Gaige - Borderlands 2

Gaige - Borderlands 2

Bio
Character: Gaige the Mechromancer
Origin: Borderlands 2
Year constructed: 2014
Debuted at: Comic Con Gamex Sthlm
2014

Why
Gaige is a badass. I love her introductionary echo logs, I love her attitude, her outfits and her constant references to pop culture. She's totally kickass. I also love that she's got SO many trinkets and accessories, there's just so much going on in her costume! I wanted to make a Borderlands cosplay for a long time, but since I never done it before I didn't want to start off too hard, so gaige seemed like a good place to start. I wanted to finish her for Gamex because my bro Johannes was making a Psycho and my bf was making Axton (which he sadly couldn't finish in time due to school attacking.)

The wig was made from
scratch using an eBay wig.

How
I started with making the wig, actually. I bought a long wig from ebay (actually I bought several because I couldn't decide upon the color, but I ended up with an orange one), which I cut off to the proper length. The cut hair was used to make the ponytails later. I basically glued the loose hair into two ponytails, fastened them into her "scrunchies" and sewed them on to the head. For a full tutorial on how I made the wig, please visit my cosplay page!

I thought long and hard on how to style her ponytails - I wasn't sure if I wanted to make them natural (like in the photo to the left) or give them their original spiky, cartoony character. But in the end I went for spiky. I backcombed the hair and parted them in different spikes and sprayed with hairspray. After that I combed over the outer layer on each spike to make them smooth. The absolute tips of each spike was glued together with just a little bit of wood glue, to prevent the spikes from "opening".

I made the pleated skirt a
bit too long.....

Tights in the making!

The rest of the cosplay was pretty basic. A regular pleated skirt, a hooded jacket and a pair of striped tights. I didn't find any good black and white striped fabric, so I had to make my own by cutting out lengths of fabric and sewing them together. To do this it's easiest to find a fabric that stretches in four ways, but two-way stretch can also work. I made a full tutorial on how to do this which you will find on my facebook page.

For the applications, badges and other symbols on her clothes I used acrylic paint mixed with fabric paint, to give it a rough, cartoony feel.

Goggles! Worbla and craft foam, huge
shoutout to Violet Cosplay who gave me some
great advice on celshading!

I made the goggles from worbla and craft foam. You'll notice that almost ALL of her gadgets are made out of craft foam in my case - mostly because I needed something easy and fast to work with, but also because it's pretty durable and can look cartoony. But actually the most important reason was because she has a lot of her gadgets attached to her belt I needed to make them light weight!

For all the celshading, I used markers in different colors and thickness. Basically I tracked the outlines with a dark marker and highlighted the outer edges with a white marker. There is no easy way to explain this really, it's best to just try and play around with it! :)

Domo arigatooo mr robotoooo

Robot arm time! This was made using worbla, because I wanted it to be durable. However I made the fingers in craft foam because they are more comfortable and softer, but you can use whatever! As mentioned before, I have a full tutorial on this overat my fb page, so I'll just run through it fast here. I basically taped my arm with masking tape, drew the patterns on the tape, removed the tape and cut out the patterns. Then I just traced the patterns on to worbla, cut it out and glued it onto an arm sock which I had sewed earlier (it's basically a long, black glove that reaches up over my shoulder). I painted it before I attached it though, with basic metallic spray paint as base and acrylics for details. What's important here is that you adjust the pieces so that they don't prevent your arm movement. You'll probably be wearing it for a while so might as well make it comfortable, right?

MORE GUNS!

I also needed a weapon right! For this I was really lazy, I took one of my old NERF-guns which I have laying around the house (don't ask) and modified it a bit to look more Borderlandsy. I covered the printed logos and fixed it up to make it more neutral, and then I spray painted it black. Since I'm a Maliwan-fan and Gaige uses elemental guns, I went for the Maliwan color scheme of grey, orange, white and turquoise. This was so much fun to make, haha, and it could actually shoot small foam bullets hahaha <3

I sadly don't have any good photos of all the trinkets, but they include (but are not limited to) a piston, two belts, a padlock, a hammer with helt, two arm bands, a couple of metal bands, a wrench with bag, some more straps and two necklaces with bolts. They were all painted cartoony and celshaded. I loved my little foam hammer since I could go around smacking people without hurting anyone (just ask my Psycho Johannes) <3

Thoughts

I had tons of fun in this costume. It is so comfy, I love the makeup attached to it and I love all the shenanigans me and my Psycho were up to at Gamex! Gaige is  also a very fun cosplay to shoot since you get to be all over the place, make faces and pose like a maniac (compared to for example my Nuala cosplay in which you need to be still, calm and fragile).

Now, I've mentioned a lot of tutorials for this costume! The ones I have made for Gaige are;

How to make Gaige's wig
How to make Gaige's robot arm
How to make Gaige's gun
How to make Gaige's general costume

You will find all of them here!

Photos
Click for larger versions!

Gamex selfie!

To hell with the first law!

Gamex!

With my bro Johannes!

  

POW!!