Annelotte Kreutz from Queen's Blade: Rebellion

The second I saw the figure come out I got curious about this beautiful character, and to my delight I loved her personality in Rebellion. I usually never like main characters in anime because they are bratty but Annelotte is such a strong and courageous woman that I couldn't help but want to cosplay her.

Construction Details:

The Shield

I used my architecture superpowers very much for this costume. I drew up vectors of each layer of Annelotte's shield in AutoCAD and lasercut ABS plastic at school. I heat formed the base layer over my couch then attached a 3/4" PVC pipe and elbow joints to the back with e6000. The base piece was painted with Kryolan silver and the upper trim layers were painted separately with automotive paint before glued down.

The rounded raised semi-sphere pieces were cast out of SmoothCast white and superglued to the shield before painted gold. I drew up a detailed 3D model of Annelotte's emblem (7 hours labor) and printed it off for sanding. 3D prints come off with a lot of striations and are not smooth, so I sanded away the ugly bits and glued that on.

The Armor

Materials used: Epoxy sculpt, Styrene, Plastex, ABS plastic, and a TON of Velcro. For the complex shapes such as the tiara emblem, cuisse (thigh side armor), poleyn (knee armor), and couter (elbow armor), I drew the shaped flat on MDF and shaped the wood on a belt-sander. Once the little curved pieces looked good, I glued them together and vacuformed ABS plastic over them. I cut the vacuformed pieces out with a dremel and sanded sharp edges for comfort. The bust cups were also vacuformed but I attached them with an ABS-acetone plastic weld solution recommended by Volpin Props. To make the solution I cut up ABS scraps and soaked them in acetone, which created a paste. The paste acted as a plastic weld and the cups stuck onto the underbust.

For the simple bicep, forearm, calf, and thigh panels, I just made a pattern, cut it out of Plastex, and heat formed it with a heat-gun. Plastex is the best to use for parts that require a lot of bending since it is still a little flexible for a smooth plastic. I also cut the trims out of this stuff and super-glued it on. For spots with difficult and rounded trim, I just used a small coil of epoxy.

Horse head choker

I took a children's horse toy and made a mold out of it in a solo cup. Afterwards I cast it in clear resin with red dye and built the gold mane out of epoxy and painted it over. I sewed up the base collar piece with ruffles and hot-glued the horse head charm.

Sewing parts

I drafted all my patterns and hand-sewed silver lycra base gloves. I sewed my own skirt out of casa satin and took care to make her pleat directions accurate and faced the white trim on the bottom to prevent ugly hem seams. I vectorized her shoulder emblems in AutoCAD to embroider the shoulder fleurs. Finally, I embroidered custom lace on her bolero for her character-specific lace.

Shoes

I used my old prom shoes as a base and removed the original color with acetone. Once raw, I painted them silver with Meltonian shoe spray. Afterwards shoe armor was attached with velcro.

Gauntlets

I hand-sewed my gloves out of silver metallic lycra for a base. Each fingerplate was patterned, cut out of .02, and heat-molded over a 1/2" dowel for a better fit on my fingers. They were then painted and glued to onto the gloves.

Once everything was made I had to get it to somehow stick to my body. :/ I ended up making silver thigh-highs that the leg armor could velcro onto and that way little gaps in the armor would appear filled. The same thing went for the arm armor.

Cosplayer: Kapalaka Cosplay

November 15, 2014