Crown Duel has been on of my favorite fantasy novels since I first read it back in 2008. I love the imagery, characters, story, and world of the book. It is very well written, easy to read, easy to follow, and overall enjoyable to read for the small amount of time it takes to do so. (It took me about a week or two.) Ever since I read the book, I’ve had a vivid imagery of the clothing worn by the characters, especially in the second half of the book aka Crown Duel, that I’ve wanted to bring into reality. Unfortunately, at the time I first read the book my sewing skills were very rough, as were my drawing skills, and I lacked confidence to actually make my ideas reality. So I put my ideas and Crown Duel back on my dusty bookshelf. Until now.
It’s been a dream of mine to make a dress from Crown Duel since 2008. Finally, I am working toward making that dream a reality by construction a series of outfits based on the main characters of Crown and Court Duel for my 20th birthday in just over 8 months. It will be an extensive projects as well as party, but I know it will be worth the time, effort, and funds. It is ultimately my goal to get every attendee at my party to portray a character from the series either from a self made or personally (aka me) made outfit. I hope and plan to make it an extravagant event like the parties held in the second half of the book.
As with every goal, the plan must start with a first step. This goal’s first step is Nee aka Nimiar Argaliar, the character I will be portraying at the party. I chose Nee over Mel (aka Meliara Astiar) for a number of reasons. Even though Mel is my favorite heroine (followed closely by Nee, Elenet, and Tamara), I do not resemble Mel in the least bit physically, which is a great draw back for me as I am trying to get each portrayal as close to the individual character as possible. Mel is short (about 5’2”), scrawny(about a size 2-3/3-4 in today’s sizes), and very petite. I, on the other, hand though short, am neither scrawny nor very petite. On the contrary, I’ve been compared to She-Hulk or Zena in a miniaturized form. In all reality, I am built more like Nee who is short (just taller than Mel), well built (about a 12-14/14-16 in today’s sizes), and very curvy. It just seemed fitting that I should portray a character I greatly enjoyed and fit physically. Therefore, I have started off my goal by beginning to create a party dress for Nee based on the very limited in book descriptions and very vivid out of book mental images produced from my reading.
For this project, I will be pulling design aspects from many different fashion eras (mainly medieval and Elizabethan with some hints from renaissance and regency), as well as my own imagination. For fabric and colors, I will be using some in-book descriptions as well as intuition to choose colors and textures that would most likely be worn by the characters for a reasonable price. I will probably have a budget of between four to five hundred dollars to pull the whole thing off. Costumes. Food. Rental/facilities. Decorations. Everything. I don’t have much money to play with nor room for many, if any, mistakes. Nevertheless, I am very excited to be able to do this project and greatly look forward to it’s completion. I will be making costumes for at least the main five or six characters with the possibility of a few minor/secondary characters.
I’ve already started on Nee. I have all of the fabric gathered, sketches drawn, patterns and minor designs chosen and at least half of the cosplay sewn (both skirts and most of the bodice). Hopefully, I will have her done in a few days as I greatly wish to debut her at Fandemonium for the costume contest. I’m really hoping that all the time, effort, and hard work I’ve put into this outfit with be rewarding beyond the feeling of accomplishment I will feel when she’s finally done.
I will get pictures up when I can and will work toward blogging and updating more regularly. As always, thank you for reading. Have a good day and an even better week. *^_^*
Sounds like a very neat cosplay! I hope you're able to get everything together. :)
ReplyDeleteI know I've seen Crown Duel around (though the author's name escapes me), but I've never gotten around to reading it for some reason. I suppose should remedy that soon so that I can follow along better! :)
Crown Duel is amazing! I really recommend that you read it when you have the time. It's a good, short read. Sherwood Smith is the author.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I hope it turns out well. ^_^