The Twins, Dead by Daylight - Part 1

I haven't actually played Dead by Daylight since the Ghostface chapter was released - being camped and tunneled off hook four of your first five matches will do that - but I've continued to watch for updates because I'm in love with the character design. Even the licensed characters feel unique to this game's version. But it's the original characters that really speak to me, and the Twins spoke very, very loudly.

I was already interested when I heard they would be from France. My dad's side of the family can trace their ancestry to the Lorraine region. We're firmly American at this point, but I still feel a slight connection to characters from countries where branches of my family tree have come from. (This also includes the Deathslinger in game since he's Irish, though his weapon defines him and I'm awful at making weapons.) Finding out that the core character model would be a woman got me even more excited. And then they released the full model, and I was both excited and nervous.

How the hell do you make a costume where half of a body is sticking out of your chest?

I'm not talking about things like the chest-busting alien from the Alien franchise. Those can generally be strapped onto the body and then covered up with clothing or armor. Charlotte has her brother coming straight out of her bare chest with clothing hanging loosely from her opposite shoulder. There's no easy way to make that prosthetic with the skill level and resources that I had.

Their chapter came out at the end of 2020. I purchased a couple of things to get started, namely a skin tone leotard and a creepy baby prop for a car window, but that was it. I just couldn't figure out how I wanted to attach Victor's body. Plus I was still trying to get my head around being a homeowner as well as competing with everyone else in the county for home improvement items (thanks, covid). I kept both pieces out in view in case I found the motivation to start it, but that didn't pop up until early 2023.

Two things factored into my decision. 1) I was financially exhausted from home projects and needed to cut back on cosplay purchases, so I wanted to focus on things I had already started/bought for. And 2) I had a breast cancer scare, which in a twisted way drew me to Charlotte in particular while I was healing. The radiologist had found a very suspicious pair of lumps during a mammogram and ultrasound (ordered for the opposite breast, but they insisted on scanning both). Within a few days of my 36th birthday, I was having an emergency biopsy. With that came limited movement while I recovered, which threw some cosplay plans into question. Luckily both tumors were benign, but one still had to come out, and that procedure was going to be more involved. And though I was able to finish the Griffon cosplay shortly after surgery, I was suddenly very motivated to finally complete the Twins once I was fully recovered.

I decided to find a way to attach the baby prop to the leotard and then try to paint it to match my skin tone. Charlotte's chest is a mess of blood and viscera and wounds, so even if the color didn't quite match (spoiler: it didn't), there would be enough to distract from the difference. The baby prop was one of those that hangs in a car window and looks like the fingers are caught at the top. The face was close to Victor's character model, and the arms were bent in a way that would work for the body, so I cut those pieces and attached them to the fabric with several types of glue. A portion of Victor's head was also sewn on. If anything came off of the fabric, I wasn't interested in reattaching it. So I took no chances.

The face was marked up where foam clay would be added to distort the face and teeth even more.

This is a totally normal thing.

Once the head and arms were attached and tugged at to make sure they stayed in place, I added foam clay to start forming Victor's distortions. The foam in the mouth was cut to resemble sharp teeth, and eye was added to his forehead, and ridges were molded around the other eyes to make parts of the skull protrude. I also added half of a bucket of foam clay around the edges of the marked parts as well as between the head and the arms. That part was surprisingly easy. Victor is basically sticking out of a hole in Charlotte's chest, so everything could be rough and stuck in weird spots. The only tricky part was underneath the right hand. It was basically flush with the fabric, but I needed to be able to move it so I could attach other things later, so it couldn't stick to the clay I added around it. A few paint brushes to hold it up, and we were good to go. And as a bonus, the clay worked as an additional adhesive. That baby wasn't going anywhere.

Not Fun Fact: I had a fall shortly before this photo and put my teeth through my lip, so my chin is still very bruised and sore. I was so very tired.

Once Victor was shaped and dry, it was time to add the dress and apron. I wanted to get a sense of the entire base before I did any painting, mostly so I could try and get the skin tone to match before I started adding gore. But it also helped to see where the dress would fall in comparison to Victor's, uh, home, so I could add more clay and make some shaping adjustments to better match the model. I will never, ever go for 100% accuracy with my cosplays. I think it's silly outside of competition or a paid sponsorship where you're aiming for it, especially for horror characters. But I don't mind making little changes to get closer to the original model or drawing.

My chin was mostly better by this point. My exhaustion levels, less so.

