Introduction

For a long time I’ve been a huge fan of the character of KOS-MOS from the Xenosaga games. Kevin (my hubby) and I have collected practically every figure every released of KOS-MOS, and have been planning to make a custom DD of KOS-MOS for the last… 15 months or so. It’s been a long process, with lots of trial and error, but it’s been worth it to see my lovely Makoto finally become the doll she was intended to be.

My original plan was to complete KOS-MOS to unveil at a Volks Dolpa in New York in 2011, but after the devastating tsunami hit Japan last Spring, any plans of a Dolpa happening that year in North America were quickly put aside to much more important matters. So my KOS-MOS project was shelved for a while. Kevin never gave up on the project, and decided to set an even bigger goal for unveiling our KOS-MOS Dollfie Dream – Tokyo Dolpa 27! I thought he was crazy (since we had just been to Tokyo in autumn of 2011), but with the enthusiasm and interest of some other friends who wanted to make this a group trip, Project X gained momentum again. This will be a diary of this project, and tutorial of how Project X came into being.

Here are a few of my KOS-MOS and Xenosaga figures. Yes, I have the stunning Volks statue too! My thanks to TokyoHunter for helping me acquire her. As you can see, I have lots of reference materials! ^__~”

Why Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra?

There have been 3 Xenosaga games, and so many outfit designs to chose from. My sister had made a Version 1 KOS-MOS cosplay many years ago, so that would have been a “safe” choice since making the DD version of that would have been a miniature re-hash of her costume – but there’s no challenge re-hashing something! Version 2 KOS-MOS has fully covered legs, and not a lot of “outfit” happening in the mid-section. I wasn’t quite sure how well it would translate into a doll outfit – and I’m also a believer of “No costume, is no costume!” so I wanted something more visually interesting. Oh – and I hated the purplish hair the game designers gave her in this incarnation. This left the outfit from Episode 3 – a good balance of costume, armor and skin showing. Perfect!

Head, Faceup and Wig

When I was still planning for a May 2011 deadline, I ordered a blank DDH-02 head from Dollfie World because Volks was out of stock at the time. I like that this head sculpt wasn’t as cute as the other option heads, and has a more angular, tsundere look – very well suited to my android KOS-MOS!

I enlisted the help of my sister, Machiko, to paint her faceup. I gave her photos of the Volks 1:4 scale statue as reference.

Photo by: meronpan

When my sister presented me with the completed head last April I was so excited! I was delighted with how she turned out. I decided to name her Makoto, at least temporarily! For weeks I didn’t take photos or show her to anyone because her blue eyebrows would have set off alarm bells. I did sneak her into a few photos here and there, but no one ever caught on – thank goodness!

Getting the right wig has been a bit of a struggle. There are lots of wigs out there in aqua blue but that wasn’t the colour I wanted. I knew from cosplay experience that I could dye my own wig, but knowing how susceptible DD’s are to staining, I didn’t want to take the risk of dye transferring and ruining my doll. I settled on a couple of Steel Blue wigs that were close enough to what I wanted and one of them was a good colour match. I have another wig on order right now, that hopefully will be arriving soon so that I can style it.

I honestly haven’t decided if I want to have red eyes or blue eyes in my KOS-MOS. I love the gentleness of the blue-eyed KOS-MOS when Mary appears, but the red-eyed battle android looks so fierce! I’m open to opinions or suggestions on this subject ^__~”

Here are a few photos of Makoto from the past year –

One of the first photos I took of her (using an iPhone… sorry about the quality). I took this because Wolfheinrich really wanted to see my new girl after I tweeted about getting a DD body in the mail! If you look really hard you can make out the blue eyebrows underneath her bangs.

Here she is getting the mail! Even with bluish hair, she was able to sneak by! This was the day Aerie arrived.

Here are Makoto and Lily coming home after a shopping spree. This wig from Nine9style was perfect because it completely hid Makoto’s eyebrows. She’s been wearing it since last July and it’s become her “default” wig.

Last Christmas, I took part in a DD Christmas card swap. Here’s Makoto with a card from mitsuki-chan!

Body Image

My original thought was to use a DD Dynamite body for KOS-MOS, but function took precedence over form – the DDdy body wouldn’t have been able to to hold up the weapon I was planing to make. I think that the newly released DDdy3 body would probably be able to, but as of me writing this right now, the only DD doll on a DDdy3 body is Haruka and she is quite hard to come by right now. For practical reasons I decided early on that I wanted to work with a DDII body, and when DD Beatrice was announced last year with the new Shapely-L bust, that cemented my decision. I would make my KOS-MOS on a DDII body, and then source a Shapely-L bust for her later. The location of the bust seam on the outfits also worked better with the DDII base body since the “peephole” on her dress would have been right on a seam/ joint on the DDdy and that I think would have been unattractive. I ordered a blank DDII body and regular L-bust from Volks USA in April 2011, and I also purchased a neck joint from CoolCat to give the head and neck better posing ability.

When the DD3 body was released with it’s improved posing ability, and stronger arms I really wanted to get my hands on that body instead! I took the opportunity last October to purchase a Yukino v.2 doll, as well as the Shapely L-bust as an option part at the Volks Dollfie Dream Gathering in Akihabara, Tokyo. It was rather serendipitous that my entry for a Volks photo contest was on display in the store – so my Mélisande (DD Yukino) was able to see her sister Makoto from across the world. These 2 were destined to do a head and body swap!

With the head and body acquired, Makoto went to visit my sisters for a long-term stay. If anyone asked me about her, I would tell them I had loaned her to my sister to use as a model for making DD-sized outfits. Sneaky of me – I know!

On to Part II!