Cosplay: Azusa, Found Kicking Ass

Posted on February 24, 2015

In earlier articles, I think I’ve mentioned my reluctance to cosplay certain characters in situations when I feel I’m relying too much on the character’s visual racial identity, but let’s face it: Some of the characters from Asia-inspired Kamigawa and Tarkir are just too badass to pass over.

After watching Sam Black and Justin Cohen champion Amulet Bloom at Pro Tour Fate Reforged—and by extension seeing Azusa, Lost but Seeking splashed all over the big screen ,in all her flaming, green glory—I felt really inspired. I mean, that gal was kicking ass and taking names in my favorite format! Then she did it again last weekend, with two copies of the deck making Top 8 at Grand Prix Vancouver. And she looked damn good doing it.

Amulet Bloom ? Modern | Alexander Hayne, Top 8, Grand Prix Vancouver 2015

I’ve had Commander friends mention before that they thought I’d do a great Azusa, and seeing her in action in Modern made me decide to finally take the plunge. Then, I had another thought: Why not tie in my cosplay to the actual decklist and craft Azusa an appropriate accessory? I’ve been looking for excuses to improve my prop-making skills anyway.

And so the concept of building Azusa and her Amulet of Vigor was born.

Flavorwise, it seems appropriate. Azusa, a monk from Jukai Forest, embarked on a quest that took her across all of Kamigawa. Her goal: to study and unite the people from all regions of the plane. An artifact like the Amulet of Vigor would be very useful to a busy master tracker like herself, and though the amulet originated on Zendikar, it’s not unlikely that one of our multiverse-trotting Planeswalker friends may have happened to have one in his or her pocket during a pit stop on Kamigawa. Was it a trade for healing or room and board? Was it an impulse gift to a pretty monk from an ancient, sexily-depressed vampire? Who knows.

From Azusa’s flavor-text quotes, we can see she’s introspective, philosophical, inquisitive, scholarly . . . but also adventurous, not afraid to get her hands (or feet) dirty trekking all over the boonies, and, dayum—that ability! I mean, what’s not to like, Sorin? Yeah, check her out, dude:

All right, so I’m clearly ready to ship that fanfic pairing, but let’s move on to the cosplay part of the article. Azusa—at least the way I did it—is a simple build.

Homunculus cruelty: Fblthp pincushions

No spreadsheet cost breakdown is necessary because Azusa really had only one cost: the fabric for her robe. I bought a king-sized ivory satin sheet set from Amazon and used the flat sheet to make the garment for a grand total of . . . $10. I chose to wear a wig, but you could skip that if you have black hair. The wig will run you about $10 to $12, and I actually used the same one I did for Marchesa, the Black Rose. Optional: green contacts, which are $12 to $20 on HoneyColor.com. Azusa’s crown was made from a wide plastic headband and regular ole cardboard, painted the appropriate colors.

E6000 industrial strength adhesive stuck the cardboard to the headband—it’s been my go-to glue.

To make the robe, I pretty much folded the flat sheet in half, cut down the center, and then hemmed both sides of the cut. On either side of my waist, I cut holes (reinforced with stitching) and used fabric ribbon scavenged from holiday gifts to make the belt. The belt is then just threaded through the holes and tied in front. It’s a super-easy way to make a voluminous robe, and if anyone needs a better explanation, just e-mail me since I did a poor job of taking explanatory progress pics.

The robe did require machine stitching down both sides of the front opening.

The amulet was made from Fimo sculpting clay and painted with Golden Fluid acrylics. I built the amulet up in layers, first laying down a flat circle and then rolling out a thin “rope” to put on top around the edge as the border. I repeated the process of rolling out very small “ropes” of Fimo to add the raised details of the amulet, before finally using the pokey end of a thumbtack to scratch in the etched patterns. If you look closely, you can see I got the proportions slightly wrong, and the bottom half of my amulet became too crowded to recreate the exact pattern on the card art. So I used a couple touches of silver puff paint to add what details I could fit.

Fimo is available for $10 to $15 per large bar, and it bakes hard in a regular oven.

The amulet took several coats of acrylic paint before it looked as weighty as the card art.

Azusa has three major checkpoints: crown, white robe, long black hair—oh, and push-up bra. Right. You do need that. I mean, it’s in the card art. Ready for the results?

Once again, I have to thank my comrade-in-arms and Gathering Magic’s very own infographic and design guru James Arnold. As a cosplayer, it’s invaluable for me to have someone like James to edit my work. Basically, I sweat and suffer and freeze and give myself back cramps trying to take the best photos possible, and then James sweeps in with his Teferi-sized beatstick wand of digital magicking and gives them that extra professional polish.

And, in cases like this, when the character has mucho visible magic, James does much cooler stuff than just retouching and adjustments, as you will see in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

Azusa, Lost but Seeking by Moxymtg Cosplay and James Arnold

And . . . there it is. I hope you enjoyed this romp in the woods with our girl Azusa!

Want to see more? Bonus pictures and outtakes are up at Moxymtg Cosplay, where it’s all Magic eye candy, all the time. Let me know what you think, and drop a Like or follow me on Twitter—I really appreciate your support. In the coming weeks, look for my articles on other MTG cosplayers and what they’re building—’cause it’s gettin’ hot in here!

Till next time, may Magic be your vigorous, vigorous artifact.

-MJ

@moxymtg

www.moxymtg.com