Switch closet cosplay for the Matrix and Animatrix 35mm screening @therevivalhouseperth last Saturday. There were only a few other people in black trenchcoats that night. I knew I’d be the only one in white.
I have seen a digital screening of the Matrix before, but it does not compare to 35mm. The colours were so rich and deep, it looked like an oil painting. It was great to have a tour of the projection room in the intermission. Revival House is passionate about film preservation.
I’ve been having fun with the closet cosplays recently. Feels good to get back to the way costumes used to be. I am getting tired of the unrealistic standards of modern professional cosplay. It’s wasteful and lacks the fun that costumes are meant to have. I’m considering doing professional photoshoots with my less than accurate costumes.
Cosplay Couture interpretation of Frankenstein’s monster (Eve)
Costume by Courtney Coulson
Make-up by Lauren Payne
Photography by Luke Milton
Location: Carport
Here’s something we’ve been anticipating for around seven months now, having both become obsessed with the Frankenstein novel and all its various interpretations. Mary Shelley’s work differs massively from the classic Universal film which gets the Michael Bay treatment by comparison. Shelley’s monster is eloquent, emphatic, and pendulum swings between sadness and rage. This is the creature we have wanted to create. Huge thanks to the remarkable talents of Lauren from Lollilicious Make Up Artistry who helped make our plans possible through her wonderful work.
-Luke Milton
I’ve completely fallen in love with Frankenstein, the book has no equal and it’s become a great source of inspiration for me. Luke and I also saw the National Theatre play back in November and I was profoundly moved, it really captured the emotional core of Frankenstein and it was after this that the two of us began wondering if there was any way to give the Creature the Cosplay Couture treatment. After watching many, many adaptations seeing what worked and what didn’t, I ended up with a creature of my own. I call her Eve, as the original Creature is sometimes dubbed ‘Adam’, this isn’t intended to be the Bride, rather a genderswapped Creature as I wanted to channel his emotional journey. This was the most physical performance based shoot I have ever done and I loved it, I was also working on a concrete floor on a cold night in a tight costume and it made the experience feel more real, now I want to see what my next big challenge will be.
The costume was mostly inspired by the Creature’s birth, often depicted wrapped in bandages, it’s a stretch cotton bodysuit with something like twenty metres of bronze organza hand wrapped and stitched on top, and it laces up at the back. The Creature’s birth is never really explored in detail and it varies greatly when portrayed on screen, so my interpretation is of a creature suspended by leather harnesses within an artificial womb.
Cosplay Couture interpretation of Tintin and Haddock
Costumes and styling by Courtney Coulson
Haddock by Luke Milton
Photography by Sabatomic Photography
Location: Fremantle docks
For such a simple costume, I am most happy as Tintin, he’s a character I really identify with. And this time Tintin is joined by Haddock and Snowy! As we have already done a couture shoot with Tintin, I thought I would mix things up and go for a more accurate costume. So the styling is relatively understated, but my personal touches are still evident in the velveteen “plus-fours”, leather boots, and camera. Besides this shoot was about debuting Haddock’s costume.
How do you make Haddock look fashionable? It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, the general silhouette and colour pallet is unchanged, but I swapped out the anchor jumper with an anchor t-shirt, which I painted myself. Plus scarves are always a cool accessory.
And introducing Bailey as Snowy, conveniently I just happen to have a little white dog for the part. He wasn’t too difficult to work with, he was pretty anxious about being in a new environment, so he stayed close by, the only challenge was getting him to look at the camera for more than a second.
Courtney Coulson
It’s always a thrill to work with Sab- she is an amazing photographer who understands what we are trying to accomplish and make us look good, It’s also a thrill to be in front of the camera again and getting my Haddock on, thank you for indulging me.
-Luke Milton
It was really fun to get back to shooting. Courtney has amazing dynamic poses and Luke has a wonderfully expressive face.
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 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.
Nearly four months ago I was nearly killed in a hit-and-run, I have no memory of the incident, nor the week that followed. Since then I’ve had to deal with injuries I don’t remember acquiring, it doesn’t feel real. I have two skull fractures, I am deaf in my left ear (hopefully temporarily), I was in a neck brace because of my fractured vertebrae, but the most debilitating part was my broken right leg with severe lacerations along the tendons. I was robbed of my ability to walk for months. Thankfully I wasn’t in a wheelchair for too long, but whether or not I’ll ever be able to walk properly without needing the crutch is unknown at this point.
