Undyne

Debut: Sakuracon 2016

My beautiful fish wife. I was taken with her from the very moment I played the game. I am horrible at video games. My first playthrough, it took me somewhere in the neighborhood of six hours to beat Undyne’s fight as a pacifist. Her Undying fight in the run where you have a bad time is what caused me to abandon that timeline. I guess she managed to stop the madness. Thank god. This was actually my second attempt to debut an Undyne! My first was her date outfit at Sakuracon. Unfortunately, wig malfunctions and an inability to get my prop made on time made me feel uncomfortable in the costume and I changed out of it quickly. Thankfully, second time’s the charm! I was faced with the daunting task of painting my entire upper body, as a leather jacket in the heat of a New England summer was not a sacrifice I was prepared to make. I had a ton of fun with the makeup, though. The base was Kryolan Aquacolor, a water based paint, which I sealed with using NYX setting powder (just on my face, I ran out…) and Got2b Glued hairspray. Probably not the best for my skin, but the makeup held up for over twelve hours with minimal touchups and flakiness, so I can’t complain. Special thanks to Miikpah Cosplay helping me pick out products to contour with and drawing me a contour map for my face! I’d never tried contour before but it’s absolutely vital for body paint, it takes all the depth out of your face. I was lost enough trying to contour a normal skin color, much less blue. Nearly everything on my face that isn’t Kryolan is regular drugstore NYX products he helped me pick out. Also, check out his Mettaton. It’s flawless. Initially, I had planned to do a lot of hand made prosthetics and casting in this project. I actually cast sheets of scales out of latex but forgot to bring them to the con. Arg. Next time? In terms of handmade, I did have my scale prosthetics improvised out of cotton rounds and latex, as well as a scar coming out from under the eyepatch that ended up not being as visible as I had hoped it would be. I also managed to snag a pair of Dental Distortions Grell teeth on sale and popped in one cat eye contact. This is definitely a costume I enjoy wearing, so if I ever feel the urge to paint my body blue again, I look forward to finding new ways to push the makeup even further. Claws would be fun. So would webbed hands. Those scales have to make an appearance eventually. And of course, one of these days I’ll actually remember that Undyne has ear fins /before/ I’m suited up and at the con. All in all, I spent a little under five hours on makeup application. Five hours well-spent, in my opinion, but that means it won’t be a cosplay I pull out at every single con. Another shout out to Naeemer Cosplay for spending two hours of his con morning painting parts of me blue that I couldn’t reach on my own. My back would have been a sad, splotchy mess without him. The spear is my first foray into serious resin casting. It took three or four tries to finally go from sculpt to mold to cast, but after lots of trial and error, I ended up with a product I felt incredibly proud of. I finished it out with Smooth On XTC-3D, a product designed to smooth out the ridges on 3D printed objects. I got super lucky at the Smooth On booth at Wizard World Portland and won it in a raffle without really knowing what I’d end up doing with it, but it ended up being perfect for this project. I attached the spear head to a clear acrylic PVC pipe with hot glue, painted it over with more XTC-3D for strength, and dribbled blue modge podge all over the whole thing for color. This is the first larger prop I’ve made that I’ve been really proud of the result of. Learning better prop making is a slow journey with a steep learning curve, but it’s worth it as I’m able to do more interesting projects and broaden my opportunities in regards to what cosplays I have the skill set to undertake. The clothing was easy. Shirt I borrowed from my mom, my regular jeans I had already. I had to paint my knees because my only jeans are distressed, which did worry me a bit because of the possibility of staining, but it was all water based so it washed right out. Ah, the wig. The bane of my existance. I really, really wanted a wig with an undercut. Undercuts are badass and gay and so is Undyne, it was meant to be. I had to!! So I bought an Arda Rocky and a long wig during their crazy holiday silky sale. It’s not problem, I thought. I’ll just splice them together and put the long wig in a ponytail. No big. What I did not realize, however, was that the color I ordered in my desperate frenzy to beat Arda’s server crash was not at all the color I wanted, Rocky’s only come in natural colors, I had to dye them to match, it took me three tries to get the dye to stay, they never matched, I stained my dorm bathroom red, dying is a nightmare, save me. ….Ahem. The splicing went alright! It looked pretty nice, though it made the fit a bit weird and caused the wig to slide around on my head because I wasn’t as careful as I could’ve been. The biggest issue, though, was that I was never able to get it in a ponytail. That was the single biggest issue with my original Undyne attempt and a large part of why I ended up taking the costume off so early. Even as I was fixing up the costume for CTCon, I didn’t know what to do about that wig. I shoved it in a bag and told myself I’d do it in the hotel room where I could have my friends ease my suffering. And then, finally, I didn’t have to. During my initial spin through the dealer’s hall, not looking for anything in particular, I found the most gorgous, soft bright red, curly, short, lace front(!!) wig for a ridiculously low price. It was everything I needed to end my wig nightmares. Even luckier, it was the exact same color as my Kyouko Sakura ponytail clip, which I had brought for completely unrelated reasons. All of my prayers were answered. I styled it in the hotel room with a mini-iron because I couldn’t find the hotel room’s hair dryer and all was well. I absolutely need to dig out this company’s business card. They’ll be my first choice for lace fronts from now on, no question about it! This costume was a huge undertaking in that it forced me to learn a lot of new skills and improvise a lot of solutions on the fly. This isn’t the kind of costume I’m used to making. However, after a few false starts and problems, I’m exceptionally proud of the result. Here’s to cosplay misadventures.

 Photography by Melissa D’Acunto.