Who Killed the World?

Hello dearies, and welcome to a spaztastic WIP Wednesday here at Mikey Does Cosplay. While I'm still recovering from the wedding, I've at least had enough time to dive headlong into my next set of projects. And I couldn't have done so too soon because one of them is a pair of costumes for an Apocalypse-themed Halloween party we're going to this saturday. So yeah, that's been  quite the turn-around, but it has been insanely fun to work on all of the pieces I've put together.

What are these lovely costumes, you ask? Oh, no one special, just the three awesomest characters in a movie that will melt your face off - Mad Max: Fury Road. It all started with my friend who's hosting the party; she wanted to do an Imperator Furiosa costume for the party and recruited my help for constructing the prosthetic arm. It's not nearly as awesome as some of the ones I've seen out there, but given the extremely limited time to put things together it looks pretty awesome.

I put together all of the bits and pieces, she sewed them onto the base glove, everyone is happy. It's made using my usual method of cereal boxes and worbla. Along with some leather pits, acryllic rods, key rings, duct tape, and some legitimate pieces like actual wrenches and a tire gauge. For such a hack job I think it looks really cool.

So naturally, when tasked to make this thing, and given the challenge of an apocalypse-themed party, how could I not immediately try for my own pair of MM:FR costumes to match? Well, Jordan is one who prefers not to wear a wig... and also prefers to have some hair, so he was the natural choice for Max.

As a bonus, he actually owns a coat that looks ridiculously like Max's from the movie (which Nux is wearing in this particular scene). Double bonus, he has a long-sleeved tshirt that's about the same color as the one Max wears, and has already worn it to the point where there's giant holes and it's missing half an arm. Score, I have almost no real work to do for his outfit minus some further weathering on the shirt, and to find a pair of pants at the thrift store. There's also that weird shoulder pauldron that I have yet to figure out the purpose of, but whatever. Either way, all missions were a success! I managed to find a pair of cargo pants at the thrift store and constructed a pauldron for him. The weathering was interesting... I essentially took the shirt and pants out to our concrete driveway and danced on top of them while shuffling my feet as much as possible... for about an hour. I felt ridiculous but it worked, you can see the fruits of my labor here.

I didn't touch the coat cause it's actually a really nice coat, but it already has the right look to it without grinding it into the dirt.

So that really just leaves me, and by now you may have a good idea of what my plans are...

That's right, I'll be donning the lovable warboy, Nux. One of these days I'll stop doing bald characters, but in the meantime this is going to be a lot of fun. The nice thing is it's pretty simple as far as clothing goes. I roughed up a second pair of cargo pants for him, I have a decent pair of boots, and some leather bits to strap around my legs. The rest is going to be make-up magic which I'm both nervous and excited about doing. I'm not the greatest when it comes to makeup but I'd like to get better, and this should be an interesting experiment. The biggest thing is going to be the engine-design scar on his chest. Given that this is less than a fully-legit cosplay of mine, I opted out of creating a chest plate with liquid latex, but if I decide to wear this to a con some time in the future, I may go back and try to do that. I've never used liquid latex though so that would be an other interesting experience to try out. For now, it'll just be painted on and we'll see how it looks.

Of course, we're not quite done because if Jordan & I are doing these two it only seems appropriate that we have the proper accessories.

Yep, Jordan will be muzzled and we'll be attached with a chain and bloodline; things are getting kinky ;-)

I cannot tell you all how pumped I am for this weekend. I will definitely post some photos of the full crew all done-up once I get back, you can count on seeing those either here or on facebook early next week. And naturally, that's not all I'm working on right now, but the rest is taking a back-burner until I get this more pressing stuff done. Needless to say, there will be lots more happening here for you to see in the coming weeks!

Drinks all around!

Hello dearies, so sorry for my prolonged hiatus but planning a wedding and doing all of the creative bits was rather all-consuming for the past couple of weeks (not to mention the small con I attended the week before at which I was vending). Needless to say, it's been exhausting but it was oh-so-worth it.

Since I haven't been doing much costume-related stuff lately,I figured I might show off some of the fun crafty, and very nerdy, creations I put together for the wedding. You can expect the cosplay stuff to resume promptly after this week as I'm already into my next commission and started thinking about my [secret cosplay] again too.

So for the traditionally creative and craft bits of the wedding, I made pretty much everything. We had centerpieces put together with the wonderful help of my mother (god bless), and those actually doubled as favors, so we got two birds with one stone there. We decided to save some money on materials by using a bunch of things I already had: Magic cards. For those of you who play Magic: the Gathering, you know how relevant the lotus is in the lore, and as such, it seemed like an appropriate flower to liken the centerpieces to. Jordan and I actually met primarily because of Magic through a mutual friend who is much more heavily into the game than we are. So it seemed appropriate that MtG cards were used somewhere in the decorating.

As you can see in the photos, there's a little button on a pipe cleaner to hold things together, and a round piece that says "Wishing you Magic in your lives" in the center. Thank god my mom cut out all of the petals and did a lot of the assembling with me because they took a long while to put together. You can also see some of the other arting I did for the tables in the form of those family crests that you can see. We used those for the table designations because come on, who was expecting me to just use numbers, I mean really?

Along with all of the lotuses we used for the table decor, I decided to create some different Magic card flowers for boutineers, which was particularly relevant because that friend through whom we met, who also is an avid magic player, was our officiant for the ceremony. so we all got some Magic roses for our lapels, with some sprucing up in the form of fall foliage. 

The next fun creation I got to put together was the card box. This was a lot of fun to work on and was Jordan's Idea in the first place.

It has a cardboard base, with a foamcore top and details in whatever random materials I could find (mostly more of the same). The nails are all brads that are actually punched through the cardboard. And the best part is the inside.

That's right, our card box was a mimic. Half our guests probably didn't really get it, but honestly, who cares XD

The last of the fun crafty things I got to do was put together the guest book. Since I've bound some books before it was fairly simple, though I didn't actually bind the pages myself for this one, I was lazy and bought a sketchbook and made a new cover for it. Along with 2 new pages for the front.

So I had lots of fun scheming and creating for our wedding, as I almost always do any time I get to make stuff.

If you'd like to see any of the photos of us on our big day, go check out facebook and you'll see us and all of our friends and family being adorable. That's all for now, loves!

Dragon Priest Mask and some Steampunk Stuff

I'm taking a hot second to show off my finished dragon priest mask and then I'm disappearing back into my cave where I'm assembling a million and one paper flowers out of magic cards. So here 'tis!

I'm super happy with how the paint job came out and so is my client, so BOOYAH!

Also, while I'm here, here's my (finally) finished steampunk shotgun that I've been half working on forever and finally got my shit together to finish weathering it and everything. I debuted it in its final form at a steampunk event in the Cuyahoga Valley (you know, that park that used to steal my sou... I mean that I used to work at).

It has been dubbed "Nidhogg" and is much more menacing in more modest lighting.

And here's a few photos from the event, coutresy of Three Rivers Modeling Co.