My first cosplay endeavors are right in time for the holidays.

The movie adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit—directed by famed comic book writer Frank Miller—releases in theaters Christmas day. Coincidentally, there’s a real-life Central City (the comic book/movie setting) near where I attend college and normally we get a lot of snow, so … I thought I’d dabble in the art of cosplaying for the first time!

Here’s a run-down of my experience: how I put my costume together and what I learned from it all.

Putting Together the Costume

Luckily for a beginner like me, The Spirit’s costume was pretty easy to put together—particularly because the scheme consists of two colors. I started with the shirt that goes under the coat: a slim, black button-up I found in a thrift store for a few bucks. The black pants and girly boots I already had.

I found a gangster’s hat along with a red tie (”Somebody get me a tie … and it sure as hell better be red!”) on eBay. And the mask was pretty easy to find cheap at a party store. Since I wanted to spruce up the outfit to feminize it, I found a pair of transparent black gloves on luxurydivas.com for $7. I really liked how they worked with the costume, so it was definitely worth it.

The trench coat was the trickiest piece, but it was also a big payoff. I found a very nice, stylish black coat on sale on amiclubwear.com for $50 (with shipping). The coat is nice enough to wear normally, and as the most important garment … it looks good!

(If you like the coat, it’s still on sale, actually.)

The Cosplay

The pictures were shot at night on location in front of the Central City signs—the only bummer was that it didn’t snow! What are the chances, huh?

Time was limited because of college, unfortunately. And even though I didn’t have a professional camera guy, I think the photos turned out nicely with the help I had (special thanks Tony and also Orionsaint for editing help! ).

In retrospect, there was a lot of things I wish I had done differently. First off, I definitely wish I had had more time planned out for shooting—like over several days to accomodate weather. Central City is on a mountain, we should have had snow, ack! There were some costume malfunctions, too. I realize now that the Spirit’s shirt is tucked into his pants, which I didn’t do.

Also, I would have liked to do some better poses, now that I think about it; maybe have played around with various shots. Although I ended up with one pretty cool action shot! So there’s a little bit of tie swishiness.

The good thing is, I learned for next time—and I’d love to experiment again with this cosplay more professionally in the future. Overall, it was interesting and fun, and I certainly have a drastically greater appreciation for cosplayers now who are good at what they do (*cough* GEN girls *cough*).

Let me know what you think!

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