Katsucon 2023: My Villain Academia Photoshoot (My Hero Academia)

By Skywing Knights // May 22, 2023

I told y’all it was coming. 😉

Can I just say… I knew it? I get told all the time by people that I need to watch X or I need to watch Y. And I always say the same thing – we’ll see. And I will be honest, I typically don’t have the intention of following through. Why? Well, because I’ll end up making a new outfit. That’s why.

It took one year.

Just. One.

And look at me, cosplaying from My Hero Academia. -cue my eyeroll-

XD In all seriousness though, gosh darn it, My Hero Academia is a good series. A lot of people were pushing me to watch it. A lot. But I’m going to ultimately give credit to my second-to-youngest little sister for getting me to watch it. My girl, you have good taste.

But yeah, I had to make a cosplay from it.

There were a lot of characters I wanted to cosplay from this series (and I still do). In particular, I adored Deku, Aizawa, Katsuki, and Todoroki. But uh, tell a fellow cosplayer that while being known for cosing a lot of silver-haired characters and what do you know, I ended up first cosplaying as Shoto Todoroki.

Before Katsucon in January, I was working as a costume designer for my local theater’s show that month. As a result, I only had about a month of time to really work on cosplays before the convention. The majority of that time went to finishing my cosplay of Riku from Kingdom Hearts III (because if I didn’t finish then, I didn’t know when it would happen). And that meant that Todoroki kind of got the short end of the stick…

All I can say is thank the heavens that I wasn’t making his hero costume, lol. The idea to do the villain version came after talks with my friend Tsukasa325, who ended up doing Villain!Kirishima with me, and we were joined by two friends who did Villain!Deku and Villain!Bakugo. I ended up creating a cosplay based on various different fanart renditions of what a villain version of Todoroki would look like and I was pretty happy with the final result. We all met up the Thursday evening of Katsucon and decided to shoot off location at a bridge in Virginia that I had found as of recently. We were also joined by Tsukasa325’s husband and harmonyisarine, who assisted us with this shoot. Beforehand, we also might have feasted at P.F. Chang’s, where our awesome waiter recognized who we were cosplaying (to our delight!) <3

The majority of the shots (including those of me) were taken by Tsukasa325, though I did get a bit of time on the camera too. While it was a bit challenging, it was really great fun to be doing a shoot, especially since COVID had destroyed those chances for a long while. I also was really happy because I somehow managed to finish the second ‘special effects’ arm for Todoroki and surprised Tsukasa with it. (She knew I was making the ice arm, but not the one with the fire effects). Additionally, post-photoshoot, I was really pleased with how the arms turned out. These took a good number of hours to make (and I ended up ruining one of my favorite dresses in the process 🙁 ) so I’m glad it was worth it and came out looking as cool as it did. (And I rebought the dress, so it’s all good 😉 ).

Here are a few of the results!

 

My Hero Academia Villlain! Photoshoot (Katsucon 2023)

(Group Shots FTW!)

I loved this one and how it shows off both arms!

Did something a little different with this one for edits. What do you think?

… and finally, my favorite!

Photos above by Tsukasa325, edits by SkywingKnights.

SEE MORE MY HERO ACADEMIA COSPLAY HERE

 

And below is one that I took! ^^;

Photo and edits by SkywingKnights

 

Our Cast of Cosplayers:

Villain!Deku – Ace5262

Villain!Bakugo – rainbowcolouredshoes

Villain!Todoroki – SkywingKnights

Villain!Kirishima – Tsukasa325

 

Cosplaying as Todoroki was so incredibly fun. I loved the challenge of creating his burn. My goal was to retain that ‘bright red’ look that matches his hair and the style of the anime/manga, while also giving it that rough, uneven, almost grizzly effect that real burns would have on one’s face. I greatly enjoyed doing the ice effects on my face for him too. It’s not a normal addition for him, but I thought it added to that ‘dangerous’ vibe for him (for the Villain look) and further created the illusion of his ice powers being a real thing coming directly from his body. Overall, I was super happy with how it all came together!

I definitely hope I can do more My Hero Academia cosplays in the future, be they other versions of Todoroki or perhaps one of the others I mentioned above. What costumes from My Hero would you like to see me do next?

Anyway, I do hope you enjoy these. Until next time then, my loves,

~Skywing Knights