By: Cindy Wang, SFU Student
I’m a digital artist who loves to draw and design my own original characters. It’s been a passion of mine since I was a teenager. However, ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, my mental health has rapidly worsened from the stress of university, resulting in art block. My passion for drawing has been dwindling for a while, but this year, I found a way to break out of that funk. I got out of my comfort zone and took up a new creative hobby.
Dressing up isn’t exclusively a kid’s activity — it should be for everyone who wants to bring out their Halloween spirit. I wanted to dress up for Halloween, but when I went to the store, the costumes were so expensive. I didn’t want to spend $90 on something I was never going to wear again, so this spooky season, I decided to try DIY cosplaying.
Cosplay involves dressing up as popular characters from media as a year-round hobby (by buying or creating a costume). I’ve done a bit of cosplaying before, particularly in high school. I made a Kagamine Rin cosplay for one Halloween and a Todoroki Shoto cosplay for another. Although I enjoyed making those costumes, I haven’t created any more since I started university. I enjoyed making those costumes a lot back then and I wanted to start pursuing it again, so this year, I made it my mission to do it differently. This season heightened my Halloween spirits and gave me a new passion project.
At first, I was a little overwhelmed. Although there were a lot of characters I wanted to dress up as, their designs were too complicated — I didn’t have enough time to prepare all the necessary materials. As a beginner cosplayer, I decided to create a simple costume using old clothes from my storage. I rummaged through my closet and found an old green dress. I looked up “characters with a green dress” and saw an old childhood favourite — Fiona from the Shrek movies.
Since Fiona’s dress was pretty similar to mine, I decided to try replicating her costume. She had some yellow linings on her dress, so I cut up an old yellow shirt of mine and glued it on my waistband and neckline. For the flower pattern top, I decided it was easier to paint the details with some gold paint. A bit of pride swelled in me as I admired the finished design — both from how it looked and how I made it. To finish it off, I went to the costume shop, bought a wig and some green face paint, and made the ogre ears out of cardboard. The cosplay turned out pretty good for a low-budget project and I was proud of my work.
It felt amazing making my Fiona cosplay. It was a lot of hard work, but the finished product was worth it. Not only am I excited to dress up as her for Halloween, but it also helped me overcome my art block. I’ve even taken up drawing again! This spooky season really inspired me, not only with reigniting this high school hobby of mine, but also with helping me get back into my artistic passions.
