Just keep crafting, just keeeeeeep crafting

SO this doesn't actually have anything to do with Finding Nemo, it just seemed appropriate for my random collection of recent commissions and new projects I have in my queue.

HOKAY, SO, the first finished project in my recent collection is actually a mask I've made before, and I actually made it for the same person. The first one was a bit different that she was expecting/intending so while I offered to make her a new one she could essentially trade in for the old one at no charge, she offered to just straight up buy the new one and keep the old one. Bless her.

I'm not sure if any of you remember the Wolverine-esque claws I made for a Toakaka cosplayer a while ago, but the mask was for the same customer.

The claws turned out really well but the mask ended up being a different shape that it's really supposed to be, so I ended up making a more half-spherical one with the help of a lovely styrofoam half-ball and some paper mache. Several hours later, with the help of some black knit fabric, white foamies, and red chiffon (which I cut out of some flag poi because I couldn't find the leftovers from my first attempt at making this mask), and we have this lovely new one!

Just as creepy, but a good bit more impressive, and definitely better quality.

The second of my recent projects was also fairly simple, but I discovered a new way of making blades that I'm very excited about, as I usually make them out of wood and I have a hard time beveling the blade so I usually just don't XD

I was asked to create a pair of Kuni that have a rather more interesting design that the classic Kunai you see in things like Naruto (and therefore can find manufactured versions that are probably cheaper than commissioning me to make them for you). I admittedly don't remember what series they're from, since it wasn't something I'd ever heard of before, but they look like this:

I LOVE THE COLORS!

So, first of all I should say that I love making bladed weapons cause I just think they're fun, and I end up playing with them when I'm finished making them :-D

These ones started with two layers of foamcore board.

After drawing in the point at which the bevel of the blade would stop, I went over it with an x-acto knife and peeled away the outer layer of paper on the board.

With the paper gone, it was easy to cut the bevel into the foam using a serrated craft knife (I think the one I used was just a steak knife I found at the thrift store. Yay thrift stores!)

Look how pretty that edge is! The next step is to spackle the exposed foam so it strengthens it and fills in all of the air holes. I usually use this lightweight spackling (and I did for this one too), but next time I think I'm going to use the regular stuff as the lightweight spackling doesn't like to sand very well, it's rather odd. I think it's because it's designed to go on smooth and not require sanding but that doesn't really work with the way I'm using it...

I don't have a photo with just the spackling, but after that I added the detail layers in using compressed paperboard (I assume you all know that means cereal boxes by this point, right? Cause I use them for everything).

After some sanding, I tried a product I hadn't used before, called plasti-dip. It's supposed to be good for waterproofing things and building up a nice, strong, flexible, rubbery layer on the outside. I know other crafters use it so I tried it. Honestly, I'm a bit on the fence about it, because I never ended up getting a nice smooth surface with it, even after several coats. Thus, I had to put several more layers of gesso on over the plasti-dip to even out all of the little holes. I'm not sure if there is a way around this, so I'm planning on trying again at some point to see if it works out a little better. Anyway, a few coats of gesso, paint, and mod podge later we have some sparkly new blades!

The only other cosplay-related thing I've made recently is an 11th Doctor bow tie for a friend of mine.

The rest of my projects are new! And I'm really excited about pretty much all of them, though I'm also a but daunted by at least one of them. First up in my queue is the blunderbuss from Bloodborne. I've made a few guns in the past and I always have fun constructing them, and this one is definitely going to be a fun build. The design is pretty intricate, and it's a rather unusual shape, so it'll be really interesting to figure out what different parts are going to need to be constructed out of. 

Next on the list is a duo of items from Dragon Age. I'll be making a staff and necklace for a friend of mine who is cosplaying Morrigan.

I'm making the one on the far right

Jewelry is fun cause I get to use legit materials sometimes and while I'm making one of her simpler staffs, they're all interesting so it should be a lot of fun to put together.

Next on the list is not a formalized request just yet, but will probably get nailed down fairly soon. A friend of mine would like a giant set of claws for Hsien-ko from Darkstalkers. Sounds simple enough, right?

Lastly is the most daunting prospect on my list at the moment, but also one of the most exciting. A fellow Fire Emblem cosplayer has requested a full set of armor for Leo(n) from FE: Fates. By this point I'm pretty sure most of you know my fellings on the current state of the Fire Emblem series, but that's beside the point because getting to make this set of armor would be awesome!

