The Best Costumes Are Handmade, Right?

Some of us costume ourselves exactly once a year, on or around Oct. 31. But for cosplayers — people who dress up as a characters from movies, books, TV shows and video games — taking on other visual identities is a year-round lifestyle.

The vast majority are hobbyists who spend anywhere from a few weeks to the greater part of a year working on outfits in advance of giant conventions (or “cons”). At these buffets of nerd events — panels and workshops with names like Synthetic Wig Styling and Polyamory in Sci-Fi — cosplayers get to show off their handiwork and mingle with kindred spirits, often late into the night.

In cosplay, a good costume is as much about creativity with materials and construction as it is about the outcome. So while some people spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on custom outfits for cons, many more invest in time, using cheap materials and household items to transform themselves into characters of superhuman, mythical proportions.

That ingenuity was on display at this year’s Dragon*Con, held in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend, where some 85,000 people donned — or came to admire — elaborate, heavy creations of foam, metal and latex.

In the mornings, in hotel rooms around the city, colorful transformations were taking place. I documented several before the cosplayers hit the streets.

Steel

Corey Issac, 47

Materials:

• Sintra PVC foam core, EVA foam

• Velcro

• Adhesive: Contact cement, super glue

• Acrylic paint

• Dancer’s leotard, black

• Knives: X-acto, beveled, multitool

• Red fabric

• Safety pins

Estimated Total Cost: $150

Corey Isaac and Natasha Dalton, his fiancée and fellow cosplayer, live in Douglasville, Ga., a suburb outside of Atlanta. But, like most other Dragon*Con attendees, they chose to stay in a hotel near the convention.

“It’s damn near impossible to drive with armor on,” Mr. Issac said.

That “armor” includes a shoulder and chest plate, leg guards and a mask, all made from EVA foam (a material often found in workout mats or flip flops) and Sintra PVA foam core, which is surprisingly lightweight and, when painted gray, passes for brushed metal. Mr. Issac used X-acto and beveled knives to create convincing metallic angles in the foam.

The process of assembling the armor took approximately 45 minutes. Mr. Issac pulled on a leotard as a base layer, then pinned Velcro strips to his shoulders and knees to keep the outer layers in place. Next, he added the leg pieces, old loafers covered with a removable foam casing; the shoulder and chest plate (with built-in six pack); wrist and arm guards; and finally, a helmet that covered his face, fortified with fabric to control the sweating. Plastic clips were built into various parts of the costume to hold everything in place.

The chef’s kiss of the costume was a floor-length red cape, sewn by Ms. Dalton, which matched that of her Supergirl costume.

Mr. Issac, a graphic designer by trade, said he could really only stay in the costume for “up to two or three hours” on a hot day. But hours later, long after they had left the comfort of their air-conditioned hotel, he and Natasha were still going strong.

“My love of cosplay keeps me young,” Mr. Issac said. “You get older when you stop playing.”

Gaige the Mechromancer

Jennifer Wethington, 24

Materials:

• Fabric, largely sourced from scrap bins at Jo-Ann Fabrics

• Paint: Craft acrylic, textile and fabric paint

• Sharpies (for quick fixes)

• Makeup: Contour pallette, lipstick, eye shadow, eye liner, an Elmer’s glue stick

• Colored contacts

• EVA foam

• Plywood

• Velcro

• Craft foam

• Converse sneakers from a thrift store

Estimated Total Cost: $60

Jennifer Wethington’s artistry is driven by efficiency (“I won’t make something if I can’t finish it in a month”) and economy (“If I can’t do it cheap, I can’t do it”). That she has become a minor internet celebrity for her costuming skills, with 30,000 followers on her Instagram account, is the result of many years of trial and error, she said.

Back home, in Batavia, Ohio, Ms. Wethington keeps a low profile, working in a nail and zipper factory with her father and brother. But at cons, she said, “I can barely go more than a block without somebody recognizing me.”

Gaige’s gun, gearbox and wig were built from EVA foam, and decorated with acrylic and craft paints (and a Sharpie, which she keeps on hand to fill in faded spots).

