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I really like Dead by Daylight. While I'm not super great at it (playing killer is too stressful), I'll play it with friends once in a blue moon. Most of the time though, I watch my partner and our friends play it instead. It's like Smash Brothers, but for all my favorite scary guys instead; everyone is here! Huntress was one of my favorite DBD Originals (she still is, but they've added a lot of great monsters since), so I wanted to cosplay her and get to do scary makeup again. Last time I'd done gore and makeup was when Left 4 Dead 2 was new and I was a Hunter for a Zombie Walk.

Huntress was a pretty chill build; kind of a return to form, since I hadn't done a mostly thrifted costume in a long while. The wool shirt was dyed a little darker and the sleeves shortened. The pants too, modified with rips and weathering instead. I got some cheap black lace and orange and blue quilting cotton with floral designs. The cottons were sewn up into her work apron, heavily weathered and bloodied like everything else on the costume. The mask was built out of papier maché, painted with acrylics. I then added the lace and a hidden elastic strap to keep it on my face.

For the axes, I bought two axe handles at the hardware store, stained them with paints, and then built two removeable axe heads out of EVA Foam. I then made the whole harness out of pleather with slots to hook the small throwing hatchet prop onto. I was particularly proud of the axes; It was the first time I had managed to smoothly sand down foam to create a blade after a couple of previously wonky attempts (Caeda, Marth and Cloud come to mind). The blood splatters on the mask and axes looks particularly convincing too; I used dribbles of hot glue to give those some dimension.

Unfortunately for Huntress, however, I only wore the costume once in 2019; the harness did not hold up the daily activities of convention-going at all and basically exploded by the end of the day. The mask was very uncomfortable; it would've needed to be re-done so its shape wouldn't push into my face so hard. I retired the costume after the convention, and now I keep the mask as a display piece. It also made me realize that while I enjoyed making wounds with makeup, I didn't really like having to wear said makeup for an entire con day, since it just peels and rubs off and needs to be reapplied periodically to keep looking gnarly. However, the crafting project was a lot of fun; I spend an evening basically fingerpainting the weathering on the clothes with a friend of mine and talking during a public cosplay crafting event, and it's a good memory I've kept since.

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