Ribbit

Hey folks, I’ve been hard at work getting my newest cosplay together and I wanted to show you all how that’s coming along!

You’ve already seen the beginning stages of him, but Frog is nearly done at this point, with the exception of a few details.

The most major thing you all haven’t seen yet are Frog’s sword and shield. The shield is actually a plastic Captain America sheild I ordered online. It was a bit bigger than I needed it to be so I cut off the outside layer of the bullseye. I also came up with a lotus emblem (seemed appropriate for a pond-dwelling amphibian), since you never actually see the front of his shield in any of the official artwork. I also used thin vinyl tubing around the outside to give it a nice edge. I sliced along the tube so it fit around the edge of the plastic sheild. It’s not the easiest to see in this photo since the tubing is transparent, but in the painted photo you’ll be able to see a little better.

The sword is all made from 1/2” MDF board and is quite sturdy, and a bit hefty, but I really like the feel and weight of it. Thankfully I’ll have it in a scabbard most of the time to the weight shouldn’t be an issue at conventions.

Here’s the shield with just the base gold, and then the finished shield after I did the detailing. Looks a bit less obvious now that it originally belonged to Cap ;-)

Here’s the full sword build, with almost all it’s details (except the gems on the blade which I added once it was all painted). The orb on the end is a wooden sphere I had in the collection of weird wood bits i have in my stash. For the grip, I wanted to get the curved, round shape to the best of my ability, so I used some extra pieces of the foam pipe insulator tubes that I bought for his armor (the stuff I used for the raised/rounded edges) and cut them up a little more, then wrapped it with masking tape to squish the foam further into the size/shape I wanted. The tape is a little messy but it’ll be covered in a later step so it doesn’t really matter.
The raised details are craft foam (the green section), cereal box cardboard (the flamey pattern at the base of the blade), and worbla scraps (the claw pieces around the sphere on the end of the hilt).

With the build all done, a couple of coats of mod podge and some detail sanding, it was time for paint!

As is my usual M.O. I spraued the metallic sections, starting with the gold. Once I had the gold sections finished and sealed with mod podge, I covered the hilt with a plastic grocery bag and sprayed the blade silver (I don’t have a photo of that step though). With that done, there was just some detail painting on the little flamey designs and the foam detail (that started out green but needed to be black). With that all done the last steps were adding the gems to the blade and wrapping the grip. For the grip I used stretchy vinyl that I happened to have sitting around (I think I got it on clearance a long while back and intended to use it for steampunk stuff… that obviously never happened lol). The vinyl is hot glued on, which I attached the start, and then glued in periodic spots as i wrapped the strip of vinyl. Here you can see the results of these last efforts.

I am incredibly pleased with how this turned out, I’m pretty sure this is the best quality sword I’ve made yet, which is super exciting!

The only detail left to share is the fully painted armor, which is now ready to go!

With all of that done, there are only a few small details to finish before he’s con-ready!
I still need to make his gloves and boot covers, his little purple pouch that he wears at his waist, and I need to find a workable belt. So with what’s left, he’ll definitely be coming to Tekko with me, as originally planned!

That’s all for now, folks. I’ll have Jordan take a photo of me in all the bits once they’re finished. You can also continue to watch the other commission pieces I’ve been working on intermittently on Instagram to stay up-to-date, but I will make another post on here int he next week or so about those projects!