hey everybody adam savage at new york comic con i'm in the javits center but more importantly i'm
standing next to jenna in an incredible costume you oh my goodness it's really really beautiful
you are azula yes but this is your interpretation so it's not quite my interpretation but what they
sometimes will do um with different characters i love the character of azulla she's such an
interesting villain that they'd really get to portray and really poke around and you know she's
you know kind of goes into such interesting arc and sometimes different artists will draw
different interpretations of her design so this is actually designed by an artist named hannah
alexander okay and i like to kind of imagine this as what if a different version of the show where
she became the fire lord you know i love that i love that mashup of just like you love this part
you love that part i want to bring it together so tell me about this costume tell me about the
process of putting it in yeah absolutely so i made this a little bit ago and essentially when i like
to build cosplays i my favorite thing to do is to just learn about new stuff and figure out what i
can do so a lot of this was brand new i've never done it before i'll do a ton of research and just
figure it out um so a lot of things you know like uh working through and i built made a corset for
the first time which i'd never done before thank god for online tutorials everyone who makes them
is a godsend um doing some uh ombre dyeing where you start in the fabric originally was this red
color at the very bottom and then slowly applying different dyes to the silk so it stays darker as
you get up towards the top to kind of blend in oh my god it's beautiful tell me more that's
incredible yeah so it's it's uh it's very delicate to try to go through and work on so i by no means
i'm an expert in this there's a lot of just experimentation it's a lot of science project
work but being able to kind of go through and it's just essentially just slowly being able to kind of
keep the fabric even and dot put it into the dye pot and you kind of smell and so you're doing it
in successively shallower layers but darker exactly so the darker parts of the top of my
skirt went in first into the die paw and then you just kind of move it through from there to
be able to kind of create that gradient so it's a lot of fun oh so it's one dark color and you're
slowly pulling it out you're slowly putting it in so that way the piece at the top of my waist is
actually sat in the die for the longest amount of time so it's ah the time to absorb the most color
that sounds terrifying did you do that after you sewed the skirt so i did you don't always have to
do that but for me because i was matching all the different seams together it was really important
yeah and that leads to my other fun thing is this the first time i ever worked with silks
and so i sewed them you know the way i always sew fabric and then i touched them and i tried
it and i put it on and it disintegrated i was like oh because silk frays so much more and i
didn't realize you have to reinforce the fabric especially when you're putting it in a dye bath
which is hot and aggressive and agitated temperatures so fun things you learn i was
like all right you're my new friend the zig zag stitch on your machine that's what that's for so
so you do go into silicon you think it's just like any other cloth and it has all these other
products yeah that's the interesting thing is there's always so much more to learn and figure
out so working with a lot of this is a lot of difficult fabrics so i definitely i have the thing
where i love to like well this looks cool i have no idea how i'll make it work but it looks cool
so like working with velvet for the first time was also a time because it just sort of puffs
everywhere yeah yeah you always know when you work with velvet because it will stay with you
much like glitter like glitter is one of the herpes of crafting yeah the glitter yeah the
fabric the herpes of fabric tell me about uh the corset because i'm curious did you have help when
you were trying it on because i i have a hard time imagining someone building a corset and putting it
on repeatedly yeah so when you build these through um what do you typically do is sort of work with a
mock-up so it is helpful to have a friend i don't i typically live alone when kind of when i craft i
do it all by myself so it's a lot of very careful work of being able to practice and put things on
having a dress form to sort of help pin things to sure also incredibly useful but it's really
just a lot of trial and error and i think it's always helpful to be mindful of when they build
things like the commercial patterns is that everyone's body is going to be shaped a little
bit differently and it's also how comfortable you want to be so like i didn't build this so i had
like this itty bitty teeny tiny waist but it's there because it's nice for the support of the
the garment so so i'm curious about something like your collar sets really beautifully right there
and i know from because i also work a lot alone without help yeah like sometimes it's really hard
to see how something will fall on me talk about that a little bit yeah i mean the mock-up is sort
of your best friend so every time i make something the most important thing for me is always the
maneuverability am i going to be comfortable in it because i've made things before and you're like
i'm perfect and now i don't move everyone please come to me thank you i will be here just put me
on wheels and roll me so you have to be able to move and breathe and fabric so i feel like being
able to have that and with the with neck pieces in particular i find it's that delicate balance
of how high do you actually need the collar to be because if you put it up too high then suddenly
you're playing this game where you're just constantly poking yourself sorry trying to work
through on some of those pieces versus if you cut it just a little bit it gives the illusion of that
yeah um so kind of being able to modify from a design if you will especially because when
they draw you know artists will have their own interpretation sometimes they'll draw this really
fantastically high color and you're like okay but my neck it's like right of that size it has
