Cosplay Profile – Little Sister, Bioshock

The costume – This was my fourth cosplay. Bioshock is one of my favorite games and the only game I have played to 100% completion a.k.a. I got every achievement. I fell in love with these Little Sisters, their backstory, their place in society. Around this time, cosplay was really starting to pick up in popularity, and sexiness in cosplay was becoming more and more common. I didn’t want to just be another sexy girl. I wanted to be scary. Little Sister became the first character for any major propwork for a cosplay, the first to generate a backstory (as I have gone on to do for other characters), and the first that I genuinely did a complete immersion when I was in full costume. This costume design and interpretation is based on a hybrid between the Little Sisters seen in Bioshock and Bioshock 2.

The parts
- The Dress – Since my sewing skills still weren’t good yet, I used a preexisting dress I found at a vintage store. The dress itself dates to the 1920s and was just the color I wanted to work with. My friend, Heidi, donated some sewing skills to make the lace pinafore that goes across the chest, sewed on the buttons, and made the apron from scratch. I don’t think I could get more accurate in terms of style, but this dress went through a hell of a lot of distressing before it reached the final product. My friend, Ashlie, did the distressing. I think she worked with coffee, paint, fire and an assortment of cutting implements to totally destroy this historical garment. The final product was exactly what I wanted – a dirty, falling-apart dress that a little girl had been crawling around in for a long time in an abandoned city. Let’s just say when I wear this cosplay, if I get something on my hands, I just wipe them off on my dress. This cosplay cannot get any grungier.
- The Adam Gun – While I had lots of help with the construction of the dress, I had enough skill and inspiration to build the Adam Gun on my own. I went off a design from Harrison Krix of Volpin Props for the Adam Gun he created. I started my construction process with a vintage gas pump that I bought off of eBay for ~$40. From there, I took it to a plumbing store where I played with plastic plumbing pieces to create a mount for the Adam container that would rest on the gun. The parts all fit on there very snugly, but I was sure to pretty much cover everything in e6000 to make sure it stayed together. The Adam container is just a larger size jar from baby food. YES, BABY FOOD. And the Adam nipples, those are also from the BABY DEPARTMENT. The nipple fits tight over the top of the jar, and covered the seal with a piece of elastic that I painted bronze. Other misc. parts in the gun include lamps parts and a sharpened dowel for the needle. After it was assembled, I wacked the shit out of it with a wrench to get some distressing marks and then painted it. I even added some red marks around the handle to give the effect that I picked it up with a bloodied hand. In contrast to the Volpin Props Adam Gun, mine doesn’t light up from the base, but! It is functional! I can drink Adam right from the gun, just like a Little Sister would. I usually fill it up with red Rockstar or cranberry juice. I tried lots of liquids before I settled on ones that were the right color of red I wanted.
- Makeup and Contacts – This was the first cosplay I incorporated the use of stage makeup and color contacts into a cosplay – yay for using my Technical Theater degree! In my first go-around with Little Sister, I only did stage makeup for my face. In later versions, I added full body makeup to drastically change my body tone and to cover up all my tattoos. I did this for Crown Cosplay Championships, and the result made me much paler than I usually am. I got yellow contacts from my eye doctor, and if you want contacts, that’s the way to go to make sure you don’t get cheap ones that damage your eyes!
- Choreography – You read that right! I did some sessions playing the game to perfect a classic movement style for Little Sister. If you look below at the CCC video, you can see an example of my movement!

Research – I played Bioshock. A lot. To the point that I unlocked every single achievement. I also did a lot of photo research online. For makeup, I really love this photo in particular

I did a lot of test runs with makeup and it took me a couple tries to figure out how to get contacts in since I had never worn them before in my life, but I think all the time I spent playing the game was all the research I really needed XD

The Finished Product – From cosplay that almost wasn’t finished in time (surprising for any cosplayer >_>) to what is now my award winning cosplay and the one I probably most well known for, Little Sister is where my cosplay heart always rests at the end of the day. It was a collaborative effort and the inspiration for me to move forward with my cosplay career and do bigger, better things. She and I went on to have our first major photoshoot together, to win Best Performance at New York Comic Con, and to be invited to the first ever Crown Cosplay Championship at C2E2. I’m proud of this little girl and her life under the sea. It has inspired me to aspire to greatness, and I can’t let her down.