In a world full of Vocaloids, Ponies, Princesses, and other explosively popular fandom, it’s the costume creations they inspire us to produce that grab the majority of affection and attention of the cosplay community. This leaves little spotlight for more obscure titles, and therefore, more obscure cosplays. Have you ever created a cosplay based on something you loved that was rarely seen and that not many people knew of? On the other hand, have you ever encountered another cosplayer who was dressed as a character you’d never expect to see? It is these truly rare and under-appreciated costumes that lurk around conventions and on the Internet that are worthy of being an art-form all of its own. A cosplay that is seldom done, with hardly a spark of reference to go by in creating it, sprouts the potential for a true cosplay masterpiece. At the same time, because of their obscurity, they tend to resonate a sense of awe, sentimentality and sometimes nostalgia.
This leads us to what this article is really about! There is one series in particular that does this for me, a 10 volumes cyberpunk-style manga by Tsutomu Nihei called ‘BLAME!’ In this manga, Nihei, known for his dark, grungy drawing style and knowledge of architecture, fills it with beautifully conceived and massive complex structures, with characters and weapons to match. Details upon details take over the pages, and almost all of them proving difficult to decipher, but still a pleasure to look at. The style also often changes throughout the books, making the reference for cosplayers and propmakers an extremely evident challenge. I’ve had the pleasure (and the headache) of tackling these challenges myself. So without further ado, allow me to take you on the journey through the creative process of building my ‘BLAME!’ Cosplay, along with some input from other cosplayers who have tackled the same battle with their own techniques and resources.
The Planning Process: “I originally put a good week of planning into the project. I started off by drawing out all the parts of the costume that I could see based on different references from the manga, but as things advanced, it became much harder to do because the art was very unclear and constantly different and a lot of it turned out to be improvisation.” – Lunnie on deviantART . One step that most of us seemed to have in common was doing sketches. Lots of sketches! By drawing out all of the different pieces of the outfits, we were able to break down the infinite amount of details, but only to an extent. The rest however, required some out of the box thinking and using our imagination. As it usually proves useful for most manga references, there were several angles to go by as you flipped through the pages, but the smaller details were still very inconsistent, mostly because there was so many of them! It would seem not even Nihei himself could keep up, but who can blame him (no pun intended), as doing the same thing too many times can get boring. Some of the hardest pieces to redesign turned out to be similar for many of us. Both Lunnie and Sadakochan87 from deviantART chose the ‘Silicon’ (name for the cyborg creatures in the manga) character Maeve, a slightly psychotic gun-armed sidekick to another Silicon named Ivy, which is the character