This year, this month in fact marks the 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters, which is one of my all time favourite films, so I couldn’t resist making a tribute to it.
Our Re-Animator shoot taught us that a minimalistic concept can yield surprising results. Often times we will spend weeks designing, making, planning and researching for a shoot, but in this instance it’s just a carport, a smoke machine and a purple light. Gozer’s costume is really simple, it’s just bits of fabric and plastic (in my case, bubble wrap) glued to a unitard, it literally took me a day to assemble. Hell, I spent more time and money on my Ghostbusters uniform and props.
Courtney Coulson
I have discovered smoke and coloured lights. Nothing will ever be the same again.
This shoot was quickly put together after watching all three Re-Animator movies in the past week. The challenge, of course, is to take a character with a very basic costume, use minimal props and set, and still manage to get across the essence of Jeffrey Comb’s iconic Herbert West. It’s really all about the look and the lighting and I’m happy with the results. This is the first time in a while that we’ve used the studio lights, but we used them outside in the carport at night to give us a grittier feel (and a bit more space). And I love making blood!
-Luke Milton
This was a unique challenge as West is such a minimalistic character, alter a single detail about his look and it changes everything. It’s also the kind of costume that only works if you vaguely resemble him to begin with, which considering this is crossplay, I think I at least pass. I didn’t really have to make anything for this costume, I already owned everything except for the glasses, I had to find the perfect frames. In terms of facial expressions and poses, again, I was kind of limited. West is pretty unfazed by any of the events of the films, his usual expression is a stern pout which I tried my best to emulate. And of course the syringe had to be ever present!
Back around 2014 I discovered Monster High and was inspired to customise them. It would go on to generate the foundation of the Doctor Travian novel I am writing. I had no experience painting dolls or miniatures prior, my earliest attempts were rough, but I would soon pick up the skills. I learned to paint their faces, insert glass eyes, re-root their hair and make detailed miniature costumes. I sold custom dolls for a time on Etsy, and I would gift a few to my friends.
I don’t have time for such a hobby anymore, but I am proud of the work I did.
Join Courtney as she experiences the Metal Gear Solid series for the first time, playing not in release order, but chronological order.
This series is intended to be a most thorough and academic exploration of the Metal Gear Solid series. Investigating the real history, politics and philosophies behind the story, as well as delving into the game guides, scripts and novelisations to bring you the most complete understanding of the works of Hideo Kojima.
Cosplay Couture interpretation of Tinker Bell from Peter Pan
Costume and styling by Courtney Coulson
Photography by Luke Milton
Location: University of Western Australia
Tinker Bell is one of those characters that is cosplayed a lot but is hard to do well. Disney makes great business decisions, but sometimes less-than-great creative decisions. The mainstream Tinker Bell has become a spritely valley girl with a posse of fairy friends who are all a vehicle for merchandise. But if you go back to the original book, Tinker Bell is far more volatile. She can be unpredictable, jealous, and vindictive. Tinkerbell has a bite. But there’s also a beautiful, ethereal, otherworldly nature to her. I think our biggest success with this shoot was integrating into our environment and my favourite pictures are those where she is lost in the green.
-Luke Milton
“A girl called Tinker Bell exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, cut low and square, through which her figure could be seen to the best advantage” -Peter and Wendy; J.M Barrie
Tinker Bell has had a fairly consistant, very feminine, silhouette from the beginning. Though she wasn’t the first, she has certainly informed pixies and fairies that came after her visually. I used lace as a nod to skeleton leaves and I imagined she might pick up hints of pollen and other parts of nature, so the sponged on pastel shades are intended to reflect that. As for the wings, the bigger the better! They are constructed from “fantasy film” and wire, by far the most involved aspect of this costume.
Cosplay Couture interpretation of Carrie Kelley as Robin from the Dark Knight Returns
Costume and styling by Courtney Coulson
Photography by Luke Milton
Location Claremont
I’ve always been a huge fan of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. The female Robin is a nice twist but what I’ve always loved about the design is that it’s very androgynous. As a teenager first seeing Carrie Kelley Robin I wasn’t even sure if it was a boy or a girl. I think it’s the glasses that really make this one. Without them it could be any Robin, but with them it’s definitely Carrie.Location wise the goal was to keep this as absolutely simple as possible. Miller uses very sparse backgrounds, and there’s so much iconic colour in the Robin costume itself that I didn’t want anything competing it. We waited until the sun started going down and tried to get some striking, colourful shots with the Robin character spotlighted.
– Luke Milton
This is my first superhero Cosplay Couture and while I like comic characters, they are re-designed all the time, whether it be by official sources or the fans. They are also very much tied to their specific colour schemes and logos. It’s a bit intimidating to try and adapt to fashion. But there’s something about Carrie that just spoke to me, I love her androgynous look, I love that her costume is just thrown together and mostly from a halloween costume. She’s scrappy, she’s plucky, she’s my Robin.
My intention was to create an outfit that felt as if she had found all these items in her own wardrobe and there are many practical items in this outfit, for example the cape has been replaced with a hood that sits like a collar. But of course I still wanted to keep that sense of fashion, the vest is the statement piece and the utmost attention was payed to the tailoring. Overall the silhouette had to be sleek. As for the make-up, I decided to go with black lipstick as it’s bold and lends itself to the graphic (novel) look.