I didn't get quite the same tone as my skin in the end (and about seven layers of paint later), but the pinkish tone looked the closest under different kinds of lighting, so that's what I went for. Once I had that over the entire front and a good portion of the back, I moved on to Victor. His skin tone is a little gray compared to Charlotte's in game, so I added a touch of gray and yellow to his paints to make him stand out a little. Then it was just a matter of layers - shading, highlighting, sores, and wounds - until I found something that was close to his game model but also looked decent from far away.

I also started distressing Charlotte's clothing. The dress, shirt, and apron were thrift store finds. Most of the rips and tears were from a razor blade. One difficulty with using cheaper fabrics, though, is their tendency to curl when cut. You can see in the above image that several parts of the dress and undershirt are curled in several spots. Normally I'd let them go, but in this case, I actually had to get some fabric starch and an iron and smooth them out. Every edge was going to have dirt and/or blood at a later stage and that's hard to add when the fabric is folding in on itself.

Time to get juicy.

Yes, I get caught up on wrestling shows and news while I work on cosplays.

Once everything was in place, it was time to layer on the blood, dirt, gore, and wounds to both Charlotte and Victor's perch. General wear and tear was a combination of tea water and watered down paint. It can be a little like watercolor painting; you want the color to feather out or drip in a way that suggests something gross got into the fabric and just soaked in. The hole and wounds were just straight acrylic paints layered and painted into some cracks and crevices caused by the leotard to try and mask them.

The rope was some standard roll from the local Lowe's, but I spent waaaaaaaaay too much time painting dark brown paint into the creases to highlight them. I will say that while it was a little soul-sucking because it was a lot of rope, it was a project that could be done from pretty much anywhere in the house, and the pop really did make a huge difference in the end. I will still never do that again.

Charlotte's rope winding pattern took a very long time to decipher, so I did end up cutting a few pieces to attach directly to the leotard for my sanity. There was no way I was going to be able to mark the places where the rope would need to be stuck to the suit and the basket, and then also get it on myself. Two pieces were cut to go around the neck, which also hid the seaming for that part of the leotard. I also attached some pieces to the shoulders, although the bare shoulder ended up being replaced by the long rope used to anchor the back basket because it was easier to put on. The longest piece was wound around the waist.

This was by far my most hated part of the project, and not just because I was at my 80% mark and losing steam.

At least the tea set that sits on top of the basket was easy enough to paint and attach.

I do not have words to describe how much I hated working on the basket. It came down to three factors: 1) We were at the 80% completion part of the project, which is when my brain rapidly loses interest and wants to be done so we can get to photos and posts; 2) the basket itself was very difficult to create, and the size was going to have to be different than Charlotte's model because she's huge and I am the opposite; and 3) there is no easy way to attach something like this to the back, even with velcro and magnets and anything else you can come up with, when you are putting everything together (and on) yourself and don't have access to the most helpful resources.

The basket ended up being a hamper that I bought for cheap on Amazon because it was closest to the color and size, though I still had to cut a strip from the side and the bottom. A piece of foam mat was attached just below the opening, and then I glued some leftover basket grass from Easter baskets to mimic the straw. A painted kids tea set (a full size would have been too heavy and also wouldn't have fit in my smaller basket) was also glued to the top.

I was less successful with finding kids cooking kits that came with a decent size frying pan, so I had to make the worst foam pan known to man. I'm throwing it in a fire pit the second I know I don't need to wear this cosplay again. (As of right now, some friends and I are looking to do a DbD photoshoot later in the year, so I'm not ready to give this up yet.) I also used foam to throw some rusty tools and rotting meat together, painted with the same acrylics and dry brushed with light brown and brick red to create the rust and dried blood effects. A roll of heavily discounted fabric from Joann's, also quickly painted to add dirt, sweat, and blood, polished off the basket.

One long piece of rope was attached with magnets and velcro to keep the basket somewhat angled on my back, and in a way that allowed me to put it on myself. I advise against this if you are ever in a similar situation with a back prop. If you are in any way able to get a friend to help you, please do. Neither sticky option was that great, though they worked well enough to take a bunch of photos and videos, and they likely would have worked so much better if I had someone else to help line everything up. If you do end up creating something like this knowing you won't have help, splurge for bigger and stronger magnets.

Finally, I didn't take any photos, but the shoes were just scraps of the green dress fabric glued onto a pair of sandals that were worn, oddly enough, for a different DbD cosplay. I wasn't as worried about the shoes since Charlotte's footwear could barely be considered shoes, and they're torn to shreds in her model, but I was filming outdoors and needed to have something.

The final cosplay, minus the basket, which was still drying at the time of the photo.

Whew, that was a long three months! Next post will be about the head - the wig, hat, and makeup - as well as some notes about the shoot. On to Part 2!