Final Fantasy VIII was one of my first role playing games, and watching my best friend play through it, I immediately loved her design and became my favorite GF (Guardian Force junction). For years I considered how to properly translate her design into 3D materials, I thought Fanime 2011 would finally be the ideal time to tackle this.
Due to the placement of the wings jutting from her head, I knew I couldn’t approach this as I normally would with a pair of wings in the past, so I devised ways to cut out as much weight as possible in order to make it wearable for extended periods. The wings were made out of a copper wire base, embroidery floss plastic mesh for the body, light polyester batting, and about a pound of turkey feathers. The wings sit underneath the wig on a metal and plastic headpiece lined with HD foam. The turkey rounds were ordered from an online wholesale warehouse, who custom dyed them to my request. I trimmed all 600+ feathers by hand and spray painted the colored ends of each feather individually on the wig, bra, wing tips, and tail when the dye I used wasn’t acidic enough. I also found I couldn’t dye the downs to fill in the spaces of the wings, so I had to cover any exposed batting with more rounds by breaking them right above the base of the stem.
A custom bra was built for the feathers at the bust and created several layers so nothing would be exposed, and did the same with the torso and tail feathers. The rainbow makeup actually takes the longest in changing into this costume, and the eyebrows are thin yellow feathers glued with spirit gum. My gorgeous harp was made by Lionel Lum out of balsa wood.