Hang Onto Your Shorts!

Hey everyone, not too much to report post-Youmacon as my commission load is rather light at the moment, but I did want to show off what I have been working on! I was commissioned for several Chrono Trigger items, all of which I’m super stoked to be doing!

First up is Lucca Ashtear’s helmet and blaster!

For the helmet, I used a baseball cap to pattern the cap bit on top, and used craft/EVA foam for the gold parts. The thicker sections are made from the EVA foam floor tiles. The studs all over it are round pearl embellishments from the scrapbooking section (which I got super cheap when Pat Catan’s was closing, bonus!!) I used wire for the antenna and the microphone, using worbla to reinforce several parts of the microphone. The big round gem/orb thing on the side is half of a clear plastic ornament; pro-tip, if you’re using one of these paint the inside! It make it so the paint literally can’t be damaged, and you get a nice, smooth, shiny outside surface! With all of that, I used Plasti-Dip to seal everything (except the gem, I attached that after the fact) and painted it!

The gun was made in layers to get all of the details. The center layer is MDF (I believe .25”), then there’s a layer of hard board on either side, then layers of EVA and craft foam to flesh out the rest of the contouring. The barrel is a slice of cardboard tube and the round bubble-like piece is a resin gem I cast a while back that I happen to have two of. They were the right size and shape so they fit the bill!

As you can see a good bit of dremeling went into she shaping, since most of the sections of the gun are rounded.

And at last you can see the two finished pieces together!

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I still have two more pieces to complete, but they are both jewelry so they will be smaller and somewhat simpler, but hopefully no less awesome!! As always, you can follow my instagram @mikeydoescosplay to get updates as they happen! I have a vending even coming up in a couple of weeks so you probably won’t see too much new cosplay stuff until after that’s over.

I'm Not Dead Yet

Welcome back folks! I know you’re all used to my spastic and inconsistent posting at this point so hopefully anyone who wants to see regular stuff from me knows to follow me on Instagram.

So since it’s been two whole months since I posted anything, lets’ dig right into it! First up, I want to share some awesome photos I got of Frog, thanks to my wonderful husband <3

I’m so stoked with how he came out!! I had a lot of fun wearing hi at Tekko and was recognized by quite a few people. I even met a guy who had the whole cast of Chrono Trigger tattooed on his arm!! I have a few friends who cosplay some of the other characters so I’m looking forward to eventually having some friends to wear this with.

Since Tekko, I’ve been working on a few commissions, along with another new cosplay for myself. My first commission is one that I put together pretty quickly for a friend of mine to take to Acen last weekend. While I’ve played Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, I’m not overly familiar with the series, but I had a lot of fun making Saix’s Claymore.

I made this guy out of layers of foamcore, with a wooden broom handle for the core/handle. Here you can see the central layer and the broom handle, along with the patter I used for it.

Once all the layers were done, I bevelled the whole thing, which took an exceedingly long time, and then coated the exposed foam layers with spackling paste.

Since the bevel spanned multiple layers, I cut them in tiers so that I could sand the foam into an even bevel.

Here’s the spackling paste gooped along the edges of exposed foam.

The rest consisted of a few hours of sandeing, several coats of mod podge, and some paint!

I don’t often have the opportunity to share photos of the full cosplay with my prop commissions, but fortunately for me, I have this wonderful gem from aprinceforflower’s instagram!

Doesn’t Tobi look badass?!!?!

With that done, I took my opportunity to finish up another commission that I started quite a while back. From Baten Kaitos, the obscure but asewome Gamecube title, I’m making the main protagonist, Kalas’s, weapons.

This will be my first of several Baten Kaitos projects as several of my friends and I are planning a group for Youma this year, so I’ll have my own new cosplay to work on, as well as some items for at least one other member of our group.

I don’t have as many progress photos of these that I can find, since I’ve been working on them periodically for the past several months.

The base of both blades are MDF, and there are some wood elements for each one as well. I used a dowel that I split up the middle for the knife handle so that it would be round, and I used thin plywood pieces for details on the sword, to help with stability.

For the hand guard on the knife, I used a piece of cereal box with worbla covering both sides. I heated up the whole thing and shaped it around a marker to get the curved bit on the end.

For the rest of the details on the sword, I used layers of craft foam, and some wooden tokens that I got from my orthodontist as a kid XD

As per usual, a lot of sanding and mod-podging ensued, until I could paint these suckers!

And here we have the finished products!

Along with that, I have another finished project, which is something I’ve made twice before already. I’m referring to Isabela’s Jewelry from Dragon Age 2.

This was the first time I made this, nearly 5 years ago, as one of my first commissions. It was made out of craft foam, model magic, and cereal boxes. This time around, there’s still some craft foam for the base, but most of it is worbla. The buggest improvement was figuring out how o shape it such that it was less neckbrace-y. The improvement is… stammering, to be honest.

This was an incredible thing to see just how far I’ve come. I mean I know I’ve improved a lot since I started taking commissions, but to have a direct comparison like this really shows it.

And that’s all I have for you guys! I’m working on a new cosplay for Matsuricon, as well as a few other commissions, so don’t forget to follow my Instagram for updates as those projects come together. And eventually I should be posting them here too.

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!