Curiosities of Cosplay: ExShadow

(Originally published Winter 2018)

It’s late on the east coast, and I’m watching in real time as Kyle Mathis – known mostly online as ExShadow – types his extensive replies to my interview questions. “It was a nice break from my vectoring,” he assures me when I voice concern over taking time out of the busy schedule he balances between a day job with Arda Wigs and his cosplay work. He is vectoring metal details for a Red Mage cosplay he is designing and sewing for a friend. Surely the only explanation for the time he finds for all his projects is a summoning of the primal Alexander itself to stop time. Or perhaps it’s his admirable dedication to his work, both personal and professional. After reading his interview, I believe you’ll find the latter far more likely.

Tell us a little about yourself! How did you get your start cosplaying?

ExShadow: You could say from the beginning. Even when I was in elementary school I wanted to make costumes. I would cut up an old coat and put gloves on my feet to be King Kong, or make a mecha Godzilla box and tin foil costume. I always asked my parents to buy me extra halloween makeup so I could save it and use it throughout the year.

Fast forwarding to late high school I was starting to put together closet costumes, and then in college I started to learn how to sew and craft. That was 12 or 13 years ago now, it’s all been downhill from there!

2) There are dozens of beautiful armor and class gear sets in Final Fantasy XIV. What drew you to this particular Dark Knight design?

ExShadow: Well actually, this armor set and the announcement of Dark Knight is what brought me to the game. My wife had already been playing for a few months, and they had just announced this new class with spiky gothic armor and a huge ass sword. That’s basically my aesthetic so I decided to hop in and give FFXIV a try. I started a half year before Heavensward dropped, so I played as Warrior before switching to Dark Knight. I was probably one of the first people in Balmung to get the full set of Chaos gear. I never missed a week of capping out on Tomes, I just had to have that gear! And of course I went the extra mile and upgraded all items so they could be dyed. I’ve tried other glamours for my DRK over the years since then but I always come back to that set. So naturally it had to be my first major cosplay from FFXIV.

The depth of color and texture in your Dark Knight armor is truly stunning, and my personal favorite detail. Is there a part of your Dark Knight cosplay that you’re most proud of? Anything that was more difficult than you expected?

ExShadow: I would say that my favorite part of the costume is a tie between the paint job and the patterning. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Illustration and I’ve been an artist my whole life, so when I started diving more heavily into cosplay and armor crafting in particular, that knowledge and experience gave me an edge. Cosplay is a very different medium from what I was taught in school, but I still love the aspects of it that tie directly to drawing and painting.

Dark Knight was my first foray into worbla, so I would say that was a fair challenge to overcome. There are some parts I’d still like to go back and revisit because of my lack of experience with the material at the time.

Your Dark Knight cosplay is mostly armor, but you’ve mentioned that you’re designing a Red Mage cosplay for a friend, which is a lot more sewing and cloth patterning. Your portfolio displays a stunning range of armor and cloth costumes, but do you generally enjoy creating one over the other?

ExShadow: I would say that I favor armor and mascot outfits over full sewing projects mostly because I enjoy tackling really epic and often times insane costumes. But a lot of times armor or mascots will still involve a fair amount of sewing as well, so it gives me a nice balance. Having those sewing sessions in between crazier armor and prop build sessions can be pretty relaxing after so many years of practice with it. There are about a million ways to create a set of armor or a giant prop, but there are a set number of techniques for sewing, so a lot of the mental stress is reduced.

When you started cosplaying, did you ever imagine you would one day develop resources for other cosplayers like your armor pattern through Simplicity and the Au Ra horns you’re currently designing?

ExShadow: Never in a thousand years! When I was little I wanted to be a paleontologist because of Jurassic Park. I was obsessed with dinosaurs! But when my art really started to develop my parents encouraged me to pursue it as a career choice. By the end of college however, I was pretty burned out on traditional art just from my education, so I was a bit lost. I ended up doing small time jobs for a while until Malinda (my wife) and I were hired by Arda Wigs. Working there gave us the financial stability to pour more time and effort into our costuming projects. Over the years of cosplaying I learned a lot of things and made a lot of connections. Simplicity was a connection I was able to make through work, and I was very happy to have such an amazing opportunity. 

Are there other resources you would like to develop?

ExShadow: Always! With every single costume project I have ever taken on, I have always challenged myself to learn a new material or technique. I continue to strive for improvement even now, and I hope to become a true master of all areas in costuming eventually. The Au Ra horns and scales I am currently making are actually the first steps for a prop business I plan to launch soon. Keep an eye out for Mountain Tortoise on Etsy; I’ll be making a lot more FFXIV related props besides horns!

I imagine working with Arda Wigs has been a great way to connect with creators across the spectrum of the cosplay community. Have any particular opportunities allowed you to tackle cosplay projects you might not have taken on otherwise?

ExShadow: Quite a few actually! I made Ganondorf from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess as a collaborative effort with many of my coworkers so that we could do a makeup and prosthetics demo at Dragoncon last year. We repeated the demo this year at C2E2. It was a lot of hard work but also a lot of fun! Similarly the year before I contributed to a Splicer group from Bioshock, and we did a Makeup demo at Dragoncon and C2E2. Both projects were a blast for me, and I hope to be able to do more awesome collaborations with my friends and coworkers in the future.

