Jellyfish gown at the Dragon Con Friday Night Costume Contest

By Sahrye Cohen

Kym Barrett, the costume designer for the movie “Aquaman,” was inspired by the weird and wonderful marine animals of the ocean world while designing the Atlantean clothes and armor. When I saw the glowing jellyfish dress that Mera wears to the Arena Duel, I knew I wanted to bring the dress to life. The light-up jellyfish and tentacles were effects added through CGI but definitely seemed possible using microcontrollers and LEDs. As an added challenge, I decided to enter this costume in the Friday Night Costume Contest at Dragon Con 2019.

Dragon Con is a massive fan-run science fiction and pop culture convention in Atlanta that is well known for impressive cosplay. There are multiple costume contests and masquerade competitions. The Friday Night Costume Contest is run by the Costuming Track and specifically focuses on workmanship, rather than performance.

The Costume Contest required advance registration, documentation and pre-judging. The deadline for registration was several weeks before the event and documentation was also required to be electronically submitted before the event. The experience levels for the Friday Night costume contest are Youth, Novice, Journeyman and Professional. The last, and only, costume competition I’d entered was Arisia in 2006, where I won Best in Category as a Novice. I chose to enter the Friday Night Costume Contest as a professional because of my semi-pro experience in electronics and wearable tech. Many of the other contestants that I met at the contest had competed at other conventions and won best in category at the novice, journeyman, and sometimes master levels, before progressing to the professional category. If you are interested in entering a costume or cosplay contest at a convention read the experience category descriptions carefully and assess your skill level fairly.

Because I knew the contest would focus on workmanship, I paid specific attention to recreating the costume as closely as I could and ensuring that all pieces were well made. The bodice of the gown is heavily beaded with pearls and sequins. When I couldn’t find the exact fabric I was looking for I created my own by appliquéing an embroidered beaded lace over matte and shiny sequined net.

Getting the ethereal glow of the jellies and tentacles was another challenge. In this case, diffusion is the key to beautiful lighting effects and I used a hoop skirt and petticoat netting as a base for a hundred LEDs under the tentacles. The jellyfish were made of painted polyethylene foam that was lit from the base. An arduino microcontroller on the jellies and the Lightbox controller on the skirt completed the costume with shifting colors and watery glowing lights.

The night of the competition I arrived at the green room early for pre-judging. The judging panel was composed of five professional costumers from various disciplines including puppeteers, theatrical designers and movie costumers. Each judge had a copy of my documentation. With a five-minute time limit for pre-judging I had prepared and rehearsed a brief intro focusing on research and workmanship of my costume. The judges asked several questions about the electronics and technical construction. I remembered to thank the judges for their time and attention and went back to wait with the rest of the costumers for the stage presentations.

Backstage was my favorite part of the costume contest. While in the Green Room I got to wander around asking other costumers about what characters they were cosplaying and examine all the details up close. Another woman in the Professional category had hand dyed and hand woven the wool tunic on her “Avatar: The Last Airbender” cosplay. The intricate embroidery and fabric manipulation on the various “Star Wars” Padme and “Game of Thrones” costumes were amazing. There were also fantastic video game costumes with intricate EVA foam and 3D-printed costumes and props.

The night ended with each costumer posing on stage in one of the large convention halls, while the presenters read a brief summary of their costume and workmanship details. I was pleased to receive an Honorable Mention for Best Use of Technology. I enjoyed competing in the Friday Night Costume Contest because the focus on workmanship aligned with my interests in costuming, and the structure of the competition really helped me document and complete a complicated project on deadline. The Mera Jellyfish dress also turned out to be a lot of fun to wear and was great for Dragon Con Night at the Georgia Aquarium, which was the perfect setting for fantastic cosplay photos.