#Isobel cosplay

[snow-noir]

I made an Isobel cosplay for Australia’s Sydnova weekend. She’s the first cosplay I’ve ever made. Loved playing the character and loved seeing other Baldur’s Gate 3 cosplayers at the convention. I think I cried a little when the Karlach gave me a hug.

Cosplayers are so open and wonderful 💙

Chest and leg armour are yoga mats,the moons are thick interfacing & satin, the capes are linen. Button loops are embroidery thread, The emblems and wings are held in place with magnets & velcro. The actual build process is on Instagram “@snow_noir”

https://www.instagram.com/snow_noir?igsh=MTZ2NDJ5cHAwZG9z&utm_source=qr

[imaginmatrix]

I met Isobel yesterday and I immediately did this this morning

I. Love her.

[lazylittledragon]

i hope i get some better photos today but WE DID IT IT’S REAL

[stachless]

First make up test as a duo with my wifey (well, IRL but in cosplay too ❤️😇) We're working on their suits, it will take.... time 😚

[whatusername00]

Which Baldur's Gate Characters Know How To Lace Up Their Clothing - Camp Edition

I got this idea because I noticed Gortash's shirt isn't laced properly, and then noticed Astarion's shirt isn't laced properly, so now I need to look at as many characters as I can because I can't stop noticing. And I'm about to spend too much time on this for it to stay in my brain. Starting with all characters who appear at camp (main party + others.)

Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Gale, Withers, Aylin, Mizora, Duke Ravenguard, Emmaline, and Arnell don't have lacing on their camp outfits.

Starting with the default clothes for Tav. Yes, they know how to lace their shirt. Good job. This particular Tav is Durge, so it's good to know he didn't forget how when his brain got Swiss'd. However, it's not perfectly consistent because on the bottom 2 sets of eyelets he threads from the outside, but the third set he threads from the inside. Though this is probably intentional so the lacing doesn't hang on the inside of his shirt, so 9/10.

Astarion, baby boy, you were so close. But unfortunately there are two pairs of eyelets where he threads one side from the outside and one from the inside. For someone who wants to appear so put together, you think he could take the two extra braincells to lace his shirt consistently. 7/10.

Threaded consistently the whole way through...with one side. Why didn't you finish lacing your shirt? Why even lace one side if you weren't going to lace the other? Why isn't the lacing that you didn't finish shorter than the one that you did finish? All questions I can't answer because I cannot ask. 7/10 at least it's consistent.

I couldn't get a good in game screenshot of Karlach since her lacing is on her pants, but I found a texture rip so I can work with it. So the lacing here is the same all the way through, super consistent, *mwah*, but...it's sneakily unnecessarily complicated. Typically, the lacing that laces from the inside to outside would sit on top, but it's not that way on her pants. She pulls the lacing through the eyelet, then threads it under the other part of the cross, then threads it through the top of the next eyelet. And with as much lacing as her pants have, this must have taken forever for no extra benefit. It would have been easier to let it sit on top. 8/10 its pretty though.

Halsin. Beautiful. Gorgeous. I choose to believe the knots are hidden on the inside. No other notes. 10/10.

I've never actually recruited Minthara so I took a picture from the BG3 wiki. Just like Halsin, beautiful. Again, I choose to believe the ends are hidden on the inside. 10/10.

Jaheira's pants lace the same way Halsin's shirt does: perfectly. Though if the knot is hidden on the inside, I feel like that would be more uncomfortable, so I'm gonna headcannon that it ties at her waist under her shirt. Other than that, 10/10.

Minsc's shirt uses the same model as Wyll's so everything I said there applies here, though I feel like it makes more sense for Minsc. My real gripe here is that Minsc is a liar. Talking 'bout some thrice laced pants, but I didn't see any lacing on those pants. How dare he trick me in this way. 6/10 I don't like being lied to.

Yenna's mom may be dead, but she made sure her baby knew how to lace her shirt before she did. She may have gotten kidnapped by Orin, but she looked put together while doing it. Perfect 10/10. She deserves it after what she went through.

After being dead for 100 years, Isobel didn't forget how to lace her armor. Gotta be put together to see her girlfriend again. 10/10 Isobel can do no wrong.

Volo...I don't know what you've done to the front of your pants but it doesn't look good. Some of those crosses are missing. It looks sloppy. What is this. This is something I would do as a joke to see if anyone noticed. Well I noticed and I hate it. 2/10 it keeps your pants closed I guess.

