Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Returns - Deviant Art costume design contest

These are Lightning costume designs for a Deviant Art contest to celebrate the launch of Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns in 2014, owned by SquareEnix.

For the Beowulf design, as the name says, I decided to get inspiration from the Myth of Beowulf: a Northern warrior from Geats (in Sweden) whose name can be translated as "Thor Wolf" or "War Wolf" among others.
The wolf analogy works pretty well in this episode since Lightning is alone, oustide of her "pack", hence the fur all over the outfit. I wanted to stay in the Northern references as the rest of the game (Valhalla, Odin, Lightning as a Valkyrie in FFXIII-2 etc).
The Myth of Beowulf is also divided in 3 parts like FFXIII with a 3rd part that tells a warrior's last battle. I also wanted the outfit to be less "godly" than hers in FFXIII-2 since the 3rd episode focuses on her humanity, so no shiny full body armor with feathers.
The cloak was partly inspired by Star Wars (lol), kinda like Luke in Episode VI (end of the original trilogy) who came back as a Jedi Master (sort of).

The 2nd design is Thor's Cloth. Compared to my 1st design, I decided to take the counterpart and go for the Northern God type. Odin seemed a little bit on the nose, so what better choice for me than Thor God of Thunder ("Lightning"? See what I did there?)?
I tried as much as possible to stray away from the comic book/movie design and decided to go with a blend of old fashioned armor and some futuristic features. We usually know Thor with his trademark winged helmet and I decided to go with feathers/wings which are also used as a pattern all over the outfit. The same goes with the "blady" parts representing lightning (a little far fetched I know...).
The fur parts are still a reminder of Northern warriors style. Mjolnir design is pretty simple/straight forward: a hammer with clouds and thunder patterns.