| | Note: This post was originally a post that I made on Instagram about how I designed my Raistlin Majere cosplay from "Dungeons and Dragons: Dragonlance Legends" by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Since it is based on text rather than visual sources, most of this project was left up to my discretion with regards to how I wanted to design it. There may be formatting errors in this post because this is not its original format. ~Patterner Cosplay
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Introduction
Every costume for me is an opportunity to learn a new technique or
creative choice that I’ve never approached before so I’m sure you can
understand why novel characters present challenges that I love to take
on. Producing a character design based on text gives me a ton of
opportunities to decide the aesthetic and decide what I personally want
to get out of my project and it also allows me to connect with the
character and world they live in, in a way that I can’t do as easily
when reproducing someone else’s visual design. The Dungeons and Dragons
world of Dragonlance is a classic setting filled with the same type of
medieval fantasy that allow me to understand the fashion “rules” of the
world—and then break them to create something unique and magical. The
challenge, as with any type of costume design, is to know what qualities
of the character you want to capture as well as have an understanding
of where what you’re designing fits into the character’s life and world,
and then distill that into a cohesive whole. While I’m not
professionally trained as a costume designer, part of my job is bringing
their work from page to stage (fun fact though, I designed my first
professional theatre show this year). Many of my early designs were a
hodge podge of design elements that I liked but I didn’t yet have the
skill to know if they were the right choices for the overall design. You
need the ability to see the details and the big picture simultaneously.
After about a year and a half of work, my design for Raistlin feels
like my best design so far, and I will always remember being told, and I
paraphrase, “if I saw your costume in a Lord of the Rings movie, I
would not be surprised.” So, here is a short Instagram-formatted rundown
of how I designed this costume. I hope you find it informative or at
the very least entertaining
Series Art Versus Text
It’s rare to find a series without some official art, even if it’s a
text novel. We’re on rich ground with Dragonlance, but like many series
we encounter the issue where the text and the art don’t agree, and I
also encounter the issue of neither source describing the types of
details that I want to include. A character like Raistlin should look
magical, powerful, unapproachable, unearthly. We get that impression
from series art where he’s shown wearing flowing, amorphous black robes.
The gold trim on his sleeves in the art and descriptions that say he
wears silk, velvet, and embroidery. We know also that his pupils are
shaped like hourglasses and that he has ties to the stars and aspires to
divinity. With all of this information, there is plenty to spark the
imagination.
Layers And Textures
Practically, what would the character wear? Everything I add to a
costume has a thought-out purpose. We know Raistlin wears a robe and
cloak, but I know that a shirt and trousers would be practical so I
added them. With so much black fabric one of the main challenges is to
create depth while balancing the negative spaces with those that are
textured or embroidered. I’ll talk more about specific pieces on later
slides, but basically, the color palette of the whole costume needed to
remain constant: I had one shade of dark blue, one shade each of silver
and gold accents, and a whole lot of black. We can get caught up in
wanting to endlessly add more color and more texture, but I actually
removed some silver chain, gold trim, and embroidery from areas I’d
planned to do it *because* it overwhelmed the negative spaces and there
are many gorgeous fabrics that I swatched for this project and then
didn’t use. My favorite textures are the ones that you don’t immediately
notice because when seen they so effortlessly become part of the whole.
Main Robe
I’ve not read this garment described in any way that could exist in
reality, but I’d already established a baseline for what mage robes in
this world look like for my Red Robes Raistlin so I started there. I
converted the smocked embroidery from the red robe to deep pleats for
the black robe version, space for working embroidery and also
emphasizing my/Raistlin’s slenderness. I knew I wanted Lightning
embroideries that would organically meld into the fabric of the robe, so
I chose to make the robe of a deep black wild silk woven of thicker
yarns. I chose the colors of blue and silver that would be used
throughout my design: I originally meant to use dark blue beads in
addition to silver and black but more than two colors is usually too
much. The blue beads appear only on my shirt cuffs. My trick to add a
magical sparkle to the robe was to add dark silver Swarovski crystals,
which blend into the embroidery so you’ll never see them, only catch
glimpses when they twinkle. Finally, all DnD designs need to have some
flashy gold trim. The wide floral one I chose is vintage and made of
real metal and it echoes the trim shown on the cover art in the "Layers And Textures" section.
