Ideas that must materialize

It was Spring 2021 and the pandemic was surging in my area. I was just trying to cope. Like many other people, I distracted myself by trying to learn some new things. I like to make things from scratch.

Homemade sourdough bread didn’t work out so well for me.

I had another from scratch idea, a crazy one. I had a new cosplay costume that I wanted to make. But it’s not from a movie or a show, but from a book. So, I did what most cosplayers do first and look for some fan art on social media and I found quite a bit of excellent artwork. I did see some examples of cosplay and I knew I wanted to try out some of my own ideas.

I wanted something complicated. I wanted something super detailed that could be part of a movie wardrobe.

The more I thought about it, I wanted something authentic.

Wait a second – I wanted something authentic, but it didn’t exist yet. Yeah, that’s circular reasoning there and I got stalled on it a lot when brainstorming.

But a grand scheme of a costume formed in my mind. I began asking “what if” questions and doing some sketches to see what I thought brought the feeling of authenticity I was looking for. I did have a fist full of official art, a good amount of fan art, and canon descriptions from the books to go by.

I knew the execution was going to be a challenge. This was a prototype, never having done cosplay this open-ended before.

At the same time, I couldn’t easily waltz into the fabric store. And the fabric stock was still recovering.

So, I was resigned to put my big ideas on hold for a while. But those crazy ideas just wouldn’t leave me alone…