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!

New Year, (mostly) New Projects

So now that I have my first con of the year under my belt, commission season is open yet again, meaning that I’m going to be busy making a bunch of awesome stuff for great people!

First up o the list is a project you’re all aware of already since I’ve been working no it off and on for quite some time now. It’s the 3rd set of Nohrian armor I’ve been tasked to construct, and this time it’s for Silas. I’ve shown you all progress photos of the build and now we’re into the finishing stages!

Those of you familiar with my MO know that I generally try to spray the metallic bits when I can, as it’s a much faster and more consistent way to achieve an even color on them, so I sprayed the silver details on the pieces that have them.

With the rest of the armor being black, I’d be brush painting the majority of bulk of the surfaces. In order to keep the silver details from needing touch-ups by getting black on them, but to save myself the time of painting a giant surface with a tiny paintbrush, I followed the normal procedure for painting walls. You “cut in” around the edges with a smaller paintbrush, then you use your larger brush to fill in the middle (when you’re painting walls, it’s usually a roller rather than a brush to paint the bulk, but I’m not going to roll paint armor… I don’t thing it’s turn out well XD)

Thankfully black paint covers pretty well, so it only took 2 coats to cover solidly (1 on on the first photo, second coat on the second photo)

Normally for stuff like this, I’d do contour painting to make the shapes pop a bit more, but that’s really hard to achieve when the surfaces are black, because despite what Sterling Archer might tell you, there’s no "slightly darker black” to use for shading, and it looks grey instead of black if you do too much highlighting. So I took my opportunities where I could and did some shading on the silver bits, where appropriate.

The shading is pretty subtle, so don’t worry if you don’t notice it, it is doing it’s job ~_^

As per usual, the whole armor set is getting a top coat of matte mod podge to give it some moderate sheen and help protect the paint. I’ll also be using it for the back to seal the foam and make sure the silver overspray on the undersides doesn’t get on Indi’s cosplay.

There’s only a few bits left to do, mostly put together the pieces for the boots and seal the exposed foam on the undersides of all the pieces, so I’m glad to be nearly finished with this big project!

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The second project I’ve been actively working on is a dark magician staff from Yu-gi-oh. A great big shout-out goes to Giant Dad for his continued support and business. He’s commissioned a number of things from me including the Fat Man from Fallout, and the Zweihander from Dark Souls. This latest project is only getting started but I’m hoping to crank it out in the next couple of weeks.

This is the only photo I have at present, because I’ve just started working on it. The staff head is foam with worbla on both sides. For armor I usually only cover the outside and wrap a lip around to the back, to save weight and material; since you see both the inside and outside of the petal shapes I needed to coat both sides or it would have looked super weird. As you can see, the ball on the end lights sup too! I still need to color it green so it lights in the correct color, and somehow all of my green sharpies have disappeared…

You also may have noticed that the shaft of the staff is in fact a broom handle, you know how much I love using random junk in my props! And it works particularly well because it’s hollow so the light that illuminates the ball on the end fits nicely into it. You’ll be seeing more progress on this over the coming weeks.

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The last project I’m actively working on is a personal one, that I’m hoping to have done for Tekko in April. If you know me you probably know I have a love of amphibians so I’m particularly excited to be cosplaying one of my favorite anuran characters: Frog from Chrono Trigger. I’m pretty sure I posted a few photos from my early construction of his head, but we’re gonna do it again anyway cause I can’t remember for sure.

I did some research on furries for this project, because it seemed to make the most sense to me to construct the head the way they do, and I was fortunate to find some WIP photos from Tionniel on dA of how they constructed it so I had some good guidance.

I decided to cover the head with fleece, mostly for the sake of simplicity, and the face that it would be easily correctable if I messed anything up.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight to trace the foam pieces before I put them together so that I had an accurate pattern for the fleece cover… so I had to eyeball it a bit. Thankfully, the fleece is pretty forgiving, though there are a few big folds in the back that… just have to be there lol.

As you can see from the photo here, the nose is my only way to see (though you’ll see later that I have a second option). The eyes are the two halves of one of those big, clear, plastic ornaments. I used contact adhesive to attach the ring of green fleece around the base so they could be stitched onto the head. You might also notice that there’s pieces of masking tape on the eyes, that was to give myself a guide for painting the pupils. I wanted to paint the eyes on the inside of the baubles to they stayed nice and glossy, and to protect the paint from getting scratched as I continued to work on it, and of course later when it’s actually being worn. So since the layer against the plastic is the one you’re going to see, I started with the pupils and worked out from there. They’re not actually attached in the photo above yet, they’re just pinned into place so I could make sure the eyes weren’t gonna be looking in weird directions.

So now the eyes are done and attached! And the nose is fixed too, so it doesn’t look all janky any more.

The last bit I’ve done with the head is the eyelids, which is more bits of upholstery foam with fleece around it.

With that detail finished the only thing left are the tympanum (frog ears), which should be pretty easy.

And I did mention there was another way for me to see…

RIBBIT!

That’s all for this week! I have a handfull of other new commissions in my queue so as soon as that armor is done (which I’m hoping to finish ASAP) you’ll be seeing some more new projects coming together, so don’t forget to check back! And also another friendly reminder that I am most consistent with posting WIP potos on my instagram, @mikeydoescosplay, so feel free to give me a follow to stay up-to-date!

Commission Progress (WIP Wednesday)

Welcome back everyone! I know I’m supper sporadic with posting here but I do have some progress updates on the commissions I’ve been working on that I wanted to share!

Let’s start with the projects you’ve already seen the beginnings of:

Silas’s armor is coming along nicely, though unfortunately I’ve run out of worbla so I can’t make any more sections until that arrives.

Next up, Opal’s bow is done with construction and I’ve started painting. The gradient painting is a huge pain in the ass but it does look pretty cool.

Now, on to new projects which I’ve somehow magically gotten further on than the stuff you’ve already seen! I’ve started working on Yuna’s staff from FFX. It’s the staff you traditionally see her with in all of the official artwork.

For the head, I used 1/4” MDF and thick craft foam to make the little blue details on the gold head. The shaft is a wooden broom handle I got at Home Depot.

The blade on my scroll saw broke in the middle of trying to cut the staff head out, which was slightly terrifying. Thankfully neither me nor the prop was hurt, I just had to finish cutting it out with my jigsaw instead.

Here’s the head all painted! Next step is to paint the shaft blue but I haven’t gotten to that yet.

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The last new item on my list is Atalanta’s bow from Fate/Apocrypha! I’m making this for a friend of mine and we’ll be cosplaying together at Youmacon.

Much like Opal’s bow, the base is wood with a section of broom handle as the grip. Despite the overall shape of the bow being a little more intricate, this actually took way less time to put together than the other bow because it didn’t involve two layers of wood together (which took a LOT of sanding to even out) and the weird round spiral bit that also took a lot of time and work to get fit together and looking right.

The raised details are all made from either craft foam or cereal box… you can probably tell from the photo above which sections are which ;-)
The bits around the grip are covered with worbla scraps that I heated up and mushed together.

With the details done, all there was left to do was paint and add the bowstring. The simple black & gold color scheme is what really made the difference as far as time spent detailing compared to the other bow I’m working on.

And that’s all the commission work I’ve gotten done recently. I was out of town all last week visiting friends and going to my brother-in-law’s wedding so I was not as productive as usual. This week I’m aiming to get Yuna’s staff and Opal’s bow done so keep an eye on my instagram to see more progress photos! I’ve also been working on my new cosplay for Youmacon which is mostly done at this point, so I’ll be posting again later this week or some time next week with all the photos and construction notes on that!