With Destiny 2, Savathun has officially arrived in the real world. On Bungie Day, July 7th, the developer showcased the amazing Witch Queen cosplays on its website. Among them was one by Willow Creative, who impressed the community in advance with the epic animations of her Savathun. MeinMMO conducted an interview with her.
Who actually is the cosplayer Willow Creative? Bungie announced in May that it wanted to challenge a total of 9 talented cosplayers from around the world to compete against each other. They were to bring the Witch Queen to life. Among the participants was also Willow Creative from the Netherlands.
Completely free in the guidelines, she participated in Bungie’s “Cosplay Cosmodrome” competition and repeatedly showed the interested community via social media the progress of her own interpretation of the Witch Queen. And it was truly remarkable.
Impressively realistic movements: The first images of Willow’s Savathun mask impressed the Destiny 2 community. The players especially found her mechanics extremely well done. It looked incredibly real what Willow shaped with the help of creative mechanisms.
MeinMMO spoke with Willow and asked her how she comes up with such implementations and ideas.
MeinMMO: You started cosplaying in 2012. How did it happen that you turned your hobby into a profession?
Willow Creative: Back then, in 2012, I was studying at a university […] Biotechnology. I did a bit of cosplay and crafting alongside my favorite video games, like Pokémon, and some friends then asked me to make birthday gifts for a little money. That was quite popular and the circle grew bigger, so I eventually made entire cosplays and props. After gaining some attention online in recent years, I was able to pick the best projects I wanted to work on, and now I can work full-time with my craft!
MeinMMO: Now Bungie has asked you to create your own version of Savathun for the “Cosplay Cosmodrome” competition: Is this your first encounter with the space shooter and is this your first Destiny cosplay?
Willow Creative: I am a big fan of the Halo series and played Halo 2, 3, Halo Wars, Reach, and most of the other Halo games in my youth. Now I have little time for video games as I am older and busier, so I didn’t choose the Destiny games. But I love to keep up with the news, and many followers immediately messaged me that I should take Savathun as a cosplay as soon as the expansion and the Witch Queen were revealed. They were sure that this character would make a great monster costume that I could make!
When Bungie asked me if I really wanted to make Savathun after all the fan requests, I couldn’t resist taking on the monster project.
MeinMMO: When you design a cosplay, do you only study the character to learn more about their expressions and poses, or do you also have an idea about their personality? What do you think about Bungie’s “Goddess of the Hive”?
Willow Creative: For me, it is always important to give the character cosplay a little extra flair, in the form of expression or animation of the costume, so that it is less like a “statue” and people can really believe that the character has come to life in our dimension when seeing the costume.
I therefore watched all the trailers and the story of the Hive Goddess, and her voice and animation were very captivating. I was sure that I would incorporate them into my project, and I will definitely also integrate some voice recordings from videos into my costume.
Especially in movement and her facial expressions, the Witch Queen is known to be a true “beauty”. This could be admired repeatedly in the trailers for the Destiny DLC “The Witch Queen”.
MeinMMO: With Savathun, Bungie set a tight deadline with Bungie Day on July 7th. But how long does it usually take to create such an elaborate, mechanical costume when it is not a competition?
Willow Creative: Usually, such a large project is often interrupted by smaller projects and can take several months, depending on motivation and other paid work that I have to do. Since this time it is a commissioned project, it had the highest priority above everything else. Although in the 6 weeks I needed to finish Savathun, I also completed some smaller projects to split the work a bit.
Doing several projects at the same time helps me stay motivated and not burn out on a single long project that takes several hundred hours, and many hours are not particularly interesting.
Unfortunately, the tight deadline did not leave enough time to perfectly finish her epic, animated costume, so Savathun only has regular and no animated wings.
By the way, there have also been some impressive cosplays by players in Destiny before this. Here are 10 that also look like they came straight out of the game:
MeinMMO: With the early releases of your Savathun mask, you have already made a significant impression in the Destiny community. Can we expect your Savathun to also have movable wings?
Willow Creative: Due to the relatively tight deadline, I could not implement movable wings to my satisfaction. I tried some ideas, but ultimately it was too difficult for me to create a decent version for Savathun (that also looks good). But I will definitely be dealing with movable wings again in future projects very soon!
MeinMMO: Is there something you learned while cosplaying that you wish someone had told you when you started?
Willow Creative: In the first 5 years of cosplay, I was on my own, I didn’t seek much help and didn’t research much. I just played around in my little student room with paper and paint. Although those times were nice and simple, I wish I had started posting my work online earlier to get feedback and follow other artists who share their progress online.
There is now so much more material, tutorials, videos, and books for cosplay. So if you want to grow as a cosplayer, want to develop in your craft, go online and don’t hold back on research and ask as many questions as possible! It’s also amazing to see how people react online to your craft and love the things you create, and it’s very rewarding to experience all this positive attitude towards fandom and online communities.
We are definitely excited to see where Willow’s Savathun develops further and look forward to perhaps admiring the movable wings. If you would like to see more interpretations of the Witch Queen from the competition, you can find them in the latest “This Week at Bungie” blog.
For Germany, MowkyFox, aka Camilla, also participated in the competition and came up with her own interpretation of Savathun, presenting it to the community.
What do you think of the Savathun cosplay? Do you find it successful or do you have feedback that you would like to share? Then feel free to leave Willow and us a comment.
