My daughter asked me to create a feminized version of Ezio, a character from Assassins Creed for her.  The first step was to examine illustrations of the character and identify important details and areas where the layers of clothing could be reduced in bulk.  (All images can be viewed in larger size by clicking on them.)

Ezio is wearing at least three layers of clothing, starting with a chemise (the bloused sleeves and innermost collar as shown in the illustration), and then a waistcoat (source of the angled panels of fabric below the waist), and an outermost jerkin with an attached hood.  The hood itself is pieced in order to fit the head closely.

Fortunately, McCalls recently came out with two patterns that seem to be generating quite a bit of interest among cos players.  The first is McCalls 6818, which is a good start on Queen/Princess/Witch types of characters.   The second is McCalls 6819:

The cover image is a little unfortunate, as the photographed version (B) doesn’t clearly show the separate upper and lower arm pieces that are connected by a bit of trim.  A look at the pattern illustration shows a few additional details:

Version A provides the cap sleeves, one set of waistcoat skirts, and stand-up collar.  Version B has the peplum, which can be added to version A to emulate the longer jerkin in the original character illustration.  The pattern also has two versions of a corset belt that can be used to mimic Ezio’s sash and belt combination.  It does not come with a hood.

One thing is a little odd:  there’s a corset back on the jacket AND a belt that is also corset tied.  That’s sounds uncomfortable, so I decided to fit the jacket as closely as possible.

After some doodling, I came up with this plan for altering the pattern to match the character’s clothing:

The goal was to edit the pattern with an eye toward creating a more feminine version of Ezio, which entailed de-bulking by reducing layers (a single jacket instead of waistcoat and jerkin) and scaling down certain features (such as the sash/belt).

The next step was to draft a hood and create a fitting muslin.