This year I’ve been spending every evening practicing art, but you wouldn’t know it because I only post work when it is fully completed and I am satisfied with it. I think we live in a world now that has been conditioned to treat everything as a source of generating content. No, focus on honing your craft, then share it with the world. Social media will distract you from meaningful progress if you’re obsessed with demonstrating superfluous improvements along the way. You think Da Vinci was cranking out a masterpiece everyday?
I’m trying to get more into colouring, I am finding I am fond of watercolours, it seems to be my favourite medium. Amazingly this is just a cheap watercolour set from Kmart. It’s surprisingly vibrant. This painting is based on a screenshot from the show Knuckles, I chose it because, aside from Knuckles being adorable, it presented a challenging lighting scenario . There’s also the difficult perspectice of the building behind him. That ended up being overwhelming, so I kept the background abstract. I’m most proud of how the flaming fists turned out.
Final illustration, lighting corrected digitally.Illustration pencils.Illustration scanned before ironing.Illustration scanned after ironing. Colours enhanced digitally.
This year my resolution was to draw more and try to push my art to the next level. But I wasn’t going to go the conventional route of doing some sketching every day and practicing anatomy. That’s boring and I find it hard to be consistent with that. Instead, I’ve always learned best when I set myself an ambitious project and learn the skills I need to as I go. No practicing, no test runs, just throwing myself into the deep end; sink or swim.
This was definitely a trust-the-process experience. There were many times I wanted to give up on this piece, but I’m glad I persevered.
The inspiration for this came from the curiosity to see if there was a way to combine the sensibilities of classical art with porn, and erotic fan art. I find most porn and erotic art ugly because it is so base, with little regard to lighting or composition. To me, the technical beauty of the image is essential to the pleasure of the image, be it aesthetic or erotic.
I’ve never drawn erotic art before, so off I went to Porn Hub for anatomy reference. What I saw was quite miserable, it’s all so cold, and mechanical, and vulgar. To remedy this, I combined that with my knowledge of Romantic art and Greek sculptures to bring in the warmth, and gentleness, and humanity. Sex should be a wonderful, loving thing, I wanted to capture that. I felt there was such a connection between my Dark Urge character Durga, Lae’zel, and Gale, which is why I chose them as subject matter.
When I began this project months ago, I had no idea I was going to be rendering it in watercolour. I just drew the initial sketch in my regular sketchpad. Once I had completed it, I felt watercolour was right, but I had no idea if this paper could handle it. It held up surprisingly well, but the process of painting was slow because I had to wait until it was fully dried between layers, it took days. Each step of this process I kept thinking “Oh no, I’ve fucked up. I should quit and start over again”. The paper ended up quite shrivelled, but I persisted. I found I could even ink on top of the painted paper. It was actually looking far better than I anticipated, despite being a crinkled mess. I had no idea how the illustration would handle being smoothed with an iron, if the paint and ink would remain unchanged by the heat. I just went for it and it turned out completely fine.
This project has definitely furthered my art and taught me not to panic more than sketching anatomy would have.
This was how my friend Phil appeared to me in a dream. He was doing some sort of Artic expedition, but could walk through a door in the middle of the tundra to return to his apartment. Phil says it gives him League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibes, I am inclined to agree. His outfit was of fur and leather and wool of the deepest, richest blues and browns, I tried my best to capture it, but this will have to be close enough. This is my first attempt at using Krita.
I hate colouring, whether it be with traditional mediums or digital. I’ve spent most of my life drawing in black and white. It’s hard to start thinking in terms of colour.
Cosplay Couture interpretation of Oswin Oswald from Doctor Who
Costume and styling by Courtney Coulson
Photography by Luke Milton
Location: A skatepark and a playground in Claremont
I love Clara in all her incarnations, but it’s Oswin that really captured my imagination. Her look was so iconic and it told you everything you needed to know about her, fun, feminine and a little sporty.
My interpretation is not a massive departure, my main intention was to go formal as Oswin’s costume is quite cheap and the hem is all dirtied up. I went for a darker colour, more like a crimson, the fabric is a net mounted onto cotton to give it a heavier drape and instead of a utility belt I swapped it out for a western style belt, so it still gives that contrast of a feminine dress with a masculine belt.
This is my first Cosplay Couture based on a female character, I don’t know how often I will do that because it felt like half the work was already done for me. But in this instance it’s a character I really love and I wanted to wear this costume to the 50th special screening and that was a lot of fun.
-Courtney Coulson
This shoot was largely improvised and presented a particular challenge for me. I don’t feel like the official Doctor Who publicity photos ever really show costumes in their entirety and they aren’t especially dynamic for the most part. There are plenty of head and shoulders shots of Clara, but nothing that really had me especially inspired. I don’t think that – at this stage in our development anyway – we’re not particularly interested in trying to replicate sets or scenes from the show. I feel that once you start doing that you are back in the realm of cosplay, so instead we were looking for actual nearby locations that perhaps were reminiscent of ideas from the show. I especially liked the plastic playground dome, which gives you a sense of her predicament in her episode, but it using a found environment. And, as always, graffiti walls are a bit of a cliche, but we stumbled upon this dilapidated skate park that was set to be demolished, and I felt that the colours really complimented such a vibrant character. You’ll notice that we shot very hot though – there wasn’t a lot of cover where we were and I was constantly battling a very bright sun. Summer in Perth is horrible for what we are doing!
Travian Designs 