The design is meant to replicate the “cel shading” aesthetic of “Borderlands 2” — a graphic technique that is used in video games and 3-D renderings to give objects a hand-drawn look.

Ms. Wethington applies the cel shading technique to her makeup as well, spending up to an hour hand drawing Gaige’s bandages on her face, outlining her lips and eye brows with black lines, and matting her eye brows with an Elmer’s glue stick. The end result makes her look like a hand drawn cartoon come to life.

Cosmetics can run in heat, but it was the wig cap that Ms. Wethington worried most about in Atlanta (it can cause “terrible” headaches, she said). Her colored contacts, she said, also tend to “dry out, then itch and reflect light off your eyes.”

Discomfort can be a small cost to pay for a great costume. For Ms. Wethington, the ability to “run around and have fun” in an outfit — and not be hindered by heavy, unwieldy materials — is always key. “I just want to make a costume that I actually enjoy being in,” she said.

Proxima Midnight

TaLynn Kel, 43

Materials:

• Moisture-wicking athletic gear, black

• Worbla (A brand of thermoplastic)

• Craft foam

• Mini zip ties

• “The shiniest gold fabric I could find at Hancock fabrics, which is now closed”

• Duct tape

• Makeup: Mehron Paradise Paint (teal, light blue), Mehron setting spray, Mehron Mixing Liquid, Black Moon Cosmetics “Sorrow” lipstick, Surreal Makeup “Evil Queen” liquid lip

• Tension rod

• A glove

• Gold spray paint

• Puffy paint, fabric paint

• Used T-shirts

• Fabric tape

Estimated Cost: $64

Watching TaLynn Kel prepare for Dragon*Con felt like watching a warrior prepare for battle: checking weapons, fortifying armor (and war paint) and laying out a battle plan (for photo shoots at the convention, as well as visits to hotel lobbies — ideal places for air-conditioned breaks and, possibly, alcohol.) But everything about Ms. Kel’s costume seemed to be giving her problems that day.

First, there was the layer of blue paint she had just lathered over her face and neck. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t make any adjustments until the paint was completely dry. Well, she wasn’t supposed to, but she did anyway, chastising herself the whole time.

And then there was the issue of lip color. Ms. Kel layered Black Moon “Sorrow” lipstick, a bold, metallic midnight blue, with a coat of Evil Queen liquid lip, a black shade with hints of blue and purple. But the effect wasn’t what she had intended. Nevermind. After some experimentation, Ms. Kel decided it looked good enough, so she put on her wig, and tossed the shoulder-length, smoky blue tresses with a small flourish. Imperfections happen. Such is cosplay.

Her face freshly painted, Ms. Kel knelt by her bed and used an intricate web of zip ties to attach the inner part of her gold shoulder toppers. The zip ties wouldn’t cooperate, so every time Ms. Kel stood up, beaming, the gold shoulder topper just slid down her arm again.

Her headpiece, however, presented the biggest liability. Crafted from cardboard and Worbla (a brand of thermoplastic that can be shaped when exposed to heat), Ms. Kel’s creation had a wingspan that was almost four feet. She had to turn her head to walk out of the door. To complicate matters further, the headpiece quickly melted a line across Ms. Kel’s face, which meant that once it was on, she couldn’t really take it off. (Thankfully, Ms. Kel’s golden scepter — a tension rod that Ms. Kel spray-painted gold, topped with a piece of craft foam wrapped in gold fabric — was ready for action.)

Fully in costume, and only moments before leaving for the con, Ms. Kel hurt her knee — another set back. But her enthusiasm for cosplaying as Proxima Midnight wasn’t bruised.

After hurting her knee, Ms. Kel was restricted to a wheelchair. Dragon*Con had run out of loaner wheelchairs, so she had to borrow one from the hotel, which would only allow her to use it to be wheeled back to her room. She used a frozen bottle of water to reduce the swelling while plotting other ways to get to the con.CreditJamal Jordan/The New York Times

“Oh yeah,” she said. “This cosplay is cursed.” But, Ms. Kel added, “I don’t worry about making it perfect. I just make it good enough.”

Jamal Jordan is an editor on The New York Times’s digital transition team. Follow him on Twitter @lostblackboy.