DURBAN North resident Justin Walter, 35, won first place in the armour division for his recreation of Arthas Menethil, a fictional character from the strategy game Warcraft, at Comic Con Africa held in Gauteng recently.
Walter created Arthas’s weapon, a 1.8m long hammer called Light’s Vengeance. Cosplay is a performance art in which participants wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character.
Walter said he wanted to get his cosplay design as close as possible to the new Warcraft 3 Reforged design.
Walter manages the family scaffolding hire business but makes time to create costumes.
He printed out a life-size image of Arthas from the game to his exact height. This was made up of A3 pages which Walter taped together and stuck to his wall.
“It allowed me to get the armour proportions as close as possible to the reference picture, because I was building each piece individually. I also have a mannequin I made that has my body proportions to build the armour,” Walter explained.
“From there it’s a lot of eye-balling, playing around with pattern sketches and of course trial and error.
“I use many reference pictures from all different angles to try to get the armour right. Mannequin test fits are still required, and on myself to make sure I can be mobile and have a range of movement while wearing the bulky armour. I can then tweak it accordingly,” he said.
It takes him 15 minutes to get into the suit with assistance. Walter has support from his wife Angela and
5-year-old daughter Chloe, who also like Marvel and DC superheroes.
Since 2009, the couple have been participating in couple’s cosplay. They heard about a dress-up pub crawl in Durban called Sissy Hankshaw’s Pan Galactic Gargleblaster Tour.
“People would dress up in teams of two and hitch-hike from pub to pub dressed in crazy outfits,” he said.
“I was so happy to have won first place. I came third in the same division last year. I’m hoping my crafting skills continue to improve. Maybe one day I’ll be able to win the masters division, or even the best in show at the crown championships of cosplay in Chicago, representing South Africa,”he said.
Walter said cosplay was growing in South Africa and the level of cosplay was becoming much higher and more competitive.