While at PAX East this year, I had the fortune of meeting LadySnip3r at our Epic Games panel.  Her female COG armor was fantastic and she has a lot of great knowledge to share about how she created it.  Here’s what she had to say about her COG cosplay and her experience at PAX East:

My name is Amanda McGinnis, known in the online world as LadySnip3r, and I am a huge Gear-head. I decided to take my love of Gears of War to the next level by creating my own Cog armor. Now I have to preface this by saying that I’m a relatively new cosplayer. I started last year at PAX East 2011 and became hooked. This costume was my first ever attempt at armor, and I probably bit off a lot more than I could chew.

When I first started planning this costume, I was going to be Anya. I then realized that I really didn’t want to wear a wig or dye my hair. My next option was Sam, but I have the pastiest skin color and could never do justice to Sam’s olive tone. After realizing that I didn’t really look like any character, I started to get pessimistic about the whole idea – but then it hit me: I was going to make my own armor. My logic was that there had to be other female Cogs in the war on Sera, I just had to use similar shapes in my armor design as the other characters. Using Anya and Sam (And even a little Carmine) as references, I began creating my armor.

Most of the costume was actually made by re-purposing children’s sporting pads. I used baby shin guards as my gauntlets, knee pads as armor on my shoulder straps, and even ski boots as my huge Cog boots. The rest of my armor (such as the chest and back pieces) were made from cardboard. I shaped the cardboard accordingly and added plumping accessories and craft foam to add details. I then fiber glassed the entire thing so it’s hard. After all that, I spray painted all of my armor and added hand painted details and some splashes of blood.

I wore this costume to PAX East earlier this month and was so happy about the recognition it received. I had a great time at the Epic panel, where I saw quite a few other Gears cosplayers. We had an impromptu shoot outside of the panel and those pictures are some of my favorite of PAX. I also attended the Epic cosplay meet-up, where Gears fans and cosplayers got the chance to meet and take some photos with Cliff Bleszinski and Mike Capps.  I got them to sign my retro lancer and it is now proudly hanging in my game room.

I had an absolute blast making this costume and showing it off at PAX. I’m hoping to make some adjustments to the chest piece and do a Gears of War themed photo-shoot soon.

You can see more of LadySnip3r’s amazing costumes on her Deviant Art page or check out her blog posts on her website Assassionista!