Starry Night Cloak
This was the garment I had the most trouble designing. I knew from
“Time of the Twins” that it was made of black velvet and that it had
hourglass embroideries but I wasn’t sure what to do with that
information. So, I don’t normally share my rejected designs, but I will
give you an idea of what I tried out. First, I initially wanted a
capelet like I made for my Red Robes cloak. This went through several
iterations and the one I kind of regret not making it was the one that
would have had dragonscale smocked panels that would cross at the back
like folded wings. None of these designs adequately portrayed power or
mystery so I reimagined the black velvet cloak. I interlined and then
lined it to make it much heavier. And on the velvet I embroidered
thousands and thousands of silver seed beads, a dense gradient starting
at the shoulders and disappearing at the hem. I created a sea of stars
in my black silk velvet. Then of course I created my hourglass
embroideries on either side of the hood. It moves exactly as I hoped it
would and the silver stars wink in and out.
Underlayers
Cosplayers talk a lot about hidden details in their work and
undergarments are certainly that, but we need to remember they’re still
part of the overall design, and because they form the absolute
foundation layers they can make or break a costume. I designed my
foundation layers after everything else was done; my fabrics for these
are practical. The trousers I made out of twill-woven linen which
breathes well and is easy to clean. They have a lace-up fly because that
fits in a fantasy medieval setting and some hand-worked eyelets are
always a good choice. My shirt is made of soft wool voile woven of both
dark blue and black yarns which would be warm as well as comfortable.
The fabric shaped the entire design because I knew how well it worked
with everything else. The close-fitting cuffs were my solution to
wanting this beautiful wool to be visible and on them I echoed the star
embroideries from my cloak. You’ll never see it, but the neckline has a
trim facing made of the same linen as the trousers which I bordered in
gold trim. They’re still basic garments, but I think practically they
should be something a person could wear without anything on top. Do
mages wear layers of robes at home?
Special Effects
Creating gold skin is easier said on paper than it is to create in
real life. I never thought this was a Tin Man situation, because other
characters could tell when Raistlin was unusually pale and in some
scenes they seemingly didn’t notice it at all. I needed something
translucent and neutral metallic gold, similar to Sutra’s makeup as one
of the androids on Star Trek: Picard. My hands, arms, neck, and chest
are always made up too, by the way: alcohol makeup makes it possible to
wear this look all day. Raistlin’s hourglass eyes are of course also are
iconic so I had my contact lenses custom-made by Samhain Contact
Lenses. “Realistic” is a relative term with a design like this but they
did a great job interpreting my request for lenses that were “as
realistically painted as possible”.
I didn’t intend to talk at length about my wig, but I do generally
texture all my wigs because it’s rare for hair to be perfectly straight.
It also let me put a little bit of pomade in and give Raistlin’s hair a
bit of a lank appearance.
The (Dragon) Staff Of Magius
The appearance of the staff is always clear: it’s a tall wooden
stave with a dragon claw holding a crystal at the top of it. But is it
really that basic? That doesn’t sound magical enough to me. I’ve
re-designed this staff three times. A major requirement for me was that
the head twist off so I can take the staff on a train and keep the top
of it safe, so that obviously shaped what I could design. I’ve always
thought the dragons in Dragonlance look kind of serpentine so I gave the
staff a dragon tail that twines around the stave and while that is
certainly not anatomically correct I think it’s a great effect and a
great solution. It joins together the head of the staff and the wooden
stave. As an aside, all versions of this staff have been made out of
driftwood I found on the shore of the Hudson River. The novels imply
that the staff may have been fashioned from makeshift materials.
Conclusion
Thank you to those who have read this far, and I hope this not only
gave you insight into my design process but also have you some ideas!
I’m going to finish with a few final thoughts that didn’t really fit
elsewhere. First, the best way to design a good cosplay is trial and
bettor, and practice. I attribute a lot of the success of my Black Robe
Raistlin design to it being the second costume I designed for him.
Subsequent work will always be an improvement upon earlier work. It was
also incredibly important to me to have people who would talk about my
design ideas and give their opinions when I was a bit stuck. I think
this is absolutely crucial to the creative process. So I want to thank
@TelekineticManiac and
@YourNightingale for doing that, and to both for
encouraging this project!
Please ask me your questions in the comments and let me know if you’d like more long-form content like this!
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