Black Wolf of the Sands

More throwback thursday stuff, yay!

It'll be a short entry this week because I've only worn him a couple of times, but I wanted to show off my sexy shirtless wolf boy, Volug from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

I think we all know by this point how I judge my FE characters based on attractiveness so when this man walked out of the desert I immediately wanted to cosplay him. Sadly he turns out to be somewhat lackluster of a battle unit but frankly I don't care.

Another motivating factor for making this character is that I hadn't seen anyone do it, and I knew there would be a Nailah (the other wolf character from Radiant Dawn) and a Micaiah at one of the cons I was going to, so I jumped at the chance.

We did these at Colossalcon, which meant we had a wonderful backdrop for the characters, and the best part was we did an actual photoshoot with Larry Hullum Jr. who got some beautiful shots of us. I'd never done a private shoot with a legit photographer before so I was super excited to have really nice photos of my cosplay.

My favorite shot from the set actually didn't show off my cosplay at all, but I think you'll all agree that it's super cool.

This one's not watermarked, but it was also taken by Larry.

At some point I'd love to wear him again, but there are so many cosplays I have and enjoy wearing, and there are't many RD folks around to cosplay with (and I can only wear him in the summer, for obvious reasons), and having someone paint on my tattoos is a big pain in the butt, so he's going to be hard to get back into circulation. Nevertheless, I do love this cosplay and will definitely bust it out again some time in the future.

Materials Monday: Closed-Cell Foam

Welcome back to another Materials Monday session at Mikey Does Cosplay! This week we're talking about one of the materials I've been using longer that anything: closed-cell foam!

What is closed-cell foam? Well I could get technical but that's probably not going to be useful for anyone, so let's just discuss the two types we use most often for cosplay: Craft foam and EVA foam.

Craft foam, which you'll usually see brnaded as "Foamies" for kids crafts, is something I've been using for years. They're great because they are lightweight, versatile, easy to use, and come in lots of great colors (which only matters about half the time since usually you'll end up painting over them anyway).  The only real downsides with craft foam is that it's not the most durable material, and it's not rigid. This is only an issue if you're making larger things out of it, as it'll be harder to get it to keep it's shape. Fortunately there are plenty of things you can do to compensate for that, which I'll get to later.

You can generally find foamies in 2mm, 3mm, and 6mm thicknesses. I tend to use the 2 & 3mm most often because they're the most readily available and they tend to suit my needs. If you want to build a whole prop out of foam though, you're probably best off using the 6mm just so you don't have to cut out as many layers. You can also find foamies with adhesive backing, which is very convenient for smaller details, since they'll stick on their own without needing glue.

Here are some of the things I've done with craft foam (and the overall ways which it can be used).

For smaller, planar props (by that I mean props that have flat surfaces), craft foam works great. I made my Godot mask out of fraft foam, with a layer of posterboard on the outside to add stability. This is one of the simplest ways to add stability to your foam. I did the same thing with my first attempt at armor. The whole thing is made from craft foam with poster board glued to the outside.

The layer of cardstock/poster board helps the foam keep its shape, particularly on the curved pieces. The way you do it is by cutting out your shape from the foam, painting a layer of mod podge or your preferred adhesive on the foam, then sticking it to the cardstock. If you need a curve, like with my Godot mask or certain parts of Haar's armor, you can wrap the piece around a tube of the appropriate size and ribber-band it so that it;s held in that shape while the glue dries. Once the glue is dry, it'll stay that shape permanently. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of that process since it's been a while since I've done it. If you're thinking of making something that way and need additional details, let me know!

Craft foam is also super useful for making small raised details and/or layered levels on props and armor.

These are some accessories I made for an FF XIV black mage, you can see how I layered the craft foam to pull out certain details. Here's how they look all finished:

This same concept is a method I use most frequently these days in conjunction with worbla. When I'm making a piece that will be covered in worbla, I use craft foam to get all of the raised details. It works beautifully, as you can see on the young Genji armor I made.

In this photo, the black pieces are the base layer and the yellow are the raised details. When you cover it in worbla you get a nice 3-dimensional landscape. This also makes painting the details easier than if the whole thing was flat and you just free-handed them.

