Site Updates and Such

Hey everyone, just a quick update today with a few changes/updates/etc.

Character Compendium

I have a new section on the site that lets you look through my cosplays by character, and then when you click on the picture, it'll give you all of the photos in my gallery of that particular cosplay. I like organization so I'm pretty pumped about it. Here's where you can find the Character Compendium on the main page, and I'll also put a link to it here.

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Mikey's on Instagram!

This is just another friendly reminder that I'm on Instagram now! I've been doing better lately of posting photos on there than I am on Twitter, and I like the format a bit better. If you're looking for more cosplay and less inane fandom junk, my instagram account is the way to go, so follow me @mikeydoescosplay!

Because I've been, and hope to continue to be, more active on instagram, and I'm using it exclusively for cosplay-related stuff, I added a media block on my home page that shows all of my most recent posts. You can find it just above my social media links on the home page. I'd love to hear opinions on the block, if you think it's worth it or if it just clogs things up too much. If you have any input please let me know!

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Post Regularity

Ok so I know I've said this a million times so you probably don't believe me, but I'm doing my best to have more regular posts on my blog here! i will be keeping my regular WIP updates mostly on Instagram, and then making a full post when the prop/costume is actually finished, so it's not too broken up if you're trying to more or less recreate my methods. However, there will be a lot more in-between posts on a much more regular basis than I have been doing.

I'm bringing Throwback Thursday back since I realized there's a decent number of cosplays I made before I started this site, and I haven't done posts about them yet. You can expect to see one every two weeks with the first one posting on Nov 23rd. I'm being a lot more proactive about my blogging and have several posts put together that'll go out on schedule. I'm hoping this will get me into better posting habits, but we'll see. If nothing else, it will actually mean there's going to be more consistent posting on here so that's a good thing!
I'm also going to be doing a weekly throwback photo on my Instagram account so keep an eye on that too!

I'm hoping to have instate a monthly Materials Monday post, starting in December. I've already started putting together the first post so with any luck I'll keep that rolling!

CAW-CAAAW

It's time to show off my newest cosplay! Ok, sort of. Mostly just regale you with tales of how I constructed it because I don't really have many photos of the whole thing yet, those will come when we get proofs back from out awesome Phantom Thieves photoshoot at Youmacon!

So first things first, let's take a moment to appreciate how ridiculous this outfit is. For those of you unfamiliar with the Persona 5 universe, the Phantom Thieves' costumes manifest themselves when they are in the Metaverse (the supernatural portion of the game world) and are based off of that person's idea of what a revolutionary/subversive hero would look like. So apparently Akechi sees a revolutionary as a super gay drum major with a crazy bird beak...

I can't get over it.

Anyway, let me regale you with the tale of how I put this bad boy together. I actually started with the accessories before I put any of the outfit together.

I patterned out the mask on cardstock, then transferred it to craft foam and did my usual worbla-wrapping method, mushing the center seam together to get the mask. You can see the first iteration above. I liked it, but I overdid the beak a little, so I trimmed the bottom, re-mushed the wworbla, and go this much more acceptable beak.

Then it was time for.... you guessed it: Mod Podge-Mania! Several coats later, we were ready to paint. I sprayed it white to start, then sprayed the bright red over it, then brush painted the parts around the eyes with a darker red. Not to brag but I think the fruits of my labors were pretty damn juicy.

Next up was the sword, because of course this flamboyant young man would never weild a normal sword, he has to carry a freaking lightsaber.

Well, fortunately for me, I had a few extra lightsaber blades from my commission a while back (I made a lightsaber based on the 10th Doctor's sonic screwdriver) and a flashlight that fit perfectly on the end of it. I also had some tubes that fit just the way I needed them to, so constructing the hilt was actually quite easy. I used the rigid tube, some craft foam, and a bunch of E-6000 to attach the flashlight to the blade. Also, I should note that I put 2 layers of blue plastic folder on the end of the flashlight to give the light a blue tint.

I guess a fair amount of masking tape was also involved...

