Thor, the Goddess of Thunder Part 7: The Final Reveal

If you've been reading along at home, you've been following progress on my Thor, Goddess of Thunder costume.  If you're just now joining us, here are the links to the previous articles about this project:

Part 1: Prototyping the Helmet
Part 2: Molding the Helmet
Part 3: the Armor Build
Part 4: the Hammer
Part 5: the Fabric Parts
Part 6: the Leather Parts

 (go ahead and read those first, we'll be waiting for you here when you're done)

With all of the parts cast, trimmed, painted, polished, sewn, tooled, and ready to go, all that's left was to find a few minutes to try everything on.

Luckily for you, I won't be the one wearing this costume.*  Instead, the whole thing was built for my girlfriend, the Lady Shawnon.  But since she tends to be insanely busy and largely unavailable for photoshoots, I had to settle for a stand-in to model the donning process.  I have a lot of options in that department.  I went with my shop assistant Gabe:


The donning process starts with base catsuit:


Then we tie on the skirt panels and slip on the left sleeve:


The top of the skirt panels are pretty uninteresting, but it doesn't matter once we strap on the belt:


Then the back armor sits on top of the shoulders:


The chest armor hooks onto the top of the back armor.  Then it's time to bolt on the cape:


I suppose it doesn't matter exactly when we strap on the left arm bracer:


Since Gabe's fluffy hairstyle isn't quite the right color for the Goddess of Thunder, we put him in a wig:


He started looking a lot better once the helmet went on:


The final touch, Mjolnir:


And just like that, it's all together:


Well all but the boots and leg wraps, but this guy's feet were way too big to fit in the boots I picked up for Shawnon.  But at least this worked out to be a good proof of concept.

So without further ado...
  
Here's the Lady Shawnon on site at WonderCon where we debuted the costume:




There were only a few Thor cosplayers there.  And one Mjolnir cosplayer:


We also found a Lady Loki pretty early on:


I did manage to get one or two photos of the both of us, but it was hardly worth it since I wasn't in costume:


Mostly it was just fun to get pics of the Goddess of Thunder with other folks in the crowd.  Like McThor here:


And these guys:


Other than that, it was just a good time wandering around the show floor, showing off the shiny armor:




It was a lot of fun interacting with other cosplayers:










Somewhere in there we ran into a guy who was having people pose for pictures with his bird:


Yes, that's an actual, live bird:

Now she be worthy!

The convention was all well and good, but I also wanted to get some good showcase photos of the costume itself.  So a few weeks later we headed over to my friend Michi's photo studio (check her out at www.photosbymichi.com) for a proper photoshoot with lighting and everything:


Here's a couple of my favorites from that shoot:




Of course, what we really needed was a location.  Fortunately, I live in the middle of some of the most gorgeous backdrops Northern California has to offer.  One such spot is "Elephant Rocks" on the way out to Dillon Beach.  Sadly, it was an overcast day with low clouds blocking the view in the distance.  But we still managed to get some good shots:










Some of them were even better with a bit of Photoshop:


Still, despite the cold and the overcast conditions, a good time was had:


Stay tuned for more insane projects as time goes on...

*If that's a disappointment for some reason, feel free to check out my old 300 Spartan costume.  You'll find it somewhere in the tag cloud at the bottom of this page.