Cosplay Construction Spotlight: Enayla Cosplay’s Asura

“This tower is ours, on to the next target!” We’re diving into the construction process of Enayla Cosplay’s Asura!

Welcome to the Cosplay Artist Spotlight!

“Let them come through ME!” -Asura, Guild Wars 2

Today we’re taking a closer look at the gorgeous and whimsical construction of Enayla Cosplay’s Asura from Guild Wars 2.

Inspiration

Asura are a race of tiny gnome-like creatures from Guild Wars 2.  Highly educated and technically-minded, they make up for their size by building giant mech robots (golems) to fight alongside.  I love their lore (and their look) and had wanted to make an Asura cosplay, but unfortunately I’m not two feet tall…so I built a golem to give it scale!  It stands about 9.5 feet and is one of my favorite creations to date.

 

The Coat

I started my Asura cosplay with the main piece, the coat.  It’s a very unusual design, so I drafted the pattern from scratch. After a couple scrap fabric mockups to ensure that the pattern was correct, I transferred it to the final fabric: a faux ostrich leather a great texture that mimicked the look of my reference.

Appliques

I added contrasting fabric appliques finished with bias tape for the gold designs on the sides of the coat.

Front Panels

For the center front panel, I layered two textiles (a blue sequin over a heavy canvas), and stitched on strips of soutache cord for all of the white and black line detailing.  I then fully lined the coat in lightweight cotton fabric and installed a line of grommets to lace it up the back.

Armor

The Bow

My Asura carries a glowing magical bow made of floating chunks of stone.  To create this effect in real life, I constructed the base of the bow out of EVA foam.  I printed off a screenshot of the bow to scale and used this as a pattern.

Stone Effects

For the rough stone effect, I used a dremel tool to carve out the EVA foam.  I did most of this freehand while keeping a close eye on my reference images.

Final Steps

Finally, I primed the EVA foam with layers of plastidip and glued the pieces together.  I used a piece of plexiglass to attach the ‘floating’ parts, and created the glowing halo effect by painting a strip of clear vinyl around the edge of the bow.

Author: Jennifer Larsen

Jennifer aka "Mayhem's Muse" is the Cosplay Editor for BoLS and manages Ad Sales and Communications. Her cosplay awards include the RTX Judge's Choice Award and Dragon's Lair Austin's Cosplay Symposium. Jennifer has been a Cosplay Guest Judge at RTX, Tacticon and Genghis Con in Colorado. She regularly attends conventions to cover cosplay for BoLS. Her cosplay work has been featured in publications such as Girls Who Love Monsters, Geek Fuel, and Renaissance Magazine. Jennifer has modeled in the Her Universe Fashion Show, Precision Camera's yearly Precision Camera University, and has taught several workshops for photographers about partnering with cosplayers and creative muses/models. Jennifer is a lifelong enthusiast of retro video games and loves Dungeons & Dragons, urban fantasy, tabletop games, VR technology, and historical archery. She has set National Records through USA Archery’s Traditional Division for Asiatic Bows and earned 4th Place in the World Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan in 2018 for Women’s Korean Archery. Jennifer is currently studying for her Masters's Degree in Organizational Leadership.