Last year in San Japan, I cosplayed as Marvel’s Psylocke. A lot of people came up to me and said they liked my cosplay, but followed with the question, “who?” Unless you’ve played Marvel vs Capcom 2, like I did growing up, or happens to be really into the Marvel Universe, you probably don’t know who Psylocke is. However, with her appearance in the latest X-Men movie, X-men: Apocalypse, I feel like more people should be able to recognize her now.
Funny story, last year as I was waiting in line to watch the cosplay contest at San Japan, this guy went up to me, looked me right in the eye, while pointing at me and said, “Storm, right?” I literally almost died laughing. I will never forget how serious he was. After I explained that I was Psylocke, he followed with, “Dang, they told me the wrong name.” I applaud him for the effort, and I will never forget that moment.
However, it was the true nerds that knew who I was. I went to the Nerdcore Comedy show the night before dressed as Psylocke. The main comedian mentions to applaud all the cosplayers that put effort that night, and he specifically mentioned me! Well, along the lines of “There’s a Psylocke over there…Yeah, she’d never talk to me,” joking about his nerdy appearance and inability to pick up girls. The room followed with laughter, and I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or flattered.
Now I’ve shared my memories with this cosplay, enough about me, more about how I made it, which is probably why you’re here anyway. I was unable to record my process, but I will do my best to explain how it was done. If an amateur like me finished it in a week, I’m sure you’ll have no problem. Because I have no pictures, please bear with me, but I will do my best to explain. If you have any questions, leave it in the comments, and I’d be happy to help.
References I used:
Costume:
What you need:
- Packaging/Duct Tape
- Plastic wrap (steal some from your mom’s kitchen)
- Scissors
- Sharpie
- Stretch Vinyl (I recommend a 4 way stretch from spandexworld.com. I used the color Royal, but I’ve seen Psylocke cosplays with darker colors.)
- Zipper
- Heels (cause you wanna be sexy)
- Felt
Bodysuit:
- Get in your underwear, preferably the one’s you’ll wear when you cosplay.
- Wrap your body with plastic wrap, this will be a barrier for your skin when you put tape.
- Cover the plastic wrap with packaging/duct tape, try not to get it on your skin. IT might be best to have a friend help you. If you have no friends like me, just…do your best lol.
- Get your sharpie and outline on the tape how you want your costume to look and where the seams will be.
- Cut the plastic & tape from on the seams you outlined to get it off your body.
- Cut the excess plastic and tape outside the outlined areas. This will now be your cheap ass pattern, custom fit for you.
- Lay your “pattern” on the back of the stretch vinyl and trace with a sharpie/pen, then make another outline just 1/2 inches away on the parts you’re going to sew (such as the sides, shoulders, neck, etc, depending on how you want it to look).
- Cut out the pieces and sew the edges together.
- Cut the middle back of the bodysuit for the zipper.
- You can hand sew the zipper if you’d like, or what I did was first glue the zipper to the vinyl, then sew it when it was dry so that it’d stay in place.
- For the turtle neck thing I did, I just cut a long strip of vinyl and sewed it around to the neck part of my bodysuit and put velcro on the back. You could do this before your zipper and just make the zipper go all the way up, which I wish I thought of before I made my cosplay last year.
Shoes:
- Put on those heels.
- Wrap your heels and legs with plastic wrap and tape it as well, similar to the bodysuit process.
- Cut the plastic and tape off down the back and front.
- Use this pattern to make vinyl socks that fits your feet with heels on.
- If you didn’t cover it perfectly, don’t worry. You can easily hand sew certain parts or glue some vinyl to cover other parts (I glued on pieces of vinyl to cover the spiky heel part of my shoes).
- If you have felt or some sort of padding, cut out some to fit the sole of your shoes and glue it on. It will help so you don’t slip off on the slippery hotel floors of the convention.
Gloves:
- Extremely simple, just cut rectangles of vinyl that will wrap around your arms.
- Sew the long edges together, making a tube-like thingy.
- Cut the bottom part into a triangle shape that connects to your middle finger.
- Make a ring out of vinyl or use an elastic to connect to that triangle shape.
Hair:
- Long purple wig (I used Eros from Epic Cosplay)
- Hairspray
- I just used the wig pretty much as it was.
- Only hair sprayed the front to give it more volume and to keep a side part in the hair.
- Please comb your hair, unlike me.
Makeup:
Makeup is really up to your creativity. I would focus on the colors red and purple for her eye make up and lips. Give her some fierce brows and eyeliner. Don’t forget your false lashes, it makes a difference in pictures. Also contour, because she is a comic book character, her features are very sharp. She’s portrayed as a mysterious beautiful psychic ninja type of thing, show it in your makeup.
♦ An optional detail you could put is the red tattoo on her face which she gains with her new powers from the Crimson Dawn.
I really wish I could’ve cosplayed her in this year’s San Japan now that my makeup skills have gotten better, oh well.
Well, that should be the main points of it! Each picture I see of her has a different detail of some sort, so I encourage you to explore the possibilities.
There are many ways to create Psylocke’s costume, but this is the way I did it. Whether people thought I was some space hooker or a part of Mortal Kombat, people wanted to take pictures with me and said I was cool, even a little kid yelled “NINJAAAA!!!” and asked his mom to get a picture of us together, which was adorable. Not only that, comic book fans will appreciate you so much since she’s not cosplayed very frequently. A man passed by me in the convention, turned around, looked at me, and said “wow, that’s really accurate,” and took a picture. It really makes me happy when people and other cosplayers enjoy the effort you put.
Do you cosplay? What’s your favorite character to do? Or, who would you like to do? Halloween is coming up, maybe you’d like to try it?
The beauty of conventions is that there’s no judgement. People love what you love and just want to celebrate it.
S H E E P S T E P 