Arthas Menethil, Warcraft's Lich King, is not an easy guy to cosplay. For starters, those shoulderpads look like they'd crush your head if you so much as shrug. Then there's the sheer amount of armor involved, which can't be easy to walk around in let alone put together. But Russian cosplayer Aoki, with assistance from his partner in life as well as cosplay Nargas, went all out on it.
They first put together a version of this costume in 2016, but weren't happy with details like the chestplate, skulls, and general level of detail. So they continued updating it over the next year, and you can see the full process detailed on their blog. They made new chainmail out of steel rings (which took four weeks!), and a wider chest plate out of EVA foam and a Russian thermoplastic called BubbleStar. There were several rounds of recasting the armor pieces, and the whole thing apparently enjoyed several repaints. Pleather belts were replaced with leather ones, extra details were sculpted onto the shoulderpads with epoxy and they were sanded 100 times after that.
And while the original version had Aoki wielding the cursed sword Frostmourne, if you remember the very metal WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne end credits you'll recall that Arthas bears something different—a glowing blue electric guitar. So they made that instead.
This version of the cosplay (enhanced even more with a new wig and makeup that took almost two hours to apply) went on to win Best Large Fabrication at Blizzcon 2018. Aoki and Narga made a cute video about the process of turning him into Arthas, with a cameo by Narga in her own cosplay at the end.
