Cosplay: Balthier

[unforth]

At Gencon, thelisafaerie and I discovered a couple things (okay, more than that, but a couple relevant to this post) about each other. One was that she had always wanted to cosplay Rikku, and I had always wanted to cosplay Yuna; the other was that I had been really wanting to cosplay Balthier, and she wanted to cosplay Fran. Clearly, based on this information, there was only one course of action - so she and I are already starting prep for these costumes, to be worn at (presumably) Origins and Gencon next year. We'll be doing X-2 style Yuna and Rikku...but I'm starting with Balthier, and I found some time yesterday evening after the ball game to actually do some work on it. Since methodology for Cosplay costumes is always a helpful thing to share, I figured I'd do a series on the making of this costume. Today's will be a bit hurried, though, I'm not loaded with time. ;)

First, I looked up some pics of Balthier that I thought would be useful...

Big, Official Pic of Balthier - this is by far the most useful image.
Balthier and Fran - shows a different angle than normal on Fran.
Balthier character sketches
Pretty awesome Balthier and Basch Cosplay - this has been pretty helpful too.
Balthier, Fran, Ashe on the Bike of Doom
Awesome Cosplay
Simplified Balthier
In Engine
Fan Art with a lot of details
Screen cap of a cut scene - Balthier, Fran, others

My other main reference material is this:

My handy, dandy, fully 3D highly detailed figurine.

I'm starting with his armor.



As it's pretty clear, this is a big job, but that's okay.

I started by doing a whole lot of measuring of both me and the figurine, and doing a bunch of math. To begin with I'm only concentrating on the front panel - specifically, one half of the front panel, which I'll mirror to get the other half. I figure, the back has a pretty easy shape, and is held with cinchers to boot, so it'll be a lot easier to fill in later.

First, I drew a to-scale version of his front panel:


Then, I drew a measured-out version of my front panel:


I've never drafted a pattern before in my life, so rather than go on faith that I hadn't screwed up, I went ahead and did the mirroring of that panel and pinned it to my nightie to see how it "fit."







I did a little tweaking to the arm whole cause something wasn't right there, and then moved on, since I was satisfied. The next step was, using the right size, to start filling in the detailed pattern work...which took a shocking amount of measuring and re-measuring...





I also used a pen to black in the areas that would need to be dark and to highlight the lines, in part to help myself out, and in even larger part because the pencil got smeared on the newsprint very easily.



I then moved on to the details on the top of the armor:



Borders are easier than the rest!

However, as I was working on this, I started looking hard at the original, the figurine, and the best cosplay, and I realized there was something way wrong with the arm hole. It took me a little fiddling, and then I realized I'd made it quite a bit too low. I started messing around with fixing that, and getting that the way I want it will be tonight's task. It'll mean re-doing that entire top border, but now that I know how many lines there are there and how far apart I want them, it won't actually be that hard. And so that'll be tomorrow's update, assuming I get any time to play with this tonight...

I'm still thinking about materials to use. I've read a few other people's creation blogs, and the one using leather seemed pretty awesome, but I'm starting to feel not so sure. As I see it, there are a decent number of ways to handle this, so now...I'm pondering. :)