The guard was all just card stock and worbla, though getting the right curvature took a few tries. The back end was actually the plastic wheel from a roll of scotch tape, which miraculously fit perfectly on the end. The thin hand guard it thin vinyl tubing with heavy gauge wire in it. Put it all together and you get...

Apparently I also added an extra layer of craft foam on the grip...

We have once again come to the mod-podging stage, along with painting. I'll spare you the boring  and repeptitive details.

Now that the props were done, I felt a little better, because nothing else involved several coats of paint and having to wait for things to dry... Oh wait.

The belt buckle originally had a butterfly on it with some rhinestones. I covered it with craft foam & worbla for Goro's iconic "A."

The "A" pieces on his epaulets were just layers of cereal box coated in mod podge & then painted.

Which brings us to one of the most frustrating things in shopping for this costume, because I had a hell of a time finding satin, braided chord, and braid fringe that were all the same freaking color. Fortunately I got close enough but there was lots of profanity flying around the trim isle at Joann's.

So, time to start on the jacket. I patterned it off of an athletic jacket I found at the thrift store which fit me about how I wanted it to. It's not as tailor-fit as it could have been, but it's comfortable and I can raise my arms without my belly showing so that was the important thing.

I used a white bottomweight for the base fabric, I believe it was Target or possibly Rodeo, I don't really remember. I got a bottomweight partially because I was hoping not to have to line it, but that didn't work out, and I had to line it anyway because f*** white fabric. 

After cutting out all of the pieces, it was time to add the weird white mountain-trim bits to the front. Little did I know this trim would be one of the most frustrating parts of making this costume. Each strip had to be about a yard long, and each one took an inordinate amount of time to sew together because of all of the stupid little mountain peek things every 3/4"

And, let's take a look at that reference artwork again...

Excuse me, I need to make HOW MANY OF THOSE?!?! 2 for the front of the jacket, 2 for each sleeve, and two for each pant leg is a total of 10 of this f***ing mountain trim. I was annoyed, but I made the first two so I could continue working on the jacket.

So let's take a quick second to talk about what making and attaching this trim entailed, in case any of you guys are looking at this to help you make your own flaming drum major costume. You stitch along the marked lines, trim the inside so you can flip it & flatten it out, but not so close that your fabric frays along the stitch line and you have to start over again (FML WE'RE NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT IT). Once it's successfully flipped, which I had to use a mechanical pencil point to get all of those little peaks pushed out, you'll want to press it flat, and then line it up & pin it onto the outside of the coat.

IMPORTANT NOTE: With the way I'm doing this, you want the peaks to be facing the opposite direction that they're supposed to point when you're done, because we're going to fold the trim over after we stitch it.

Once it's in place, you'll do a zig-zag stitch along the raw edge. Here's why I did a zig-zag stitch: the fabric will fray a little bit, but with a zig-zag it'll keep that to a minimum and make sure you have a nice, tight seam line on the trim.

Once you've stitched it to the front, take it back to your iron, fold the trim over your zig-zagged edge, and press it flat. So now our raw edge is hidden under the trim and the peaks are pointing the proper way.

Now that they're pressed, you'll want to stitch them down. You can do this on your machine by running a top stitch along the edge of your trim, though with the weird shape of the trim, it'll take while. On the other hand, if you are a masochistic perfectionist like I am, you can hand stitch it down.

Thankfully, the base came together nice and easily, and I did a pretty good job sticking to my pattern so there weren't any weird spots between the lining and the outside. After the excruciating process adding the trim to the front I needed this part to go well for the sake of my sanity.

Once this part was done, I decided not to immediately attach the sleeves, because they were going to need that stupid mountain trim added to them too. Instead I decided to put together the cape.

Construction on the cape was fairly easy, I simply patterned it straight from the pieces of the jacket I tore apart to make the rest, I just had to add the standing collar, which wasn't particularly difficult, but it did turn out a bit big for my neck.