That's it for the camp. I'll link other sets of characters below as I do them.

Tieflings

[jackieuniversecosplay]

Coffee buds

[eufiemoon]

How to Make: Electronic Wings for Cosplay

Hello Everyone! It's been a while since I last uploaded a written tutorial on here and since I just finished and wore my Dame Aylin cosplay this last weekend it seemed appropriate to jump back in with a tutorial on one of the costume pieces!

Her wings were the star of the show this weekend and I know a lot of people were curious about how I made them! A huge source of knowledge and inspiration behind these wings was this video by Axceleration, I made a few changes to the frame shape and electrical circuitry for mine but her tutorial was a huge stepping stone to give me the confidence to tackle them myself!

Health and Safety:

When working with Sintraboard (as well as other thermoplastics) it is incredibly important you wear a respirator as well as goggles when heating, moulding and cutting it. The fumes this plastic will give off when heated up are no joke! Make sure you're in a well-ventilated space!

Basic tool safety knowledge is also really important! wearing gloves when using power tools can be more dangerous in most situations, so always be aware of where your hands are vs where the tools are. Always cut away from yourself and take things slowly, don't panic.

Electrical safety! You're working with live wires and circuitry! make sure your hands are dry, you aren't touching the bare wires at any point when they are connected to a power source, and if you choose to solder anything, make sure you're wearing heat-proof gloves and a mask in a ventilated space!

Tools

Wire stripper

Screwdriver and wrench

Dremel - I recommend the Dremel 3000 rotary tool personally! Some essential Dremel bits you'll need for this include, a sanding bit, drill bit (smaller or same size as your screws/bolts), and a small/narrow cutting bit. These will usually come with the Dremel!

Heat Gun (A hairdryer will not get hot enough to heat the Sintraboard!!)

Pipe cutter (alternatively you can use a hacksaw for this!)

Hacksaw

Ruler

Scissors (for cutting fabric straps)

Materials

Heat shrink Tubing

2 core electrical wire

switch (you want a three position, six pin switch, like this one, even better if it has the Screws on the pins! otherwise you'll need a soldering kits to solder the wires to the pins.

2x 8AA 12v Battery Holders

2x 12v Linear Actuators (Mine had a stroke length of 100mm)

21.5mm PVC Pipes (I got 2x 3m Lengths)

2x 21.5mm PVC Pipe straight couplers

6mm 8"x12" Sintraboard

Nuts/Bolts/Screws (I used M5 bolts for the base & Actuator connectors and M6 screws to attach the hinges to the pipes! You'll need Washers for every Nut & Bolt!)

Hinges (I used 2.5cm wide hinges that were skinny but long so they would just about fit along the PVC pipe! 3" gate hinges would work!)

50 metre Polythene Jiffy foam roll (in retrospect this was ALOT of foam, you could definitely get away with maybe a 20-30 metre roll! I now have a load leftover XD)

16 AA Batteries (I used 16 and had enough for the whole day with them on, I think They'd probably be enough for another half a day-full day too! but have spares just in case!)

Webbing strap ( I went for grey to match my base suit colour!)

Buckle - as wide as the webbing strap you use!

3 metres of white cotton fabric (or whatever colour wings youre going for!)

Optional

Zipties (for cleaning up the wires)

Lets Go!

Sintraboard is this wonderfully stable thermoplastic that is relatively easy to cut into (with the right tools) and when heated allows you to mould its shape! I started by using a mannequin and heating the Sintraboard with a heat gun for a few minutes to make it pliable, I recommend using gloves for this part as the materials gets VERY HOT! Press the board into the shape of the mannequin's back, taking note of the edges especially! you want this board to sit as comfortably to your body shape as possible as it makes a huge difference to how long you can wearing the wings for in this backplate is comfy!

Once shaped, I placed it against my back to make sure it was a good fit, heating again and making any alterations I needed (again don't place bright hot plastic to your bare skin! wear protective clothes and wait till its slightly cooler to do this, with the help of a friend!). I then took a hacksaw and rounded the corners, before sanding the edges with my Dremel! Try to avoid cutting off loads, just enough to make things less likely to snag.

