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The world of cosplay is a unique and creative place where people painstakingly create costumes that are as good as or sometimes better than the characters they are emulating. It’s a long and tiresome road to style hair, clothes, and makeup, but the complete costume is always something to be admired.

The inspiration behind a costume usually happens when someone sees a cool character or costume on a character that they want to recreate. However, that’s the thing, you usually see characters cosplayed, you don’t see too many buildings or inanimate objects running around at conventions. One famous castle is so lifelike though, it actually makes for a fantastic costume. Of course we’re talking about the “moving castle” from Howl’s Moving Castle and it looks just like it leaped right off the screen.

After starting as an English book, Howl’s Moving Castle became popularized as a Studio Ghibli animated movie, and this year brings us this gorgeous cosplay. The costumer, who goes by the name Elentari-Liv on DeviantArt, spent one and a half years painstakingly recreating the beautiful and iconic castle that graced movie screens back in 2004. It walks, spits out smoke, and lights up, just like in the film!

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This “living castle” stands two meters (6.6 feet) tall and contains LED lights for the windows as well as internal equipment that allows it to expel smoke and let off steam as it moves. The core of the castle, though, is mostly chicken wire, craft foam sheets, PEX tubing, and lots and lots of paint.

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Elentari-Liv has been blown away by the amount of attention her costume has been getting, but when you make something this good, people are going to take notice. Congratulations, and we are all waiting to see what you have next on the costume list. Can it possibly be more impressive than a moving castle? We will just have to be patient and see.

Source: Culture Lab
Images: DeviantArt/Elentari-Liv