This Is A Flawless Groot Cosplay

Sometimes it can really just hit you how impressive fandom can be. Sure, Hollywood as an industry rakes in billions of dollars and defines the cultural zeitgeist — but the talent and productivity present in the audience should never be underestimated. Take, for instance, the amazing Guardians Of the Galaxy cosplays director James Gunn encountered Labor Day weekend.

Gunn made his way down to DragonCon in Atlanta for the holiday weekend, and his Instagram revealed a veritable treasure trove of glorious cosplay. I feel like I'm still mastering the basics of a liquid eyeliner cat-eye, while these people are creating entire recreations of Hollywood-level FX on their own bodies with 1/1,000th of the budget. Chief among them this time around came courtesy of Hurleyfx, a sculptor and airbrusher who put Bustle's own Baby Groot costume to shame with his full-grown Groot. Because sure, ours was pretty intensely cute if I do say so myself — but how?? How did he create that??? Guardians Groot himself was mostly CGI, which makes it all the more impressive that Hurleyfx created an entire physical copy without the full backing of Marvel/Disney behind him. Like, whoa. Way to go. Cosplayers are pretty metal, is what I'm saying:

You can see a lot of the process of Hurleyfx's creation of the costume over on his instagram, as well as some badass closeups:

And he's not the only awesome Guardians cosplay Gunn encountered Labor Day weekend:

Images: Marvel; James Gunn/Instagram, Hurleyfx/Instagram