Destiny 2 Cosplayer Willow Interview – Impress Guardians with hauntingly real Savathun
At Destiny 2 is savathun officially arrived in the real world. On Bungie Day, July 7th, the developer showed the blatant Witch Queen cosplays on its website. Including one from Willow Creative, which impressed the community in advance with the epic animations of their Savathun. MyMMO spoke to her.
Who is actually the cosplayer Willow Creative? Bungie announced in May that it would challenge a total of 9 talented cosplayers from around the world to compete against each other. You should finally bring the witch queen to life. Among the participants was Willow Creative from the Netherlands.
Completely free in the specifications, she took part in Bungie’s “Cosplay Cosmodrome” competition and repeatedly showed the interested community the progress of her own interpretation of the witch queen via social media. And they really had it all.
Impressively realistic movements: The Destiny 2 community was already impressed by the first pictures of Willow’s Savathun mask. Above all, the players found their mechanics extremely well done. It looked damn real what Willow was shaping with creative mechanisms.
MeinMMO spoke to Willow and asked her how such implementations and ideas came about in the first place.
MyMMO: You started cosplaying in 2012. How did you come to turn your hobby into a job?
Willow Creative: Back then, in 2012, I was studying at a university […] Biotechnology. I did some cosplay and crafting alongside my favorite video games like Pokemon, and then some friends asked me to make birthday gifts for some money. It was quite popular and the circle kept growing to the point that I ended up making entire cosplays and props. After garnering a bit of attention online over the past few years, I was then able to pick and choose the best commissions to work on and this has allowed me to pursue my craft full-time!
MyMMO: Now Bungie has asked you to create your own version of Savathun for the competition with Cosplay Cosmodrome: Is this your first encounter with the space shooter and is this your first Destiny cosplay?
Willow Creative: I’m an avid fan of the Halo series and grew up playing Halo 2, 3, Halo Wars, Reach and most other Halo games. Now I have little time for video games as I’m older and busier and that’s why I didn’t choose the Destiny games. But I love keeping up to date with the news and many followers immediately messaged me to cosplay Savathun once the expansion and the Witch Queen were revealed. They were sure that this character would be a great monster costume that I could make!
Of course, when Bungie asked me if I really wanted to do Savathun after all the fan requests, I couldn’t resist tackling the monster project.
MyMMO: When you create a cosplay, do you just study the character to learn more about their facial expressions and poses, or do you also have an idea of their personality? What do you think of Bungie’s Goddess of the Flock?
Willow Creative: It’s always important to me to add a little extra flair to the character cosplay, in the form of expression or animation of the costume, so that it’s less of a “statue” and more so that people can really believe that the character in our dimension is… comes to life when you see the costume.
So I watched all the trailers and the Hive Goddess story and her voice and animation was very captivating. I was sure I would incorporate them into my project and I’m definitely going to incorporate some voice overs from videos into my costume as well.
The witch queen is known to be a real “beauty”, especially when it comes to movement and her facial movements. This could be admired again and again, especially in the trailers for the Destiny DLC “The Witch Queen”.
MyMMO: With Savathun, Bungie has set you a tight time limit with Bungie Day on July 7th. But how long does it usually take to make such an elaborate, mechanical costume unless it’s a competition?
Willow Creative: Usually such a large project is often interrupted by smaller projects and can take several months depending on motivation and other paid work I need to do. Since this time it is a commissioned project, it had top priority over all other tasks. Although in the 6 weeks it took me to complete Savathun I also completed a few smaller projects to split the work up a bit.
Doing multiple projects at the same time helps me stay motivated and not burn out on a single long project that takes hundreds of hours, and many hours aren’t very interesting.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to finish her epic animated costume perfectly, so Savathun only has normal wings and no animated wings.
In Destiny, by the way, there were some impressive cosplays by players before that. Here are 10 that also look straight out of the game:
10 stunning Destiny 2 cosplays that look straight out of the game
MyMMO: You’ve already made quite an impact on the Destiny community with the early releases of your Savathun mask. Can we expect your Savathun to get movable wings too?
Willow Creative: Due to the relatively tight deadline, I was not able to implement any moveable wings to my satisfaction. I tried some ideas, but in the end it was too difficult for me to create a reasonable version for Savathun (which also looks good). But I’ll get back to moving wings for future projects very soon!
MyMMO: Is there something you learned while cosplaying that you wish someone had told you when you started?
Willow Creative: For the first 5 years of cosplay I was on my own, didn’t get much help and didn’t do much research. I just let off steam in my small student room with paper and paint. While those times were nice and easy, I wish I had started posting my work online sooner to get feedback and follow other artists who are sharing their progress online.
There is now so much more material, guides, videos and books for cosplay. So if you want to grow as a cosplayer, advance in your craft, get online and don’t hold back with researching and asking as many questions as you can! It’s also amazing to see how people online are responding to your craft and loving the things you make, and it’s very satisfying to see all of this positive attitude towards fandom and online communities.
In any case, we’re excited to see where Willow’s Savathun is going to develop and we’re looking forward to being able to admire the movable wings. If you’d like to see more interpretations of the Witch Queen from the competition, you can find them in the last one This Week at Bungie Blog.
What do you think of the Savathun cosplay? Do you think it was successful or do you have any feedback that you would like to share? Then leave Willow and us a comment.
Reference-mein-mmo.de