Cosplayers are bringing cel-shaded characters to life

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Making characters from games like Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us cross over into reality.

Last month a Redditor posted a photo of "Borderlands wig made out of foam by Goldvester Cosplay", showing a recreation of Gaige's hair from the Borderlands 2 Mechromancer DLC. Though the wig is a 3D object made out of foam, it's got heavy black outlining around it that makes it look like a cel-shaded 2D cartoon from any angle, and if you look at it long enough it'll hurt your eyes. The comments underneath that Reddit post are full of people saying "My brain refuses to interpret this properly" and "REDDIT is now CONFUSED!"

It's the work of Jennifer, aka Goldvester, who specializes in brain-breaking cel-shaded cosplay. Here she is as Snow White from The Wolf Among Us.

There are plenty of tutorial videos to show how these effects are achieved, like this one showing off bodypaint work, this one for clothes, and this for prop work. Though characters from Telltale games, comic books, and cartoons like Archer are popular inspirations, most of the cosplayers bringing cel-shading to life focus on the Borderlands games. Here's how Jennifer's Gaige ended up, as well as some shots of her as other Borderlands favorites Maya and Mad Moxxi. Plus, one more look at that downright eerie Snow White.

You can follow Jennifer's creations on Instagram and Twitter.

Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.