Behind the Seams · Collaboration

600 Hours for K/DA: Ahri & Akali for Boba Bear

Some projects you keep quiet for months. This was one of them.

Our work started in September, and now finally we can tell you: FD Cosplay Studio created two costumes — Ahri and Akali — for Boba Bear's collaboration with Riot Games and the K/DA project.

We're very grateful for the trust and for this collaboration. Here's the story of how 600 hours of work became two costumes you can now see in real life.

The Collaboration

When a café becomes a K/DA stage

Boba Bear is where worlds collide — a living playground that transforms beloved IP into fully realized, walk-through experiences. For their collaboration with Riot Games and the K/DA project, they needed something most cafés never ask for: costumes that could stand on a stage next to virtual pop stars.

K/DA — Riot Games' virtual K-pop group — lives on screens: music videos, game renders, stage visuals. Bringing Ahri and Akali into a physical space people walk through is a different job entirely. The costumes had to hold up in person, under real lighting, seen from every angle, every day.

The Work

300 hours per costume, no shortcuts

Each costume took 300 hours. That number is not a rounding error or a marketing flourish — it's what happens when a pop-star stage outfit is built with couture logic: sculptural tailoring, layered details, and finishing that assumes someone will look closely. Someone always looks closely.

And then there are the gloves.

 

The Gloves

30 hours, three rebuilds, one standard

The Ahri gloves alone took 30 hours — and they were rebuilt three times. Not because they broke. Not because the client asked. Because they didn't meet the standard, and the standard is the standard.

This is the part of studio work nobody photographs: a pair of gloves goes back to the table, again and again, because the internal eye — in our case Serhii's, who approves nothing out of politeness — keeps saying "not yet." At least we did it. That's the honest summary of every rebuild: frustration, doubt, and then the version that finally gets a yes. The gloves on display at Boba Bear are the third rebuild. They earned their place.

The Hat

Two variants, both approved

The Akali hat went the opposite way: we built two variants — different interpretations of the same design — and both were approved. Sometimes that's how it goes: one piece fights you for weeks, another gives you two right answers on the first try.

We love that both versions now exist. A collaboration is a dialogue, and two approved hats meant the client could choose the interpretation that fit their space best. That's what working with a partner who understands craft looks like.

The Special Brief

Built to be exhibited, not just worn

The special thing about this job was the standard it set: these costumes had to work as museum exhibits. Not stage costumes that survive one performance — exhibition pieces, meant to be seen up close, in real life, every day they're displayed.

That changes how you build. Every edge gets finished, including the ones facing the wall. Every seam assumes a viewer two steps away with time to spare. A costume made to be photographed lives for a moment; a costume made to be exhibited lives for as long as it stands — and that's how we built Ahri and Akali.

You can see them for yourself at Boba Bear — in real life, not on a screen. That, in the end, is the whole point of what we do: making the fictional real enough to walk past.

Thank You

Grateful for the trust

To the Boba Bear team — thank you. Thank you for trusting a studio in Kyiv with a project this visible, for understanding why the gloves needed a third rebuild, and for treating cosplay with the same seriousness usually reserved for gallery pieces. Collaborations like this are why we keep raising the bar: when a partner expects museum quality, the whole studio grows.

And to everyone who visits the exhibition: look closely. The 600 hours are in there.