Ninon from King of Fighters: Maximum Impact 2

King of Fighters is a fighting game similar to Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, etc. Ninon is a cute unlockable character introduced in Maximum Impact. This is an alternate version of her costume.
My friend Christa said that she and her friends were organizing a King of Fighters group for AnimeExpo 2007. I had played and enjoyed KOF, but I didn’t really like any of the costume designs until she showed me this alternate version of Ninon I had never seen before. I didn’t really think it would be a great idea to try and tackle this with only a mere three weeks until the con. But somehow, the more I thought about it the more I became obsessed with finishing it. I loved the design too much.
Construction. This thing is kind of my pièce de cosplay resistance; well, next to Dr. Mrs. the Monarch anyhow, so as with that costume I could write a novel on the insanity that ensued when I decided to make this. As outlined above, I had three weeks to make this costume, and I was also working 60 hours a week at my soul crushing summer job as a clerk at the Post Office. I could tell many depressing/hilarious tales of my time there, but I digress. For those three weeks before AX, I would wake up at 7, go to work, get home at 7, and then work on this costume until 4 in the morning, when I would go to bed – squeezing time to go to the gym, eat, and play guitar somewhere in between.

I started my way at the top and worked my way down. Styling the wig and making the hairbows was easy. The kimono was quite easy too – I just altered a kimono pattern to have longer sleeves and added lace. It’s also short so it tucks into the obi, and the bottom half is separate from it. I didn’t know how to screenprint back then, so I wracked my brains trying to think of how to get the skull images on those sleeves. A lot of things crossed my mind: like making a stencil somehow, or printing them out and then tracing the images, but all that bullshit would have been too time consuming to figure out. In the end, I just ended up eye balling the reference pictures, drawing the images freehand onto the fabric with tailor’s chalk, and then painting them myself using acrylic paint mixed with textile medium. I had to do both sides of each sleeve, which is four paintings total.
The bottom half of the costume is three pieces. The obi (belt) is attached to the two triangles of fabric hanging on the sides, and closes in back with a separating zipper. The bow is detachable and clips on with metal snaps. The shorts (and yes, she’s wearing shorts not a pleated skirt, trust me I spent way too long looking at these pictures) have a flap of fabric attached at the back that sticks out from beneath the triangles in back. The legwarmers were basically made by tracing my legs, and the sandals I bought and then altered.
I also wear long red fake nails, and red contacts with this, which means my hands are all but useless and the edges of my vision are red. I got the contacts from CosplayLab

Pictures by Consplayers and others

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