Pre-Youma Crunch Time

Hey folks, welcome back! As usual, my hiatus has been related to having a crapton of projects and minimal time to make blog posts. So, rather than sit here and listen to me moan about all the work I still have left to do, let's just look at the stuff I've been making.

First up, we have a gun & case from one of the Purge movie... I'm not sure which one cause I haven't seen any of them.

hat is an actual working airsoft gun, with a legit case. I didn't really build anything for this, it was initially pitched as a simple "paint a few parts of this gun" request, and then spiraled into the much more elaborate commission that you see before you. Thankfully it's done and I don't have to worry about it any more.

Next up we have this giant nail bat/club thing from one of the Yokai Watch characters. It's all a paper/cardboard base with a worbla shell covering it. The nails are also worbla scraps mushed together and formed into nail heads!

Most of the painting still needs done, but thankfully my client no longer needs it by Halloween, so I have some time to work on that without rushing it. I'm hoping to have it done in the next few days though.

Last, and most importantly, we have my new cosplay for Youmacon! I'm doing Yatsuhashi from RWBY!

I've been wanting to do a RWBY cosplay for a while, and I have a long list of characters I want to make, as well as several people I want to cosplay with, all as different characters. So it came down to which one would make the most sense to have for Youma. Well, thankfully my friends made the decision pretty easy for me, since only one of the three of them was even going to be there, and was planning on cosplaying Coco again, so it was a perfect fit. Eventually I'll also be doing Torchwich to pair up with my friend's lovely Cinder, and either Qrow or Taiyang, to pair up with my other friend's kickass Raven (the one I made the mask for, if you guys remember that).

Anyway! Down to business. Thankfully his outfit is fairly straightforward. I bought a black tshirt and cut the arms off to do his undershirt, and I found a pair of brown pants to use. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a pair of boots to use for him, so I had to make spats. Thankfully those are pretty simple so it was no big deal. The first parts I actually made were the top & the thick leather belt/cincher piece he wears around his waist.

Next up is his shoulder pauldron. Pretty straightforward, worbla over craft foam, as per usual. Don't ask why I did all of the plates with full details when you don't see 60% of any but the top one.

The pauldron attaches to the harness... strappy... thing with some giant snaps. I don't have photos of them, but I made his boot armor plates thee same way.

Next up are the gauntlets. They're layers of foamcore with craft foam details, and some worbla pieces. The rings split in the middle and are held together by velcro.

Last up is the sword. Since it's ginormous I decided to use a wood base (wide craft boards) and then shape the bevel with a layer of foamcore on either side. Same method as usual: remove the paper, sand the bevel into the exposed foam, coat with spackling paste, sand again.
The handle is a piece of PVC with a strip of worbla wrapped around it.

And the only bit left is the wig! I used an old black wig I stole... I mean "inherited" from our family's costume closet. It was already kinda short and I cut it eve shorter. For as much as I hate cutting and styling wigs, I feel like this one turned out alright. It's obviously not as short as Yatsu's actual hair, but I couldn't cut it much shorter than this or it would've looked super spotty. So I suppose this'll just have to do.

Well, that's all folks! If you want to see what the whole costume looks like, you'll have to wait another week until I wear it at Youma. I should have some awesome photos with my Coco and we're going to a RWBY photoshoot so hopefully I'll have some photos of a bunch of other awesome cosplayers. Until next time, ciao!