Undertaker 6

My version of Undertaker from Yana Toboso's Black Butler. This cosplay won a workmanship award in the journeyman division at Arisia 2012.

Undertaker was completely unplanned. I did not have time in my costume schedule to make him and I ended up delaying several other projects to complete him (like Colonial France). He also went massively over budget (*cry*). But he was worth it, I think.

My favourite part of this cosplay is the boot covers. Recently the manga gave many closeup drawings of Undertaker's boots and it turns out that they are thigh-highs with no less than nine belts around each leg. I was lucky enough to find a cheap lot of 18 large silver belt buckles on ebay and they turned out to be perfect for this costume. In all I used two yards of 60 inch black pleather to make the boot covers and belts to go around them.

The sleeves on my undercoat (it's actually quite similar to a cassock) button all the way from the elbow to the wrist the way the ones in the manga and anime do. My photos do not show this well, but it is quite cool.

I would also like the point out that I took some liberties in designing Undertaker's necklaces. The beads are all natural materials, many of them bone. The rest are wood. For the shorter one I used long black hairsticks made of bone (in two lengths. The longer one is made of black wooden beads and white bone beads that look almost like teeth. The bead in its center is a piece of bone my mother carved (a long time ago) to look like a claw.

Now, in most depictions Undertaker only wears one chain around his waist-the one that holds charms with names and locks of hair. My original intent was to clip short lengths of hair from various natural coloured wigs, but the pendants I bought ended up being too small. Instead, I drew out each of the four charms by hand using India ink in various colours and then used glue and laminating paper to set them inside the pendants. One of them says Claudia P, as seen in the manga, and another name (Alex) I got from the character design for the anime. The other two names are as yet unkown, so I used names of characters I liked from other series who have died. They are Ran (from Texhnolyze) and Jenny Shepard (from NCIS). In one artbook drawing Undertaker is also shown wearing a longer chain with crosses on it. For extra detail I chose to make this part of my cosplay. There are 13 metal crosses (the number was COMPLETELY unintentional, it just happened) on the second chain and a 14th on the chain with the hair mementos.

This is a rather comfortable cosplay, with a few exceptions. One: the bangs are rather long and when the pomade starts to wear out near the end of the day they start attacking my eyes. For one reason or another wig hair is about 143 times more painful to get in your eyes than your own hair.
Two: inch and a half long fingernails present many...challenges. For instance, going to the bathroom is damn near impossible. It's also quite hard to fish money out of your wallet (or your ID for those stupid 18 and over panels).
Three: even if you wear pants under them, the boot covers get itchy and HOT.

Undertaker and Black Butler are (c) to Yana Toboso