The Twins, Dead by Daylight - Part 2

The bulk of the Twins cosplay was a challenge considering my skills and experience, but the head (and arms and legs, as I'll mention later) were much more comfortable to work on. I love working with liquid latex and creating all kinds of weird scars and wounds and bumps, especially on my face. I can't even blame my stage makeup class in college for that. We worked solely with paints; for the one project that needed hair attachments, we used spirit gum. But somehow I ended up experimenting with it later in life and got hooked.

Are there other options? Yes. Are they better? Absolutely. Will I continue to use liquid latex? Of course. It's cheap, easy to layer and paint on, and sticks pretty well. Fair warning if you haven't used it though: it stinks to high heaven, and you will need a good eight layers if you want to build a prosthetic that can be reattached to your body (as seen with my Nero cosplay earlier in 2023 and my Plague face scaring from NYCC 2019).

But first, the hat.

For such a simple design, this took me forever to make.

This was the one part of the project where I wish I would have taken some extra time to template either the fabric or the foam reinforcement. The design itself is fairly simple. It almost looks like Charlotte cut off part of a pant leg and put it on her head. The problem was that part of it was stiff and needed to sit a certain way, and I couldn't measure it to my head because I was going to be wearing a wig that hadn't arrived yet. I knew I was going to use the leftover fabric from the apron. But I had the materials to make a prototype, and I should have taken a day or two to get it positioned correctly.

I ended up draping the fabric over some leftover craft foam that was the right height and angle but that should have been connected to form one piece to avoid having a gap between them. This made the hat sit a little funny the day of the shoot and I was at pains to fix it. Luckily the rest was easy. The band was made from a strap from the apron, so I didn't have to add fake stitches, and I chose fabric that had some edging seams to build the two flaps in front of the ears. Then the edges were ripped using the razor and painted like the rest of the cosplay.

The wig was a cheap find off of Amazon since I knew I was going to be mutilating it anyway. I got an old shower curtain, laid it on the floor in front of the bathroom vanity, and started hacking away until it resembled Charlotte's hair. There was a little bit of thinning for the bangs and the hair around the hat flaps since her hair seems to be very fine. Beyond that, I straightened everything and the wig was done! I was able to attach the hat with a couple of small bobby pins, hidden underneath the hat itself by sewing a few extra strips of fabric to the underside.

On to the makeup! I did a test for this one just before the wig came in because Charlotte's scars had the potential to be tricky. Two run from her lip up to her cheeks on either side, one runs from her eyebrow to hairline, and one of her cheeks also had a bit of a pit in the center. None of them ended up being challenging, though I will say that the Kangaroo liquid latex, which I've been buying since 2022 , worked way better than the bottle I bought at Spirit Halloween and the Mehron bottle I'd acquired at some point (though that one may have just been old). In the case of the scars, I drew a line with the latex where they would be, and then added a few additional layers to give it some depth. I also dabbed a little on the chin and other cheek to give it a little bit of texture for the paint. Latex mixed with some toilet paper allowed me to create the pit on the destroyed cheek.

Once everything was dry, I peeled the edges of the latex back a bit on the scar lines. That makes it easier to keep the painted lines straight when adding color, and it helps to add more depth and texture. All of the marks were colored with black and brown eyeshadow. Some Mehron red face paint was dabbed onto the mottled spots as well as the cheek wound, and some Kryolan white paints that I really need to throw out were used to add some highlights to the scars and the cheek pits. The key to all of this was to layer slowly and try not to overdo any one area.

Scar layer was first, then a light coat of foundation to even everything out. Chapped lips are just me, unfortunately.

Colors were then layered into the scars, and some redness was added elsewhere as a highlight.

The final layer was some shadows around the nose, mouth, and chin to create a double chin effect, as well as a stylish unibrow.

The final result! Contacts are from Ohmykitty4u, and I could see surprisingly well out of them.

I didn't take any photos off the process because my hands were covered in latex and paint, but the gore on Charlotte's arms and legs were a very similar process to the face. The different was that I didn't try nearly as hard to match the model. I simply layered thicker rolls of toilet paper along with the latex around parts of my forearms (I shaved my arms prior to this - do everything in your power to make sure latex does not touch any hair on your body or you will have a painful time removing it), and then randomly painted in and around the grooves. These were painted with Mehron Creamblend sticks that I had from my Nero bodypaint.

The decaying leg ended up just being the darker gray paint with a few smudges of the green. I didn't want to go too crazy with it because that's not a focal point of the character design, and I was also beyond ready to photograph by this point because I had been painting my body for three hours and I still hadn't put the costume on. Notes for next time - make mesh sleeves and leggings and paint/build on top of those. That way only the feet and hands need to be painted, and the edges of the mesh would be covered by the shoes and lacerations around the wrists.

And that was it! Overall, the project took roughly two months and took four hours to put on. Part of me wants to redo parts of this cosplay because I have some friends that want to do a Dead by Daylight photoshoot. Part of me wants to make a new one from scratch because I know exactly what I would do differently, and Twins cosplayers are few in number. And part of me wants desperately to just chuck all of these pieces in the trash and call it a day. Which means it was a very successful build for me. If I'm not 100% over it by the time I'm editing photos, I didn't put enough of myself into the project.

(I am most likely to redo parts of it because I have some fantastic ideas for a shoot with my friends' Ghostface and Jason Voorhees, and I would have help getting into the costume, but I cannot shave my arms again just for some latex.)

I'm not sure when I'll do another DbD cosplay, but it might be a good bit unless I pull a Plague and do some gross milkbath photoshoot. Which is always a possibility with me. Regardless, I'm glad I did this one. Charlotte and Victor mean something to me in a very weird way. I appreciate that they helped me to heal and helped me to focus. If only they had reminded me to wear bug spray during this shoot....

Until next time, nerds!