The most time consuming part was hand-stitching the gold braid along the top, but even that wasn't that bad, and I got through a few Tiger & Bunny episodes as I worked on it.

The epaulets are just as absurd as the rest of this cosplay, but thankfully they were pretty easy to put together, and I could machine-stitch the chord fringe to them, which was nice since I had to hand-sew all of the gold chord. The center thing is a cover button with gold satin on it, and the "A" embellishments, as I stated earlier, are made from cereal boxes.

With the cape done, it was time to delve back into trim hell and repeat my mountain trim 4 more times for the two sleeves. I made it through and the rest of the sleeve construction was surprisingly unproblematic (sleeves often give me trouble, too so this was a welcome surprise).

Of course in the references there are two different types of gold trim on the sleeves, so I used satin ribbon for the flat part, and more of that gold braid.

Well, things are looking up at this point, as all I had left was the gold braid closures on the front. Little did I know that that aspect alone would take just as much time as putting together the entire rest of the f***ing costume.

3 days later I'm down to my last 3 sections of braid and my fingers can barely hold a needle, I've lost several mL of blood from stabbing myself so many times with my needle, and I am desperately trying not to just bleed all over my pristine white costume, so instead I'm just sobbing onto it because I can't help myself and I'm supposed to be leaving for Detroit in 24 hours. Hell, I'm about ready to just set my whole sewing room on fire and just be done with it.

It is at this point that something miraculous happened. As I was listening to my nerd music playlist, Prince Sidon's theme came on. Now, for those of you who haven't played Breath of the Wild and are unfamiliar with the Zora prince, he is a treasure. He is very affectionate and encouraging with Link. Now, at Tekko this year I met an awesome artist named voidbug who made this fantastic print of Sidon.

Coming home from Tekko, I immediately hung this print up in my sewing room to give me encouragement while I'm working on cosplay and let me tell you , IT WORKED. The combination of hearing his theme music and looking up at this print with my 8ft tall fish boyfriend giving me encouragement... I continued crying but they weren't tears of frustration any more. This art actually got me through this cosplay; it's a miracle.

So I buckled down, grabbed a pair of pliers (since my fingers were all sore at this point) and stitched the last sections of braid down.

I was so happy to get it done, and I absolutely love how it turned out. There are a few things I could do to make it a little better, but none of them are that important and frankly I think it looks awesome as is.

The best part about all of this was that I got to be part of a full group photoshoot at Youma, with a bunch of really good cosplayers (like, REALLY GOOD. Two of them won a Hall competition trophy that weekend for other cosplay they had). Here's the photo we have now, the rest will come later, when our photographer has a chance to go through and edit them.

Photo courtesy of  back_of_beyond_cosplay

Not sure how often I'll end up wearing this, but I do know several friends want to do P5 cosplays too, so I'd fit right in. I have no intention of cosplaying any other version of him though, this one is just too fabulous.

Have Mercy

Welcome back!
As promised I have some construction photos from the second set of Imp Mercy armor I made, since I never really did that for the first set. It's the same bits: hip and leg armor.

For the leg armor, I started by patterning out the armor on poster board, and then tracing my pattern onto 2mm craft foam.

You can see the part that goes over the shin, the ankle piece, and the knee section here. You'll also notice the little diamonds and triangles on the patterns. Those are the details that will be raised on the final pieces: I incorporated them into my original pattern so they'd all end up in the right place and the armor would be as symmetrical as possible.

Each of these sets represents half a leg, so I had to repeat this 4 times to get all of the pieces I needed.

You'll notice the diamonds and triangles on here are yellow now. I cut out the small raised shapes form another piece of craft foam and glued them in place on each piece. When we cover the foam with worbla, these bits will stick out like we want them to.

Time to apply the worbla! Heat up your worbla for each individual piece, we will assemble the pieces later.

