Pax Prime Cosplay: Ellie

So Pax Prime is coming up soon and Husband and I are attending with the Daves. As I have a) never been to Seattle and b) not been to PAX Prime, I am thoroughly excited about this trip! At the last PAX Convention I attended, I cosplayed as Roxy Ritcher.  This time around, I know better. I will be cosplaying as Ellie from "The Last of Us" as well as a character from a Web Comic that is a PAX Affliate. That one will come up later.

As you can see, Ellie is a 14 year old girl who is pretty much wearing stuff you can find right now.

Fortunately, I have a pair of jeans and a black long sleeved thermal already. All I "needed" to get is a pair of black, blue, or brown Chuck Taylors (which I wanted anyway, though I ended up using my orange high tops as I already had them and Chucks are expensive), a dark green backpack, and a shirt that looked like the red shirt she wears throughout the game. The backpack easy and cheap ($13) thanks to Amazon. The shirt, on the other hand, was harder. I COULD buy it for like $25 and it wouldn't look vintagey. Why in the heck would I do that?



Thus begins the Arts and Farts and Crafts time!




First off, I found the graphic online. I printed out 3 copies on thick grade cardstock. Using an Xacto knife, I cut out all the parts that needed to be black on one, all the parts that need to be blue on another, and all the parts that needed to be yellow on the last one. Then I laminated them and cut it out again. I did that just to give the stencil a bit more firmness.




Then I hit of the thrift store and got a shirt for $1 that was close to the right color. Boom! Not $25 spent! SO I got together my paints (already hade, but they were $2.50 for the 3 colors), sponge brush ($1), an old magazine (to put in the shirt to keep the shirt from drying together) and masking tape (had). I taped a guide for my stencils so things could line up nicely and put the magazine up the shirt as a firm surface for my art work. I started with the Yellow stencil as it is the lightest color (easiest to apply color over) and the background of the palm trees.

The tape lines are for lining up my homemade stencils!

Gotta stay in the lines!

First level! Tadah!

Then I let the yellow dry completely. after a couple hours I went back and added the light blue waves.

Now on to the second color!

Waves!

After letting the blue dry, I added the black layer. Unfortunately, on my first try, my sponge brush had water in and the black lines are not crisp for the most part. I tried to dab up some moisture, but for the most part, I thought the shirt was ruined. I let it dry and tried the black layer again with a DRY sponge brush and it turned out ok. Her shirt is filthy during the game and it kinda added to the "not brand new" styling I was looking to get.

Boom, Cosplayed!

I will post some pictures of both of my Cosplays from Pax when I post pictures from said convention.




Keep it real, y'all...