As you can guess, this will be no easy feat. And if you remember my last throwback thursday post, Haar is my only experience with armor to date. His turned out reasonably well given my skill level at the time, but making a suit of faux armor for a client is a bit more stressful because I want to make sure it lasts and needs minimal maintenance to keep it looking nice, not to mention making sure it actually fits the person without having that person around all the time to try things on. This commission is also not a done deal yet as I'm still studying the artwork and researching materials to give an estimate, but I'm staying optimistic at the moment because this would definitely be a new and exciting achievement for me as a cosplayer.

So as you can see, I have my work cut out for me at the moment, so be sure to check back in as I start cranking out some of these awesome projects!

<3

I'd rather be napping

Another week gone by and it's time again for Throwback Thursday!  This one's going pretty far back, and I'm sure it comes as no surprise that it's a Fire Emblem cosplay, since I figure I need to work one in every so often so when I run out of other costumes you won't just get a long string of them haha.

This is definitely one of my favorite FE cosplays because he's one of my favorite characters, and I'm pretty confident that I'm the only person to date who has ever cosplayed him. I'm referring, of course, to the one-eyed wyvern rider Haar.

Haar has always been one of my favorite characters in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, partially for his design, partially for his attitude, and mostly for the fact that he's a doom machine. He is pretty much one of the only two axe-wielder I use in those games, along with Kieran (since Boyd is such a delicate flower).

Putting Haar together was an interesting journey, since it was one of my earlier cosplays, and it was the first time (and really only time thus far) that I've tried making faux armor. Thankfully, the cloth parts were pretty easy, and the armor covered some spot that let me cheat on some bits.

The tunic I made covers just the underneath parts, and the panel that hangs in the front is a separate piece that buttons onto the front. The tunic itself has a huge head hole and is sleeveless (cause I was not very good with drafting at that point so that tended to happen a lot). Fortunately, the armor covers everything up there so I could just use a black collared shirt underneath the tunic and you'd never know it wasn't all one garment! Wow am I lazy XD

Well, that may have been partially because I spent all of my time and energy on the armor, cause it was a doozy. I used craft foam and poster board to make all of it. Thankfully most of the pieces only needed to curve in a single direction, so I would cut out the foam piece for the back, slather on some mod podge with a paintbrush, then stick it to the poster board. To get it to hold the curve I needed, I'd wrap the piece around a large cardboard tube and rubber-band it on while it was drying. Because of the thickness of the foam, when it dried it held the curve! There are lots of great tutorials online for this and similar methods for craft foam armor, so I won't go any more in-depth with the details, particularly because I never took any progress photos while I was making it. I think this was the tutorial I used, though I didn't follow it exactly and used some different stuff in parts, nevertheless it was a good starting point for me, given that I had no clue what I was doing.

The axe was another fun thing to make cause it's just so darn big. It's all cardboard & paper mache, though the pole at the center is pvc. Very simple build & paint, which is why you can see the contours in the paper mache pieces if you look closely. Thankfully it still photographs well so you'd never know.

The great thing about wearing Haar was that all I had to do for posing was look sleepy XD

The downside was that I wore it to Otakon in the middle of summer in Baltimore... cause I'm a dumbass. Seasonal planning for cosplay hadn't really occurred to me yet so I spent the day nearly dying of heat stroke. Live and learn. The other issue was that we never actually did much of a photoshoot so these are the only 2 pictures I have of him. I definitely want to wear him again in the future so I can do a real photoshoot and get some good quality photos of him, because he really is one of my favorite characters, and for all of the work I put into this costume, he deserves some quality photos. Hell, I'd pay for a professional photographer with this one.

That is not going to happen too soon though, as his armor got a lot of wear and tear at the con. Also, being a newb at the time, I didn't think to use black or white foam for the base because the packs of large sheets I found at the store were all multicolored, so the base foam is all bright green, red, yellow, & pink. Needless to say, it's super obvious in the spots where the paint has worn off

not so subtle...

So thankfully I've learned my lesson, which I will now pass on to you: use foam that's roughly the color you're painting it!! Or use black, because the dark won't show up as obviously as the wierd-ass colors I used.

So, slowly but surely I'm working on repainting his armor so I can wear it again, I'm thinking of maybe shooting for Youmacon on October or Ohayocon next January. No more summer cons for Haar, he'll (I'll) sweat to death.

Well that's all for now folks; later, lovelies!

Not quite a Sharkzooka, but still pretty rad

So my first experience with LEDs in my props turned out pretty fantastically with the Fishbones rocket launcher from League of Legends. To be quite honest, it's pretty hard to top that, but one of my more recent commissions was pretty intensive and awesome too. I was contacted by a client of mine who I'd made a shield & sword set from Majora's Mask, and she asked if I could make a Clank for her brother. As in the little robot sidekick from Rachet & Clank. I certainly was not going to pass up the opportunity so continue expanding my horizons with this project, despite it being a rather daunting one.