I don't have photos of the individual pieces before I started assembling them, but you can see one of the leg pieces coming together here. to bring the center seam together, you'll want to heat up the edge of each piece, line them up, and press them together. Be careful not to burn your fingers (have have a few blisters from this assembly) as the worbla needs to be pretty hot to adhere to itself nicely. You can also see the raised detail on the ankle here, I used a popsicle stick to form the worbla around the raised piece of foam.

Once the main part of the leg is done, we'll do the same process with the knee piece, and then add it to the leg armor.

There are also long, curved, spike-shaped pieces on the knees. I don't have photos of the pieces on their own, but here's the leg section with the spike added.

Lastly, we'll assemble the ankle parts. I left those as separate pieces, rather than attach them to the main leg armor. The reason for that being that it would give better range of motion for your foot while you're walking in them.

With that, the leg armor is almost finished. I used a leather punch to add holes along the back edges so they can be laced together in the back. Then you add your several layers of mod podge to everything, and start painting!

For painting, I sprayed the silver, then brush painted the black. Remember, metallics are always harder to get a uniform coat, so spraying is way easier. Also, don't forget to seal coat them with another layer or two of mod podge!

Now, on to the hip tassets!

These were made entirely out of foam, I didn't use a worbla layer for them because it wasn't really necessary. The base is EVA foam, and the raised sections are craft foam.

I cut the EVA foam with a craft knife and then used my Dremel with a sanding bit to smooth out the rougher parts. For the craft foam, I mostly used scissors, and then an exacto knife for the holes in the center.

To get the etched design into the foam, I traced the pattern onto my EVA foam, then sliced into the foam with my exacto knife. It's important not to cut too deep or you'll weaken the foa too much and risk it tearing. Once the foam has the cuts in it, go over the areas with your heat gun and the cuts will become little channels. You'll also want to heat up the whole thing so you can curve it to fit around your hips.

You'll notice that each layer of the foam has the panel cut out of it, that's so the lights can be installed, which is our next step.

To help make the panels as bright and properly-diffused as possible, I used aluminum foil to reflect the light. You can use E-6000 to glue it around the opening in your EVA foam layer.

Once the glue is dry on our foil, it's time to install the lights themselves. I used strings of moon lights like these because they work well for cosplay, having small battery packs. You'll take your string of lights, and make a bar that is as long as your opening is wide. You can use other small pieces of wire to keep it together, or clear tape will do the trick too. Make sure to leave some wire at the end near the battery pack.

I realize you can't really see anything with the foil, but you want to tape down your bar of lights with packing tape along the bottom edge of the foiled foam. Sorry he photos don't help here, it's hard to get a clear picture of it so if you're trying to do this and need help with how, please send me a message and I'd be happy to walk you through it a little better!

The next step is to make a backing for the lights. You'll take annother piece of craft foam and add foil to it. Then youll glue the piece of foam with the foil facing inside to the back of your hip armor piece. That way, any light hitting the foil will be reflected out the front where you want it.

For the front, we're going to add some bits of white plastic grocery bag to help diffuse the light.

Now that we have our diffusion layer, we'll glue on the first detail layer of craft foam... unfortunately I don't seem to have a photo of that anywhere.

Once our first craft foam piece is on there, we'll want to add our outer panel layer. I used a translucent pink plastic folder for this. It filters the light rather well.

Obviously you'll want to cut it first, this is just to show you how it's layered. 

Once you glue the pink plastic layer and the top piece of craft foam on, you're almost done!

The diamond-shaped pieces on the sides can be easily added with craft foam if you just want the shapes, but I wanted them to be more 3-dimensional and actually be prism-shaped, so I made a little daimond-shaped prism out of cardstock and made a silicone mold of it. Once the mold had cured, I cast the daimond-shaped pieces in liquid plastic. Once they were all cast, I attached them with contact cement.

Now it's time for mod podge! Paint on a bunch of layers and then you can start painting. I sprayed the white sections and brushed the black. If you spray any part of this, you'll want to be careful to cover the top part so you don't get paint on your glowing panels. 

I don't have any photos of the underside, but I added loops of webbing/strapping so that they can be worn from a belt.

And that's that!