Halloweentown Axel

Since a few people have been asking I thought I would make an entry here about this cosplay. This cosplay started after asked me to pick through a couple of options to do with her group, Amoung the ones she asked I found Axel to be the most appealing. After tripling making sure that their previous Axel was not available for them I agreed and she told me it was a Halloween town themed group.

It took a while to really wrap my brain around the idea, especially since I live 2000+ miles away from them and couldn't see the other group members designs. I started by searching through pics on the internet for what other people had done. There were two pics of a Halloween town Axel that I liked. One was of him as a circus master, and the other a zombie. Originally, I liked the circus master and was thinking about doing that cosplay. I even bought a vest for it. As time got closer Ifreaked out over making pants and a jacket. So I then thought about doing a zombie version, but that seemed to meh.

I believe the new Batman with Heath Ledger had come out a few month prior to making this. The idea of a jester started to swarm in my head, and I felt a strong connection between a jester/joker and Axel since he was dark but playful with Roxas. His hand motions also felt really dramatic to me so it was a perfect match.

For a while I was fixed on having the actual organization 13 jacket in the cosplay. So my first drawing for the character was this: www.flickr.com/photos/40601027…

I sent it over to ~supernovadobe, waited for a couple of weeks, and then finally got her on the phone. I could tell she wanted to be nice about it, but was not impressed with the design and basically felt like it lacked details. So that night, I was a little pissed and was like.. you want details? I'll give you details. I dropped the idea of having the actual organization coat in the design and made it just one jacket, having it longer in the back to represent the organization's jacket, and making it shorter in the front to show the harsh spikey boot design and the pleather pants. So I created this drawing:
gbright1.deviantart.com/art/Ha…

I sent it off and once again waited for a few weeks. I figured at this point that ~supernovadobe hated the jester concept and that I had taken another misstep. To find the spirit of Halloweentown I went back to the roots and studied Tim Burton’s "Nightmare Before Christmas." The cloths were closer to a pilgrim look and I designed this: fav.me/d2foggj Probably the most hectic design of them all with those wings.

I once again sent this drawing off. After not hearing anything I finally told ~supernovadobe that I was going to start planning with her wife instead. To which she said.. "you sent it to my gmail? I never check that." Fortunately, does check hers. She loved the second jester and so off I set to make it.

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Jacket construction: The white and black fabric are denim. I wanted something harsh, and a white that really stuck out. The red parts are vinyl to give it a darker presence, since "evil" people tend to wear vinyl. Because vinyl is hard to work with, instead of sewing the front and back red parts together they are glued, which prevented puckering. There was one place at the time that sold the KH mega-zipper. I bought 2 just in case, and the dangles from the org 13 jackets they make on that site. I started with a jacket pattern from Joanne’s and cut it up into the multiple peaces. The entire garment is lined to give it a finished feeling.

the pants: Are matte vinyl, size: JK not telling, from Lips service.

boots: basic boots from hot topic that they have sold for years. I took some upholstery vinyl, double layered it, cut spikes, and put in grommets to lace it on top of the boots. The toe spike is crayola moldable foam and then painted.

Wig: The wig is 2 wigs sewn together for thickness. One was a 2 toned punk wig from amphology and the other a matching solid color one from ebay. It was styled with got-2-be spray, regular hair spray, some blue got-to-be glue, watered down to try and stint the bright red of the wig.

The masks: These are not shown in this current pic. I have made 3 for this cosplay. one was from clay which I broke. A second from the crayola foam, which I wore to Sakura con, but has now broken. And the third is a smaller version of the second one, which has no been outside my house since I am forgetful and muscked up on bringing it with for this shoot. I used regular/pearl acrylic paints to color them.



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