Kassandra Cosplay From Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – The Making Of

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was made by Quebec City’s Ubisoft team, so they made an official launching event in an eSports bar called LvlOp in Quebec City. The bar’s owners happened to be friends of mine and they wanted to have some cosplayers dressed up as Assassin’s Creed characters for the event. I had no Assassin’s Creed cosplay, so I finally decided to make Kassandra’s costume especially for the event on October 5th 2018.

Kassandra’s cosplay is one of the most technically challenging costume I’ve ever made. There was a lot of 3D printing involved, a lot of sanding, molding and casting, an incredible fiberglass plastron covered with genuine leather and an impressive hoplite helmet with natural horsehair.

The plastron was 3D modeled over a 3D scan of my body, 3D printed, molded and casted in fiberglass. This fiberglass cast is so perfectly matching my measurements that it’s surprisingly comfortable. I covered the fiberglass shell with kind of a leather bustier. The shape of that leather garment would perfectly match the shape of the fiberglass shell and was literally glued on it. To reproduce the intricate plastron’s design, I tried the most complicated combination of leather sewing techniques I ever used, trying to have finished edges and glued sewing allowances everywhere, even in the most curvy pattern designs. Those of you who know how to sew will be impressed. I have to say I’m very proud of this sewing job. :D

The helmet was also a great challenge. The horsehair crest alone was an adventure. I used natural solid black horsehair and natural blonde horsehair dyed in red. I had bleached hair for more than 15 years and I know how bleached hair is easy to dye. I was convinced that blonde horsehair would be just as easy to dye, but it wasn’t the case. Actually, platinum blonde horsehair dyed with red hair dye turned light pink. However, the bottom part of the horse tails that was yellow because of the horse’s urine was very easy to dye and I got a perfect bright red. I ended up with horsehair that was half pink, half red. I made a lot of searches about natural dyes that could have been used 2500 years ago and I discovered madder roots. Using madder roots dye, I was able to reach a dark orange color and that pigment would help the red hair dye to hold on the platinum blonde (now orange) horsehair. By the way, apparently, urine would have been used in different natural dyeing proccesses over the centuries.

Then I had to figure out how this horsehair crest would be made and how it would hold on the helmet. There are bronze hoplite helmets in museums, but natural horsehair crests of course didn’t survive… Even though I did a lot of searches about Ancient Greece costumes and armors, we apparently don’t know exactly how the horsehair crests were made and attached to the helmets back then. We can only make deductions and try to guess. I tried to see how modern reproductions were made. I finally folded long horsehair strands in 2 over a metallic thread and attached the strands with the sewing thread I use for leather. I added more and more horsehair strands until I had enough to make the crest. I cut the lenght of the crest once it was glued on the helmet. It was literally like making a haircut to a hoplite helmet. :D

Maybe you’re wondering why I made molds of every armor piece when I could have used the original 3D printed piece. My original plan was to make many pieces with different texture and paint finishes. But as the deadline was getting closer and closer, I realized I wouldn’t have the time to do everything I wanted to do. I wish I’d have more making of pics of the helmet, but I have actually more making of pics of what I started with, when there was more time before the event. And as the event date would get closer, I had less and less time to take pictures of each step and I mainly focussed on completing my costume! lol A huge thank to my grumpy friend who accepted to help me with that project that was way too big for one person considering the time I had. The making of Kassandra’s costume required 2 months of full time work, the same time we needed to build Rachnera, the fiberglass spider. It gives you an idea of how complicated that costume was.

All the 3D printed pieces were 3D modeled by Texelion: https://www.deviantart.com/texelion

I started writing a Making of Blog about this costume. I didn’t have the time to talk about all the costume yet, but if you want to read what I have written so far, please have a look. I explain each step in details and I also talk about some of the searches I made about Ancient Greece.

https://mcbourbonnais.com/en/tag/assassins-creed-odyssey/

Check out the other gallery to see more pictures and closeups of the finished costume.