Leona Heidern

Series: King of Fighters 1996

Variation: Orochi Riot of Blood

Worn at: Fanime 2009

Why I made this: Almost undeserving of its own gallery, but different from her normal version, so here we go anyway. In the game, Leona has the Orochi gene within her, which transforms her into a red-haired, fanged, and batshit crazy warrior with a bloodlust. I thought this would be a lot of fun to portray, since most of the characters I do are “safe” and don’t have all the crazy facial expressions that go along with Orochi Leona’s alternate personality.

Construction: For the costume, I just reused my same uniform and boots from her default form, and used my own hair instead of tracking down and styling a wig in that dark shade of red – her hair’s frizzy and wild, mine can be on a bad day, it was a match made in heaven. I also opted to wear my purple iris-enlarging contacts to give her a more feral look, which worked great, but killed my vision the rest of the day.

Personal thoughts: Shadownet was kind enough to be my Ralf for the afternoon, and we randomly found a Clark at the con, so I finally got my dream of having a complete Team Ikari! Posing in the Capcom vs. SNK gathering was quite a fun experience as well :)

Costume references

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