Jacob Frye from Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Two years ago I made a uniform like coat for a friend so he could wear it in a maskball he was going to attend. He actually won the "king of the ball" title in that event and he was back this year (2015) to ask me for another costume to wear in this year event. As the ball is organized during anime convention and there are lot of cosplayers, he wanted to become Jacob Fyre from (then) soon to be realized Assassin's Creed game.

At that point of time (summer 2015) there were very few shots from the actual game. There were few screenshots, some official promo materials and amazing cosplay by someone from Netherlands who had direct access to Ubisoft. I was stuck with working with refrence materials I can get from the internet.

 

The first concept art was good but a lot of details had been changed by the time videos from the game started to come out. So, I used it only partially and mostly used screenshots from the videos as a refrence.

For the base I used Victorian men costume pattern from McCall's

I took the trousers completely from the pattern but modified coat and vest.

For materials I bought last meters of really good fabric I found that also had similar pattern as the wool in the screenshots. The problem - I could only make coat or trousers out if. For some reason I chose trousers hoping I can find similar pattern. And by pattern I mean this on the fabric:

Anyway.. trousers came out fine and I managed to find really neat steampunk buttons for them but I could not find any more fabric with similar pattern or texture.

So, after many unfruitful trips to different fabric shops I gave up and brought random dark wool fabric and some artificial leather and stitched leather.

The stitching was smaller than I wanted but it was the only one they had in quantities I needed it. Anyway.. I could now start working on the coat. It was a lot of fun - I liked all the small details the costume had. Adding rivets. I had some really useful small women bag rivets from old times (when I made the Marie Antoinette dress hat) and they were so useful now. Sadly, I could not find them in any shop anymore so in the future when I might need them, I am out of them. I also made a leather belt with different kind of rivets. Finding so small rivets was hard but in the middle of horrible rainstorm I ran into a small fabric shop and they had small rivets in stock. Lucky me.

Sadly I do not have any images of the process, only this one really bad quality shot done with a phone when I tried the coat on my sister:

With the vest I had much more trouble - mainly due to the fabric. I tried to find something that is green and has "same looking" pattern. Soon I realized this is hopeless. I started to look anything in right green tone with pattern. Again, nothing. So, in the end I decided to print the pattern by myself. I did some googling and somewhere people made stamps and used those to apply pattern. It sounded little complex so in the end, I drew the pattern and printed it out in old fashioned slide film (you know, the ones that were used before powerpoint). It was strong enough to enable me to use carpet cutting knife to cut out the pattern. Then I used piece of fabric and white fabric paint I got from local craft store to apply the pattern, one stripe (few repetitions of the pattern) at the time. It was a long process and the slide and the cuts lost their quality more I used them but:

First tries. Getting the paint consistent right was little "trial and error"

More fabric filled with the pattern

After spending two nights on the floor and watching tv while applying the pattern I had enough fabric for the vest. I then tried it at midday's sun and later user iron to make sure the color is not going anywhere. It stands the ironing and washing.

What to say: it was very time consuming process but I did not know better option back then (now I know a company that can print on fabric using custom files, so I could have had this printed...). It was cheap at least. It took time and the quality of the pattern application was varying but it looks all right.

Finished vest. Both the vest and the jacket have their sides covered with really nice dark silver bias tape.

Anyway. Quickly I made the tie and added a ribbon to the top-hat as I was off to Japan for 4 months and I needed to finish the costume before it. So, I actually never saw him wear it before in September he sent me the pictures from the convention where I wore the costume:

Photo by: Sabīne Tarando, Elīza Eikert

Photo by: Kristiina Saar