He doesn't look so complicated... right?

My first thought was, this shouldn't be that hard, I've built all kinds of wierd stuff before. Well, that was before I realized that in order to be very effective with him, I'd need to make him posable, as in all of his joints needed to actually work. On top of that, his legs would have to fold up into his body so he could be worn around like a backpack. And the last fun thing: in order to be properly proportional to this Clank, he'd have to be about 3ft tall. Oi.

 I had a perfectly good idea how to make most of him right off the bat, carboard and foamcore would be just fine for the body, foam with paper clay over it would work well for the legs, and I could use craft foam for the raised planes. The real trick would be getting the joints to actually move. I had only a vague concept of how that would work and what bit & pieces needed to go together in order to achieve that. So, my first stop after picking up some paint & foamcore: the thrift store.

And I came home with these things.

I know, you think I'm crazy, right? Well that's probably true, but they did actually come in handy for constructing some of Clank's joints. The wierd little alien's legs moved in and out, which I could steal their mechanism to use in his ankles, and their spherical-ish shape worked out quite well for that. That Torx thing I ended up using for the shoulders, since I knew I'd need something that could support the weight of the arms and stay in place, while still being able to turn.

Say goodbye to our little toys, and hello to some useful materials with which to make our little robot move. Now unfortunately, I couldn't find any other joints to harvest, but after seeing how they worked, I felt somewhat (or really not very) confident that I could make some joints of my own for the knees and the elbows.

I started with a few different sizes of pvc, some nuts & bolts, rubber washers, and a whole lot of E6000. God only knows how I successfully constructed some functional joints, I might be able to recreate them again if I needed to, but I doubt I could really explain what I was doing... so you can just look at some pictures instead of listening to me ramble unsuccessfully.

The feet were done with my usual floral foam + lightweight putty method, and the raised parts are craft foam. All in all, probably the simplest part of the whole construction.

Add the legs & a box and his bottom half is done!

With the bottom half done, the next step was the arms. Those bits from our Torx toy, plus some dowel rods and giant washers made for some interesting limbs.

The hands were actually fairly simple; they're made from a few layers of foamcore board with some screws for the knuckles and one of those safety eyes you usually use on plushies for the large round part in the middle of his hands. The fingers are just 2 layers of black craft foam with some heavy gauge wire stuck in the middle so you can pose them.

Put it all together with the body, and we have a torso!

And... waiting for things to dry... and there's only so many ways you can keep things level...

So as you can see, nothing within arm's reach is safe when I'm crafting! I'll grab anything that's the right size.. it's a good thing I don't have any pets at the moment, I feel like that could go badly.

Well, you know what's next! It time for a head, and it was, of course, constructed using our favorite project from kindergarten... paper mache-ing a balloon then popping the balloon! I seriously haven't done that in forever and it was downright theraputic.

Apologies if that photo gives you nightmares...

Also, fun fact: that piece of cardboard tubing that I used for his neck, it's the same tube that made up most of Fishbones! I seriously never throw away anything in this house. It's kind of a problem.

Well, now that we have most of the pieces put together, it's time for the final construction and painting! I was moving pretty quickly as I was running short on time to finish this guy and so I did a vary bad job of taking any progress photos of the painting process, but here he is!

As for the bits I didn't discuss... his eyes are two halves of one of those acryllic balls you can get from craft stores. They were very convenient for this cause I didn't have to do much to them since they were already in two pieces, I just sanded the inside of them to diffuse the green light from the LEDS. His antenna is a little metal tube I pulled off of a clock (thank you steampunk interests!) and a big plastic marble at the top that I sprayed red. His jaw is a piece of thick foam that I sprayed silver, with those same giant washers from his arm joints to attach them.

And now for the magical part. He needed to fold up so he could be worn around like a backpack. Well, on the bottom of his boxy body there are two doors with industrial velcro, and on the top of that little box his legs are attached to is the other half of the velcro. When he's standing, you can attach the legs to the outside of the doors, but when you want them to fold inside, you just pull them off, open the doors, and slide the legs all the way up. There's another platform with velcro on the inside that holds them in place!

I swear it took me more time to come up with how to make that work, but functionally speaking, it works better than most of the joints I constructed for him, go figure!

This little guy was certainly a learning experience, but I had a lot of fun figuring him out and putting him together. And I actually got to meet the Rachet cosplayer at Colossalcon which was pretty cool too!