While I recovered from the worst of my injuries, I stayed with my family, I didn’t have much else to do but play whatever games I had downloaded on my laptop, and that just so happened to be the Phantom Pain. What I got was an intense exploration of pain, loss and grief, I was shown characters who seemed to understand what I was going through and gave voice to these new feelings I couldn’t articulate. The opening of the game alone was some kind of nightmarish re-enactment of my hospital confinement. But it was Kazuhira that became a kind of spirit guide for me, because of him I feel no shame in my current physical limitations, if I need this crutch forever, so be it, no matter what I’ve lost, a Diamond Dog gets up and keeps on fighting.
I still haven’t been able to return to work, my circadian rhythm is completely unpredictable, so while I continue to recover, and when I’m not sleeping, or playing Metal Gear, I find myself inspired to make costumes again. This costume was entirely sourced in op shops, the only sewing I did was attaching the Diamond Dogs patch to the beret, and tailoring the trousers. I’m not so much interested in making everything from scratch and being 100% accurate to the source material. It’s more fun for me to source pieces, the thrill of the hunt, finding garments that evoke the character, and I just so happened to get lucky. I wasn’t going to make this a girly rule 63, that would be tacky, I wasn’t going to make this crossplay and try to pass myself off as male, that would be inauthentic. I just adapted Kaz’s costume for myself, with all the practicality and dignity his costume entails.
Another stroke of luck was the shoot, it had rained mere hours before we shot, but it was mostly clear skies when we needed it. It was cold, perfect for all the layers I had to wear, and just the right amount of wind to get us a few dramatic flowing trenchcoat shots. There also happened to be a real naval ship in the harbour too, although we couldn’t get too close.
It felt good to return to modelling, and I hope I can bring you more Metal Gear shoots soon.
A cosplay couture interpretation of the 11th Doctor
Costume (shorts) and styling by Courtney Coulson
Photography by Luke Milton with Sabatomic Photography
Shot somewhere along Indian Ocean Drive
To me 11’s love for Westerns was something I related to the most and also something that was unique to that regeneration. I think 11 is easily the most schoolboyish, his open enthusiasm paired with his awkward body language definitely makes him “adorkable”. It was fun translating that into this shoot, throwing my posture all about the place! The costume plays up on that boyish theme with the high waisted shorts, the skull bowtie and oversized Stetson. My hair is pretty close to Matt Smith’s so no real challenge there. Like Benedict Cumberbatch, Matt Smith has a great character face, so I had a lot of inspiration when it came to the make-up. There’s very little on the eyes but a bright red lipstick to draw the focus to the lower half of my face as Matt is all chin but he has hardly any eyebrows or eyelashes.
-Courtney Coulson Initially this wasn’t my ideal location and I had planned to steer clear of the red dirt and the road, cautious that it might feel too Australian. However, seeing Courtney in context led me to shift plans and incorporate all of it, and I’m really glad we did. I feel like the road lends the image more purpose and helps create a sense of vastness while still keeping our focus firmly on the character and the clothes.
I think I drew the design for this costume about a year ago, then just this past weekend I finally got to bring it to life with a beautifully restored Beetle at my side. I can’t thank my collaborators enough for helping me with this project, it couldn’t have happened without you.
The design process was simple, I envisioned Herbie as a youthful and cheeky tomboy, I took elements from 1960’s fashion as well as race car driver uniforms and accessories. I looked at the likes of Twiggy and Audrey Hepburn for inspiration. I knew I needed a round hat to really evoke the shapes of the Volkswagen, and the dress is a simple A-line silhouette, it was best to keep things clean and minimal and let the stripes do all the talking.
A cosplay couture interpretation of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes Costume (coat and hat) and styling by Courtney Coulson Photography by Luke Milton
Translating the BBC Sherlock Holmes into a fashion interpretation was surprisingly easy, it’s such a beautiful and iconic costume to begin with. The coat remains relatively unchanged from the original as does the scarf and purple shirt, though they are made of finer quality materials.All I really had to do was add the leather pants and boots to give it more of an edge.
As for hair and make-up, I made my hair as fluffy as possible, though mine is shorter than Benedicts’, the make-up was fun because Benedict’s face has a lot to draw from. I emphasised my cheeks and my upper lip and eyes and yet kept it subtle to maintain an androgynous look.
We shot in various parts of the city of Perth, most of the locations were lucky discoveries, amazing what you can find when you just wander around.
-Courtney Coulson
This shoot was all about exploring the city and poking around all the back alleys that we’d normally quickly walk past. We were focused on a very urban feel, but then it was nice to veer into the more serene setting of the church steps as well. This was the first time shooting while a lot of other people were around but it’s amazing how comfortable you feel and how much you can get away with while brandishing a camera.
I had no other equipment other than the camera itself so shooting on the exposed rooftop was especially challenging with all that direct sunlight. This was definitely a baptism of fire.
Travian Designs 