Craft foam can also be used on its own for props and accessories, but you should keep in mind that it's not overly durable so you'll want to be careful with things you make that don't have any protective layers. My Volug hip armor (or whatever that thing is supposed to be) is just made with craft foam glued together, there's no sealant layer or paint on it at all!

Like I said, as long as you're careful it's fine. My Volug pieces have held up so far (granted I've only worn the costume a few times).

Here are a few tutorials on using craft foam, since there's even more cool stuff you can do with it that I don't have great examples of in my own work.

• How to make a full suit of armor using craft foam
• Tooling your craft foam (i.e. engraving designs into it)
• Texturing craft foam to make it look like leather
• Using foam and worbla together

The other type of foam most often used in cosplay is EVA foam. It's very similar to craft foam in texture, the main difference is that you can find it much thicker and therefore it'll be much more durable than the thin craft foam. This makes EVA foam more useful for larger projects like armor and big props since it'll be sturdier and hold it's shape better. Also, because of it's thickness it can be useful for larger or more unusually-shaped details.

You generally find EVA foam in two shapes: tiles as pictured above, and rolls as pictured below. Generally speaking, the tiles are going to be thicker than the roll, so depending on what you're using it for you may want one or the other.

EVA foam is a very popular choice for making armor because it's lightweight, inexpensive, and sturdy. You can also use a heat gun to help shape it however you need to, and a dremel to essentially "carve" out details. I used EVA foam for my Masrur cuirass and needed to do both of those things: shape it into a curve to go around my torso, and then carve out the musculature with my dremel and a sanding bit.

EVA foam can also be used for details that won't work as well in craft foam. Craft foam is great for layering but if you have details that come to a point it doesn't work as well. For example, this piece that's a part of Genji's shoulder pauldron would not have been easy to make with craft foam because it's not thick enough and the detail is not layered. So instead I carved it out of EVA foam.

It works great as a base for worbla too. I used the craft foam, plus some EVA detail to make that pauldron, and then covered the whole thing in a layer of worbla. Here's the result:

This is a great example of using both craft foam and EVA foam for different types of details!

If you want some help with making things out of EVA foam, here are a few great tutorials from people who are better at explaining things than I am ^_^

• This tutorial has a lot of great info from where to get EVA to how to use it to make armor and other things.
• Shaping your EVA foam
• Beveling EVA foam (getting an angled edge, like on the Genji armor details)
• Adding detail lines to EVA foam

That's all for now, I hope these Materials Monday posts are helpful for you guys. As always, if you're making stuff with these materials I'd love to hear about it and see what you're making. I'm also happy to offer my thoughts on what sort of materials would work best for the types of projects you're doing, so don't be shy!

Twirl 'Round and 'Round – A New World in Which the Doc Dances?

Welcome back to another throwback thursday edition of Mike Does Cosplay. This time around we're taking a look at my favorite crazy genius: Dr. Franken Stein from Soul Eater.

Stein was always a pretty cool character because he definitely fell into the moral grey areas in the show. He's super strong, very knowledgeable, and has a pretty wide range of abilities, but he falls prey to madness which ultimately makes him a danger to his comrades.

Naturally, as with most of my costumes, a big motivator was the prospect of doing a Soul Eater group, as I have friends who wanted to do Medusa and Crona together, and another friend who already had a Spirit. Groups make everything better and Stein worked so well to play off of all the other characters I just had to do it.

His lab coat I made from scratch, and the shirt is actually two different sweaters cut up & sewn together. It seemed appropriate given Stein's desire to dissect. The biggest pain in the butt was all of the thick black stitching, which I did with yearn. Getting a yarn needle through all that material took a lot of muscle!

One of the coolest things about the costume was that I made the bolt so it would actually click when you turned it.

The scythe was super simple too, since I made the version without the giant blade, so it was just a bunch of PVC that I cut, stuck together, and painted black. It was easily disassemble-able too for easy transportation.

And I made a little scalpel out of a popsicle stick and some cereal boxes. I took several photos with my Spirit threatening to dissect him.

All in all I had a lot of fun making & wearing this costume. I don't think I'll be wearing it again any time soon though, unless my con friends decide to do a Soul Eater revival. Besides, there are always plenty of Steins wandering around, so I'd rather do something new and different!