Lady Arthas Cosplay interview

Who are you?
My name is Janet, I am a Slovak cosplayer and prop maker living in Scotland.

How did you choose your cosplay name, Lady Arthas Cosplay?
The first armour I made was Arthas Menethil from World of Warcraft – it’s probably my most favourite character of all time so I decided to keep the name Lady Arthas.

What was your first cosplay?
My first cosplay was Mitsuki Nase from anime called Kyoukai no Kanata. It was a bit of disaster – all I had was a simple school uniform because the wig I ordered never arrived and I didn’t really finish a lot of important details for the costume. It was an outfit for my first con (DeeCon) so I was a bit nervous, but I had a great time!

How did you get into cosplay, and how long have you been doing it?
I think it’s been about five years since I first dressed up for a con. A friend of mine talked me into going to a comic con with her and we wanted to dress up as characters form anime we were watching at the time. Because I really enjoyed the con and saw all the armour builds I decided to do more research and experiment with materials. I failed a lot (and learned a lot) and decided to make Arthas Menethil armour, my first worbla cosplay. On the day of the con I was having second thoughts and I wanted to chicken out because I didn’t think the costume was good enough to be presented in public and to be honest if my friend didn’t force me (yeah lol) to go to that con I really don’t think I would actually become a cosplayer. So Thanks xD

Favourite cosplay you’ve done so far?
Arthas Menethil without a doubt. The costume is really comfy and the sword – Frostmourne is the best prop I have ever made. I have spent so much time researching and improving my skills to make this costume. And of course I just love walking around feeling badass like the lich king.

Any advice for beginner cosplayers, or people wanting to get into cosplaying?
Start with a simple project – it doesn’t matter if you want to buy a costume or make it, just make sure you don’t start with something too complicated. At the start it is very easy to get discouraged when the things don’t turn up the way you want. Just don’t give up! Remember that your skills improve and you can take on more difficult projects over time. If you need help, you can always approach more experienced cosplayers to ask for advice, don’t be afraid to ask ^_^

How do you go about choosing which cosplays to make and wear?
Usually it depends on what games I currently play or what movies I watch. I really need to fall in love with the character and the franchise – I absolutely love Blizzard games and that’s why I keep going back to cosplaying from Diablo or WoW. I usually go for powerful, badass characters with a lot of sass.

Any group cosplays you’d want to do?
There is one group I’d love to be a part of. It’s called Project Ebon Blade and they are World of Warcraft characters redesigned by Zach Fischer. He’s one of my favourite artists and if I have time this year I’m going to make one of his designs.

One of your latest cosplays is Sindragosa from World of Warcraft. Can you tell us about why you chose to cosplay that character?
I think everyone who ever played Wrath of the Lich king remembers the frost wyrm that Lich King raised in the opening cinematic. She was one of his strongest and most loyal servants and she has a very interesting backstory. I was thinking about cosplaying her for a long time but since there wasn’t an in-game human model I would have to design it myself. When I saw Zach Fischer’s design of Sindragosa I fell in love and I just had to make that costume!

Can you tell us more about the process of creating it?
Since the start I knew I wanted to make it out of worbla. For me it was the easiest option since I know how to work with it and I know it’s fairly easy to make details. I think the one thing I underestimated was the number of scales and spikes I had to make. It was driving me crazy haha. I had a lot of problems with the crown and horns because they were too heavy. It was difficult to make attachments to hold them in place. But overall this costume was full of details so it was long tedious work on all the small bits.

Parts of the Sindragosa cosplay light up. How difficult was it to incorporate electronics into the cosplay?
I made this part a lot more difficult for myself. I thought it would be a good idea to make the costume and then leave the LEDs until the end. Well… it wasn’t. It would have been a lot better if I planned it all out at the start. I decided to make two circuits – one for chest, arms and legs and the second one for the crown. I had a really hard time trying to hide the wires and had to make few alternations to the design. I had a lot of help from one of my friends who taught me how to work with LEDs since I knew absolutely nothing when I started this costume.

Do you have any cosplays in the works that you want to share with us?
At the moment you can find work in progress photos of barbarian and wonder woman on my social media. This year I would love to make Arthas Menethil cosplay again. I think it would be nice to see how much my skills improved since I made the first one.

On Instagram, you’ve posted your Wonder Woman work in progress. How’s that coming along?Actually, it’s almost finished. The armour is ready, now I’m working on the sword – Godkiller. I also decided to make a blue cape for this costume. I’m planning to do a photo shoot in a couple of weeks, so you’ll be able to see the final result.

If you could live in any franchise, which one would it be and why?
It would be one of the Blizzard games. I’m not even going to consider Diablo because that game is way too terrifying. Especially the butcher – I used to have nightmares about it lol… I think my pick is World of Warcraft. I love the game and the lore, and I think I’ve been playing it for way too long!

You can follow Lady Arthas’ work on the following websites:
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