3. I then cut in four holes, wide enough to feed my webbing strap through, two at the top and one on either side below where my arms would sit! I measured the webbing strap by firstly feeding them through the top holes and pinning them, and then bring the strap over my should to everything sits where it should and seeing where the strap hits the side hole and cutting the length there! you'll also want a strap that attaches across the chest, meeting in the centre with a buckle!

4. After sewing the straps closed I was able to move onto the PVC pipe structure! This may change slightly depending on the finished shape you want but I needed the PVC pipes to come out from inside a breastplate so had a particularly angle as well as character references to work with! I began by heating the pipe over my heat gun and flattening a portion of it under a heavy object so it would sit much more flush against the backboard and sit better underneath my breastplate before moving onto securing the first portion of the structure to the backplate. This mainly involved lots of try-ons and measuring to make sure the angles were correct and symmetrical and was quite fiddly but well-worth the effort! I'll include a diagram of the general shape I went with below:

5. I wanted my wings to be relatively modular for ease of travel so I needed to make sure certain portions of them could come away from other parts easily, so I popped a straight coupler on the top of the pipes that were attach to the breastplate, this also meant I could slot the breastplate over these shorter pipes and wear everything correctly! Then these second pipes slot on and at the other end they are attached via hinges to the longest portion of the pipe 'skeleton', Diagram below:

6. Now that the skeleton was put together, it's time for the electrical stuff! It's a good idea to figure out where your circuit is going to lay on the skeleton - consider if you want the battery packs mounted the the backplate or, like me, put them inside the actual wings in removeable pockets for easy access and removal for battery changes. all your wires will go through the switch so deciding where you want to place that is very important! Mine was placed just over my shoulder on the front side, mounted to the PVC pipe with a metal cover I drilled a hole into to slip the switch through and then drill through the pipe.

I've included another diagram below that explains all the electrical circuitry, including which wires go on which pins on the switch!

Important to note: The linear actuators need to be placed and bolted into the PVC pipes at *exactly* the same angle on each side, any slight deviation will lead to the wings going up wonkily! So take your time and make as many adjustments as necessary.

7. You can extend your wires by adding on the electrical wire, just match the colours, and put heat shrink tubing over the connections to hide the live wires! I ended up zip-tying the wires into organised bundles once the wings were done to help keep everything safe from snags.

8. Now its time for the Wings themselves! I drafted my base pattern by just draping the white cotton fabric I had over the wing when it was fully extended. I then pinned the wings to the shape I wanted them to be along the bottom before cutting along the pins. I ran the fabric through my sewing machine to close the bottom edge, leaving a gap wide enough by the wing base so I could slip the wing on and off, closing it with velcro. I also added little fabric pockets inside of these to hold my battery packs, which also connected via velcro for easy removal!

9. Now that I had a wing base I was able to begin making feathers! I cut out a total of 800 feathers out of polythene jiffy roll for these wings, in 6 different styles and using real life bird wings to dictate the shapes I used and where I placed them. I ended up hot gluing every individual feather onto the white fabric base, going row by row until every side was covered, the wing covers themselves are super light because of the foam feathers and they shine light through them in a really magical way!

Optional: I also ended up going over these feathers with my airbrush and some super light beige paint to help darken the shadows, this is entirely optional and may change depending on the wings you're looking to make!

When in neutral position and in extended position the wings looks like this:

Mine had a wingspan of about 7ft total when fully extended but when in neutral position they were fairly close to my own proportions! mainly staying behind me and weren't much of a problem in a packed con hall!

Photo by: Helloimfran (on Instagram and Twitter)

I hope this tutorial helped and if there are any questions about anything in specific don't hesitate to reach out at eufiemoon@gmail.com or on my instagram or twitter (@eufiemoon)

Happy Crafting!

[ontoilogical]

on dame aylin (as the elusive other)

I haven't looked into a lot of what people are writing and meta commenting about Dame Aylin and Isobel Thorm, but in my personal quest to make the space in my head more entertaining, Isobel and Shadowheart have developed a tentative baseline voice I can recognize and imagine in situations. Dame Aylin, however, has not. Not yet. I want to slosh an idea or two around as to why that may be the case.

In the game, Dame Aylin is presented from many angles, depending on the character and their relationship with her, but a lot of the time her role is very othering. The othering doesn't come from the game writers' options of her – they wrote a wonderful, rich and layered character, gave her a three-arc questline that unfurls for the player like the most enticingly wrapped present, full of curiosities and surprises, and placed her so that you cannot avoid this gift even if you wanted to. And that's all without mentioning how her relationship with Isobel is the romance of the game, exceptional by any Faerûnian standards.

