Jason and I have attended many conventions both professionally and for fun. After all this time, we’ve accumulated a lot of cosplay photography. After Jason’s recent review of the book Undressing the Art of Playing Dress Up we decided it would be fun to start sharing some of this content with all of you. First up is a wonderful Zelda I met at ConBravo in Burlington, Ontario a couple years ago. Read on for all of the photos!
As a fan of the many The Legend of Zelda titles over the years it’s always great to see iconic characters like Zelda brought to life. Usually a try to take some time and see if cosplayers have a moment to step off to the side for a variety of pics. We didn’t have too much time for these ones, and they’d turned out darker than I’d hoped but the backdrop seemed to work well.
I loved all the smaller details that made up her dress. Many Nintendo characters have details like these, especially in manual art and concept designs. It’s great to see them being included. This outfit is specifically younger Zelda from Ocarina of Time which many consider to be the highest point of the franchise.
I mostly went for some views to show Zelda looking upward to capture a hopeful emotion. She definitely deserves credit for making those images stand out since as you can see in the first image below, the cosplayer was quite calm and happy but got right into an intense emotional gaze for the looking up photos.
Next I wanted to try out a curtsey since Zelda is a princess after all. I figured it would be a nice greeting photo and took it from a bit higher to emphasize the motion.
Lastly I tried out a couple magical poses. I think similar concepts have been used in Zelda games before and I thought it added a good sense of urgency to a basic action photo. Perhaps it’s just a healing spell being cast in haste to save a friend, or maybe she’s preparing a shield spell to block an incoming attack. I found it captured the innocents of a youthful Zelda.
And that’s it! Thank you for checking out our first Cosplay Spotlight and I hope you’ll look forward to future updates down the road. We’ve collected a wonderful collection of talented cosplayers creations and I look forward to sharing them with you.
