. I work slowly on these ideas (a big part is working up the courage to get started) but I put so much love into them, they almost have a life of their own and I connect with what I'm making. I think that's why I like sculptural, creature costumes best. They're not just a different human with different clothes. They can take an audience a little bit out of the ordinary world.
Translating a fascinating, elaborate design into real life is a reward of its own, but I also love doing a service to other fans who haven't gotten to see that design represented before. People have pressed through crowds to come express joy at me, and it's tremendously uplifting. At cons I'm surrounded by people who love this creative process as much as I do, and we can praise each other's work like we're pieces in a walking, talking art gallery. When I find friendly people with awesome costumes from the same series, it's like we're contributing to some even greater thing just by standing near each other. I know, it's silly.On the other side of the coin, there's the nervousness being in costume in public when I'm not surrounded by cosplayers and I look totally out of place. I also worry about criticism of my work and am not as good as I should be at brushing off rude remarks on the internet. But nobody is a more serious critic of my work than I am. The other thing I dislike about cosplay is makeup. Do not like putting it on, wearing it, worrying about it, or removing it. But it's often very necessary for an accurate look, so I'm starting to learn to use it properly.
Thank you HylianJean and be sure to follow her on deviant-art !
