One of my favourite costumes that I have worked on has to be Celty Sturluson. She is one of my all time favourite characters and a costume that I did my first ever 'big' props for. The helmet is a bit roughed up over a couple of years now due to travel with it but it's still one of the most comfortable and bad ass feeling costumes to wear.
Please click below for a long post about this costume and lots of photos!
The helmet I used for Celty, straight from Ebay.
I had a large period in my life where I decided to not really bother with cosplay anymore. When I started to get back into anime however I decided I wanted to get back into anime. Around that time I had also just watched Durarara!! and ended up really loving the character Celty. I decided then for MCM that year I would totally be able to finish this as long as I gave myself enough time. I found this helmet on ebay for about £10 after a long time of searching for UK sellers and good cheap listings. It didn't matter if the helmet was no longer fit for riding motorbikes which helped find cheaper ones.
With the base helmet got I also bought myself a large pack of mod rock and window tint and said to myself I should totally start on the helmet soon.
Of course I didn't because I was a little lazy but eventually I started working on it. My first thought was about weight and how heavy it would be on the head. I started then making the general shapes out of very light weight card I cut from a coke box. Using tape and stuffing newspaper into places I eventually made some form of solid base. After the card general shape I then went to work on the first layers of mod rock. I had used mod rock in school one time and remember it being quite easy to use and also an alternative to using heavier products. It is still a little heavy but not so bad I was going to break my neck. As you can see though it is a little messy but it was easy to build up certain shapes and start to make the card foundations a lot more solid.
All the mod rock.
So after the first layer, I spent a while adding a few more layers over a couple of days to make sure it was solid and the right shapes I wanted. After that it was time for some sanding. Oh boy all the sanding. I got pretty bored but I knew it had to be done. Some point during this sanding I also started looking for bodysuits. I'm no expert on sewing and stretch fabrics for a catsuit were definitely beyond me so I accepted that I would be buying it. However I wanted to make sure the bodysuit was the right kind of fabric and fit well. I have seen lots of bodysuits look a little sad by just not being body fitting. I went with my mum around fancy dress costume shops to try some on and couldn't find a good one. Eventually I found one on ebay that I thought may work that was a UK seller so wouldn't be hard to send back if it wasn't good. It was about £14 and fit really well. The fabric inside was also very soft to the skin and the suit was pretty comfy to wear around, almost like wearing PJs around the place.
This photo is actually from a couple of years ago now. I think I've lost weight.
Eventually I was done with sanding the helmet and so then I went down to a shop to get both the spray paints I wanted along with a primer to paint on plastic. It took me quite some time to pick out the colours I thought were the most correct but eventually settled on some colours. I primed up the helmet and let that set for a couple of days. During that time I created a big enough template for my mum to print out at work and for me to cut out and make into a stencil for the symbol on the helmet. Then, with lots of paper set around, I went to go take over the garden with spray paint. I sprayed the helmet entirely yellow before letting that set.
After it was dry I taped off the lines to the blue section on the back and covered the front yellow in newspaper before spraying the back blue. Then after that was dry I went to gently and carefully with lots of newspaper around the helmet spray in the symbol in the place I thought was most correct. Afterwards I went back into the helmet and painted with acrylics the places that were black. All that was left was to window tint.
Oh boy window tint.
I had of course never window tinted anything in my life and I'm just going to say it was a lot of getting annoyed at the window tint plastic, melting a plastic card and wearing gloves to not burn my hands from the hair dryer. Eventually after about several attempts I managed to get it window tinted as best as I could see me doing it.
My first time wearing out the costume at MCM October 2011!
After MCM I wore it to Hyper Japan and then didn't really wear it out. I tried to do a couple of photos in it here and there but I never had a proper photoshoot done with the costume though I really wanted one.
At Hyper Japan with some great Drrr!! cosplayers
Skip forward ahead now to this year and I have just come back with a new determination to cosplay again. I meet a cosplay photographer my friend has worked with over cosplayisland and I start talking about wanting a photoshoot as Celty as I never got proper photos of me as her and I always wanted a cool city photoshoot. We then agreed to meet up at Canary Wharf for a photoshoot and at that point I decide that for this photoshoot I want to make a scythe. Within a week.
So heading down to work I tried to see if I can get one of the biggest sized boxes (the sweet popcorn box) and went home to try and find long metal or plastic poles. I took to cutting out the scythe shape I wanted after my parents gave me a long metal mop pole they were going to throw out which was just about perfect for making a big weapon. I attached it rather poorly as I was in a rush but it manged to do the job and I was soon spending my free afternoons and evenings paper macheing this scythe. If I had more time I would've maybe seen about alternative methods than using cardboard and a mop pole but I was determined to get it done before the photoshoot.
After the levels of paper mache had dried I then spray painted the hell out of it.
I let that dry and then afterwards went through to correct any mistakes in the painting with some resprays as the magazines kinda flapped into the paint now and then. I then had myself a giant scythe that was going to be super fun to take around the trains with.
Just posing in the garden with a scythe.
So onto the photoshoot and having my first time doing a photoshoot with a photographer! We met at Canary Wharf and did a couple of shots of another outfit while we were waiting for it to get more twilight evening wise. I changed in the tube stations toilets and then we took to going around Canary Wharf finding good places to take photos.
A whole lot of photos!
I had a really nice time with Carlos and we had a couple of reactions from the public as we went around the area. I had a couple of people bring their window down to say I had a cool costume or one person gave me a thumbs up. I also had a couple of people come up to ask to take my photo on their phone. One highlight is that while taking photos a police car pulled up. I was worried we were going to get into trouble but instead they just wanted to ask what we were doing and to say that I had a really cool costume.
This costume is definitely my favourite to both wear and one of the few times I've really felt good about something I've made in terms of props. I'm still somewhat new to making things for cosplay but this will be a costume I will keep and will maybe where for other events when I just want to wear a comfortable and fun costume of a character I love.
The bonus behind the costume is also the window tint. No one can see you make derpy faces in photos.
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