Huntress in the Bayou - July 23rd, 2019

Page contains affiliate links

Use code KITEERA for a discount on Hunt: Showdown and its DLC content at shop.crytek.com

In anticipation of the release of female hunters in the game Hunt: Showdown, I've been working on a female hunter cosplay since the end of May! Thanks to Crytek, I had a sneak peek at some of the tier 3 hunter designs, and chose one to bring to life.

My favorite aspect of working on a cosplay is weathering/distressing. Seeing how dirty and muddy hunters in this game can get, I was more than a little excited to get this ball rolling.

The very first thing I did was consider materials for the largest, and to me, the most important part: The hooded cloak. I wasn't happy with any of the fabrics I found in stores, so I contacted Cindy with Spotted Pony Traders and had a look at their genuine deerskin leather. I picked out three of the largest hides I could find, took them home, and stared at them in awe before I got to work.

When dealing with expensive materials, I always make muslin mock-ups.

After I was happy with the shape, it was time... to cut the leather.

Oh dang! It's starting to look like a thing!

Taking shape! This was before I tweaked the hood a bit.

For making the bottom look nice and torn up, I just took scissors to it and cut it all to hell!

Look at that TEXTURE!

I wasn't liking how the hood sat, so I tweaked it.

Initial round of weathering! It looks like a hot mess here. The acrylic paint looks... well, bad. However, I wanted to start with a good amount on there. After letting the paint dry, I ran the leather through the washing machine (gentle cycle) several times, at times adding a bit more paint here and there and letting it dry before washing it again.

The result was more than satisfactory.

Whoa dang.

How did I apply all the paint? Paper towels. I bunched one up, dipped it lightly into the paint, patted excess paint off, then applied! I used new paper towels as needed when the previous one got too soggy.

I didn't have luck finding plain, dark brown pants that I liked. So, I bought blue jeans and dyed them. First I used Rit color remover (it will not remove all color from jeans FYI). It lightened them up enough before I put them into a dark brown dye bath.

Ta-daaa!

Time for belt pieces!

This is flimsy, and sad. Must fix!

I added 2mm craft foam to the inside to really give it shape.

Much better!

For the belts, I bought a few. I had to rip parts from one belt to use for another, and had to get a little creative for some bits.

For parts that I needed to paint gold, I just used a gold leafing pen.

Here's the little bit that wraps around the waist, just above the pants. I just used a fairly sturdy dark brown fabric.

Little more weathering! I used slightly watered down acrylic paint and spritzed it on.

Boots!

I bought these from Boot Barn, in distressed brown.

I weathered the pants with the paper towel method. I added a little bit of paint at a time, and layered on more as I saw fit. With the leather, I went fairly heavy with the paint initially since I put it through the washing machine after, to give that faded look.

I got the revolver prop from a shop called shootandscoot on Etsy (you can also visit their site at http://www.shootandscoot.co.uk). Here's how it looked when it arrived.

Initial painting done.

BOOM. Weathering.

After this point, it was down to putting everything together, and seeing how it all looked!

And there you go! Thanks for taking a look at the process behind my female hunter cosplay, from the game Hunt: Showdown. This project was fun to work on, and I'm super grateful that I was given the opportunity to work on this when I did.

Another HUGE thank to Crytek, and thank you David Love for working with me on photos!

See you guys in the bayou!

-Kiteera