Fran from Final Fantasy XII

Made In. May-June 2007
Debuted. Anime Expo 2007
Info. For once, a costume was not my idea! It was G-Mal who was originally interested in doing Final Fantasy XII costumes, after falling in love with the life-sized figure of Gabranth at SDCC06. I toyed with the idea of doing an FFXII costume, but lost interest because the game had not even been released yet. G-Mal was die-hard the whole time, and when the game was finally released, my interest was piqued again. Since Yuriy still really wanted to make Gabranth, I figured I'd make something to go with him. But who to cosplay as? None of the female characters interested me at first. My favorite character, as it turned out, was Balthier! So my logic figured that if I did Fran, I could adequately spread the Balthier love by humping any Balthier cosplayer I ran into. And when Lionel announced that he was making Fran and Balthier's hoverbike from the game, that sealed the deal for me. (Fran did eventually grow on me, of course.)

The problem with Fran is that she is tall and skinny, and I'm short and slightly overweight. Fran was a lifestyle change for me, because I vowed only to wear the costume if I could shed 20 lbs. I dieted from November to July, and managed to lose 23 lbs! I spend longer studying the designs for Fran than any other costume I've ever made, as there were a lot of inconsistencies between the artwork and in-game designs. I had the game open on my TV and spent hours just rotating the camera endlessly around Fran. As for the costume itself, well, let's just say if Zelda was the tip of the iceburg of craft foam armor, Fran was the entire f***ing glacier. All of the armor from head to toe was made out of craft foam, with a little bit of wonderflex to hold the shape and finished with acrylic paint. I also learned to chainmail for this costume; there is aluminum chainmail attached to both sides of the body suit.

While the costume is a little uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time, it was so rewarding. I received a HUGE amount of acclaimation and approval at Anime Expo 2007,where I debuted it. Even better, I had the HUGE honor of cosplaying with my buddies Sana-chan and StripperVash, who rocked their Ashe and Balthier costumes, as well as TsukiNoBara and her awesome Mjrn costume (sisters!). And yes, I did hump StripperVash. A LOT. As if things couldn't get any more awesome, riding Lionel's amazing hoverbike was an experience I will never forget.