#mockingjay suit

Katniss: the Mockingjay at ACen 2024! I left my real bow at home, but we, as they say, fixed it in post. My friend wasn't cosplaying on Sunday, but I think she makes a pretty good Leeg 1. We're planning our next move.

The Hunger Games Tarot - Major Arcana

1. The Magician: Cinna

Got out of my art block by getting back to the basics: Katniss! I haven’t drawn Hunger Games art in forever, and it felt good to do it again. 

I am hauling out my decade-old Mockingjay suit for ACen on Saturday! I came up with the book-based design in 2012 and wore it to ACen 2013. My friend made the vest and breastplate, and I did the shirt and helmet. The other day, I finally made an armguard for it!

Feeling nostalgic and sentimental lmao, but after Mockingjay: Part 1 came out the next year, and we got a movie canon mockingjay suit, I had complicated feelings. I've always been an avid, shameless book-canon supporter, though I'll weave in movie-canon for some things. But I never wore my Mockingjay suit to another con. While part of that was that I was taking the opportunities to wear other characters, another big part was that I was worried people wouldn't recognize me or wouldn't understand why it wasn't like it looked in the movie. Childish! Now, I'm happy I have something that preserves my own mental image of the Mockingjay from when that image was only informed by my own imagination. Something from the Katniss I knew before the movies came out and had their influence.

Anyway, my favorite parts in which my suit differs from the movie suit are the sleeves and the helmet. The book describes "the slight fullness of the sleeves that allows the white fabric under the arms to show." This could be interpreted so many ways. And believe me, I imagined a few fancier ideas from Cinna. Since I was 18, new to sewing, and not Cinna, I went with a pretty simple representation. Same deal with the helmet. Mine is the same material as the breastplate and in a pretty cool crest shape if I do say so myself. But in the book, the helmet is made of an "interwoven metal...The material's supple, like fabric, and can be drawn back into a hood." Yeah, I wasn't doing that. After making the armguard this year and taking another look at the text, I think the next step for improvements, if I ever added to her again, would be some kind of other body armor in addition to the breastplate, fancier boots, or prop hidden weapons. We'll see!