to interpret to work with the body that is being offered um did you do your own embroidery here oh
yeah so yeah all of my favorite thing to do on this i figured out when making this costume was
bead work so i had never had a chance to work with beads and so my favorite thing in this costume is
definitely these little ones oh yeah so we made these little dragons so there's one over here
it is an actual dragon so these were my first time working with little tiny seed beads so they're up
on my collar and they're also there through on the sleeve so you're sitting there with a needle and
thread with a needle and thread i individually put all of these into itty bitty little beads on and
you have to be careful because normally when i do things like beadwork like on these guys
it was fine if it was a little bit messy underneath because it's fine you don't
see it behind the fabric uh you can see both sides here in this uh there's nowhere to shine
yeah really nowhere to hide those mistakes so i actually worked on most of the sleeve while i
was on a business trip i was flying back and forth to london and so i literally just had them out and
was sitting there beating into like on the flight i think the people next to me were just like
i don't know what's going on here but um you know i'll just leave you doing that one so you know
it's just nice to have that quiet time just to sit there and think but it is you know little tiny
meticulous things but it's fun to kind of slowly build and watch this picture come together amaze
the sleeves are incredible that is i had no idea you handed that okay i want to talk about your wig
yeah because it looks to me like you took great care to get it precise and i see old manners wigs
are hard oh my gosh things are really hard and tell me about how how this came yeah so
with azula when i thought about her there's a couple of things that really stood out to me
with her one is her pretty iconic like little widow's peak that she's got going and a lot of
traditional wigs you tend to wear them and they just kind of go on the top of your head and you
typically have like kind of a bang or something there so they just kind of stay on with elastic
and prayer and a lot of bobby pins but when you want a specific hairline you have to use this this
lace front so therefore it's this little piece you have to kind of glue on and get that into place so
a lot of what i did on this wig was i bought one that they sell in the store and it was
a very severe widow's peak a little bit more like raven from teen titans so you have that
very severe piece so what you can do is it's all just little individual hairs that are hand tied
so with ventilation so i re-plucked essentially re-plucked my own hairline kind of like you do
with your eyebrows to get it to be a little bit less aggressively i am here uh and then working
through that and then you can i also went through and on the back of it went to do and re-wefted it
so because a lot of times with an updo the wig fibers aren't made to go that way they lay flat
so when you pull it up it's like like it's like pulling like you know screech on the tires if
that's not the way that's supposed to go so you have to kind of flip things around and move that
over um the attention to detail is inspiring um i i in the illustration you were following
is the eye makeup was the eye makeup part of that or was that you just trying to bring it
out it's definitely a little bit of a part of that so i it's one thing of a combination of
i with with where we are right now what the world is is i don't have it all the
opportunities to wear a lot of makeup so when i was here and i'm in this costume like well
you might as well go all out because it's what kind of sticks out and it's bright and she's so
fiery and colorful and i like the fact you get to kind of play with a lot of those colors because
i don't i mean more people can but i don't tend to go outside in this you know big ta-dah look at
me makeup um the mask yeah now we're all putting masks with our costumes and sometimes it works and
sometimes it doesn't and that's fine but you really feels like if azula had to wear a mask
that's her mask well it was fun because when you're thinking about it trying to look through
all the details so i had actually sewn this corset a while ago so trying to find the right
fabrics and things that i had i was a little bit of like oh gosh what do i have that i can really
make this mask for because when i made her it wasn't season so to speak so now i was kind of
just running through my trim and i found this and i love just a little bit more texture and a little
bit of ways to have fun and what i love about you know cosplaying with masks on is it's kind of one
more thing you get to add in to kind of show who the character is as well as like who you are as
a person and a cosplayer i really appreciate that idea about it because i think that a lot of people
are like oh i got to add this to my costume but i mean the way the the the decoration works above
your nose it almost is like a fanged mouth like there is a villainous aspect to the mask
maybe just a little bit jenna this is so amazing how is do you have a different feeling when you
watch azula on the show now oh goodness there's definitely a little bit of that i love being
in azula because one the reactions you get when you do like characters and just being a villain
is so fun because you can sort of just be a little smirk a little you know way over a little how high
it's just fun to kind of embody that character and obviously the lines and the
you know she's very iconic it makes me always at some point it's like man i wish my hair these hair
like grew back so you can do like that thing where she cuts her bangs off and kind of goes off the
the deep end slight spoilers for avatar sorry um but it's always really fun to get to do that and
sort of play with who the character is and how you interpret her can you show us one of your
azula poses oh goodness we can try to attempt they're not particularly dynamic i usually will
try to do some like fire bending but it's very difficult but fortunately we have some moves in
here for the piece so you can kind of go through and channel that lightning up in and through
jenna amazing work it's really inspiring thank you so much for watching thank you so much
incredible all right yes have a great call you as well