Your intricate and detailed cosplays require knowledge in every aspect of the cosplay process: prop-making, sewing and patterning, wig styling, photoshoots, even drawing and vectoring. You’ve most recently started working with LED lights to bring your Deathbringer Ultima sword to life for Fanfest! Which part of cosplay creation has had the steepest learning curve for you, or been the most interesting?

ExShadow: I feel that every costume tends to bring about new challenges and more than a few steep learning curves. Dark Knight was my second full set of armor but my first with worbla, so the familiarity in constructing an armored costume was challenged with the new material. Mascot projects always require me to change my proportions to fit the character, so that tends to give me plenty of obstacles. In any of my costumes I have to consider how hot I may get, and I have continued to learn new ways to prevent myself from dying of heatstroke. Comfort is something that I used to think of last, but have really started to focus more on at the beginning of a new project. One reason I want to revisit parts of my Dark Knight armor is so that I can break some of the shapes up more so that I can sit and bend my back more easily. I’m stiff as a board in that outfit! And I will say for sure that I am not the smartest person when it comes to computers, as much as I love them. So learning the coding for these lights is probably the biggest challenge I’ve faced in a while, but I’m lucky enough to have a friend helping me to learn.

Do you have any advice for cosplayers who want to achieve a level of detail in their cosplays like your own, but might feel intimidated on where to start?

ExShadow: Yes; dive into the deep end without fear. I have been cosplaying for more than 12 years now, and I can say with absolute certainty that the only thing to hold you back is your fear. Fear of not knowing what to do, or being afraid that your costume won’t be good enough in the eyes of your peers. I still feel these fears now, especially with the bar I’ve set for myself in previous costumes. But life’s way too short and busy for me to worry about messing up. I like to quote good old Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus, “Take chances, make mistakes, GET MESSY!”

That was the motivational advice anyway. As for where to start in a project, I tend to start by getting as many reference pictures as I can, and I start to take notes on the differences between my body and the character’s body so that I can make adjustments as I go to either make myself have similar proportions or simply make the costume look good on me. When I start to pattern and construct a costume, I begin dissecting the outfit into as many individual parts as I can, and for each part I break it down further into steps. Once I have it as thoroughly broken down as possible I go through my list and make a time estimate for every step. These estimates will almost always be wrong (and that’s OK), so try to learn your pacing and give yourself a lot of extra padding to account for any mistakes along the way.

I also try to make a list of all the things I will need for each piece and start collecting materials. If I’m not sure what I want to make something out of I will ask fellow cosplayers personally or look up online what other people have done for that costume or something similar. As you get further into your project, continue checking your time estimates and adjust them according to your timeline. Try to pace yourself so that you have plenty of small breaks but continue to progress. I think the biggest challenge in a costume is hitting a wall, giving yourself a week off but then never returning to it. Try to take baby steps to get over the wall, or change over to a different part of the project while constantly thinking about how to get over your wall. 

Another great habit to form is documenting your progress through social media posts. This has a two fold benefit of having something to reference back to so that you can grow, and can also build up a following of fans or fellow cosplay friends over time who will support your endeavors. As you get closer to your initial deadline, if you are worried about finishing it on time consider whether or want to make sacrifices to have a wearable costume at your event, or if you would feel better postponing the costume for a later deadline. Neither choice is wrong, but give yourself the benefit of thinking about that before the last week arrives and it will help lessen your stress.

This may sound foolproof, but it definitely isn’t. It’s just a system that tends to help me get to the end, which is your goal. How good you do along the way really doesn’t matter until you consider yourself finished. What I want to emphasize is that you have to be willing to learn from any mistakes you make, and you have to keep striving through the hardships. I won’t lie, having an artistic background definitely helps me a lot, but that doesn’t make it impossible for you or anyone else out there to reach a similar level of skill. What I find most endearing about us as a species is our stubbornness to get what we want. Sometimes that takes a lot of work, and it can suck. But keep working at it and you will succeed!

Any future FFXIV cosplay plans?

ExShadow: Yes! I am actually hoping to squeeze in a reversible outfit for both Hildebrand and Godbert Manderville before Fanfest. If I don’t make it in time then I will work on it afterwards. I also really want to make Odin; it’s been kind of a dream costume for a while. I had wanted to make it this year but work ended up keeping me far too busy, so perhaps next year I’ll dive into it. I have some pretty cool ideas in mind, so please look forward to it!

Tell us a bit about your character in-game! What is your main class, and what is your favorite way to spend your time in Eorzea?

ExShadow: Of course my main class is Dark Knight! I actually have all tanks at 70, and quite a few DPS as well. I eventually want to get all classes to 70, but it’s been a slow grind on daily roulettes mostly. Work and cosplay take up a lot of my time, so I usually only have enough time for casual content, but I have always enjoyed keeping in touch with the meta for any game I play. So I tend to read up on the community’s thoughts for class balance through patches, the best rotations, and the best gear. Eventually I want to give end game content a try, so that I can have an in game Deathbringer Ultima to match the one I am making in real life. I find it terribly ironic that it’s easier for me to make a real version of the weapon than it is to obtain a digital version.

Thank you so much for letting us peek behind the curtain into your workshop! Is there anywhere our readers could find you online if they’d like to see more of your work?

ExShadow: Of course! I would be delighted if you all check out my work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter!

You can also check out ExShadow’s online store, Turtle Smithy, where he and his wife Malindachan have released a wide array of cosplay props and accessories!