Photo by OTL and MLZ studios
(Note: this isn’t going to be a full blown, step by step tutorial because I don’t have that many photos, but I’m going to try to cover everything I did! Feel free to ask questions in the comments, we’re always happy to help!)
So, Auriel! This costume was made for Blizzcon 2014, and based off of Auriel, Archangel of Hope from Diablo III. Continue reading
This mask was easily the toughest part of my male Witch Doctor costume. This was a totally new realm for me, I’d never done leather work before, and since it was made out of a solid piece of leather, with no cuts, it was simply formed over my face to get the proper shape. Continue reading
This is my last post on my series of how I made the female Witch Doctor Costume, and Mario is working on writing up his posts now so you should see them soon.
To find the perfect shades for our body paint, we went to San Francisco (which is just over an hour away) and, of course with our trusty iPhones out with the pictures loaded up, compared swatch after swatch of paint to what was in the picture. Mario’s turned out to be a mix of two grays: 501 and FF7. Mine was a red/brown called 046. It was easier to order these by calling Kryolan, because I couldn’t find one of the shades anywhere online. If you don’t have a store around you that allows you to swatch the colors for your body paint, then make sure to look online for pictures and videos of swatches that others have done, to see how the shade looks on different skin types, and how it photographs. Continue reading
The staff and dagger were really some of the easiest (but kind of time consuming) parts of the costume.
Honestly I thought I took more pictures, but again… I either didn’t, or I’ve lost them. Lame. Continue reading
The lady Witch Doctor has an awful lot of jewelry and accessories going on. She’s got several gold bracelets on each wrist, one on her left upper arm, two gold bands on her right leg, a bone and feather leg band on her left leg, two completely different sandals, two gold hoop earrings in each ear, and what we have been lovingly referring to as the ‘crotch skull’. Yes, it is that skull with feathers that is clipped to the …crotch part of the skirt. Oh, and she’s got really long nails, too, which I did not get any pictures of at all when I was wearing them. Lame. Continue reading
The mask really required a lot of planning and ingenuity to keep it light and secure on my head, while being under the wig so that you couldn’t see the strapping. We went with the inside of a construction helmet (the strappy bits) to keep it held on my head, and balsa wood for the mask and details on the mask. It was actually the most time consuming part of the entire costume. Continue reading
This post will cover the Witch Doctor’s neck rings, leather collar thing (is there a name for that? I dunno.), and necklaces. (Also, the picture above has a different mask than the one I made, I just used it because it has a close up on the necklaces.) Continue reading
After squinting at and studying the female witchdoctor concept art for a few weeks, I finally felt sure of what kind of fabric it was I was looking for. Mario and I made a trip out to our local JoAnns, and proceeded to wander around with our cellphones out and the picture up, holding up the picture to every reddish fabric we could find. We decided that it needed to be a good stretchy fabric that would fray and rip nicely, and it didn’t take us long to find it. We only got two yards because really, the costume doesn’t call for a lot of fabric. We also got leather lacing in the same color (lucky for us that it matched so well!), some beads that looked like they were similar to the one in the picture, and a button/claw thing that looked like a tooth that isn’t in the picture, but would help secure the skirt onto me so that I wouldn’t have to worry about anything falling off, since the leather lacing is kind of hard to tie (and would be bulky under the skirt anyway, and I didn’t trust a simple clasp to hold this heavy skirt up. Continue reading
When we first saw the picture I was going to base my witch doctor off of, I had no idea what the hair was supposed to be like. We didn’t know if it was dreads, just spikes, feathers, what. We finally decided that we would make the wig two toned: Purple on the top, spiked, and then with longer braids going down the back (pink, but covered with ribbon so it didn’t matter) with large beads on them.
I don’t have an awful lot of progress pictures for this wig, so I apologize, but there ya go. Continue reading
That’s right, people! It’s the morning of the first day of Blizzcon, and we are in the midst of getting painted and dressed for the con. For those of you unable to attend the convention, here are some pictures from our photoshoot a few weeks ago:
Please try and imagine Mario’s mask with huge, red and black feathers across the crown. Pictures of the end product after we get back today, but for now, this is all we have :D
Tomorrow I’ll show pictures of our second day costumes. For now, I’m off to finish getting ready!
Arms, Armor and Awesome 