The othering, instead, comes from inside the story. The writers wrote a story where the main conflict for Dame Aylin is how much she is othered within the world she inhabits.

For Lorroakan and the adventurers that took on the bounty, she is a literal item, relic with a property, resource to harness for the problem they're trying to solve. For Ketheric, she is the unknown, the people that are unlike you, not a part of your group or tribe, infiltrating your territory, threatening your way of life and abducting your daughters. For the Sharrans, she was an obstacle, a test to pass or fail, a rite of passage. And although more implied than really explored, or just mentioned on the tail end of her story participation, to the mortals of the land she is a function – a vengeance paladin, a goddesses aspect, the will of Selûne, applied. Her status of exceptionality is even commented on by Isobel towards the end, when she says "She's singular among us all". Unlike anyone else.

I find my fun in discerning the many layers of a character's personhood, observing each one, naming them and seeing how they inform the character's actions, feelings, lowest and highest points, essence, that which we recognize as familiar, real, sympathetic. Dame Aylin is very rewarding in that regard, at the very least, to me.

...but even I may have fallen into the trap of latently believing Dame Aylin what she says about Dame Aylin. Because, as others before me have remarked, Dame Aylin also relegates Dame Aylin to a certain, narrow function. Her parting words for the player character essentially promise she will be another sword on the battlefield for their cause. And my rogue Dragonborn Tav is there like, staring in disbelief and deciding between the "can you fucking drop the formalities and tell me something silly about yourself, like whether you're, idk, physically capable of farting or burping or something", "do you think you can take Shadowheart with you I feel she likes you better", "do you ship CaitVi / are you excited for season 2 of Arcane" and "I want you to stay I'm not yet done with tanning my body under the Moonmaiden's glow" dialogue options.

To be clear, I do not believe her, but some strange, subconscious part of me may not allow me to disrespect Dame Aylin – when I open that sad notepad on my mobile phone – by being "she does this, but actually, it's a distraction from what's really going on deep inside her Aasimar soul", something that only Isobel gets to see, touch and feel. Isobel always understands, despite Aylin's deflections, even towards her (maybe, I haven't decided whether she does this or not). Isobel is patient and understanding about it, because that is her nature, but she'd be lying if she said it wasn't a little frustrating and trying at times. "Let me carry and care for you at least occasionally, my beloved. I witness your pain and it aches my heart when you try to shield me from it."

Hm.

I would also add that Aylin's charismatic presentation, language particularities and everything else make it potentially easy to set them as character points to check off, after which one may fall into a false sense of "there, I just wrote canon-accurate Dame Aylin". I mean, maybe you did, maybe I would, but... what about that Dame Aylin POV character exploration fic that doesn't feel like you're slapping "stoic character" tropes on her or keeping to the surface, but rather exploring what is distinctly and uniquely hers, beyond how strange she is against everyone else around her. I'm not saying anyone is doing this, but that this is how I feel whenever I try to write or imagine something that isn't a remix of the scenes and dialogues available in the game.

[monstrousliarstold]

Minthara, Isobel, and Shadowheart

[pinkupix]

A couple of the group shots from our photoshoot! I totally forgot to share them all on here, though I’m sure some of the other guys have. I’m still working on Isobel’s armour but glad I got the coat done in time!

Photo by Johnny_sham on Instagram

Links to everyone’s pages on this post

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-akq1uId_-/?igsh=MjVmdXMwdXZweDZt

[ninxszenik]

My Isobel Thorm for MCM London ✨

[hologlyphic]

Went to RetroGameCon over the weekend and cosplayed Isobel the whole time (still a work in progress but I’m just happy I finished enough to be recognizable) it was a great time, met the voice actors who were there and a whole bunch of other nice people.

I handed out “blessings” to people, let me know if you got one!

[imaginmatrix]

Obligatory side-by-side of my Isobel (Baldur’s Gate 3) cosplay and the lady herself! I’m so proud of how my makeup turned out for this 😭

[lazylittledragon]

mini mcm dump 🖤

only 24 hours out and i already want to go back

(puppetstarion was made by bokkicat!!)

[notmeowse]

I did my roots! And then I had an idea

[jackieuniversecosplay]

Clowning around as Astarion was my best experience in my whole cosplay career