Britthebadger

Always dreaming. Always creating. Art is my passion. <3

[britthebadger]

Faces of Sakura Con ‘16 Part 4

I started this black and white hall shot photography project last year and I decided to continue it at Sakura Con 2016!  I love how the black and white portrait highlights the talented cosplay artists that I see and meet during the con!

Check out the full gallery on my Flickr Page!

[britthebadger]

Faces of Sakura Con ‘16 Part 3

I started this black and white hall shot photography project last year and I decided to continue it at Sakura Con 2016!  I love how the black and white portrait highlights the talented cosplay artists that I see and meet during the con!

Check out the full gallery on my Flickr Page!

[britthebadger]

Faces of Sakura Con ‘16 Part 2

I started this black and white hall shot photography project last year and I decided to continue it at Sakura Con 2016!  I love how the black and white portrait highlights the talented cosplay artists that I see and meet during the con!

Check out the full gallery on my Flickr Page!

[britthebadger]

Faces of Sakura Con ‘16 Part 1

I started this black and white hall shot photography project last year and I decided to continue it at Sakura Con 2016!  I love how the black and white portrait highlights the talented cosplay artists that I see and meet during the con!

Check out the full gallery on my Flickr Page!

[britthebadger]

Question of the Week: “Who can I cosplay as if I don't want to be 'slutty'?”

Warhammer 40K Inquisitor by Jynx Art & Cosplay, Photo by Martin Wong

Valkerie Espion by Danielle Beaulieu, Photo by Anna Cosplay Photography

Jinx and Fishbones by Britthebadger, Photo by Costographer

The easy answer to that questions is: anyone you want!  In a perfect world that's true, but sadly some people think it's their duty to define “sluttiness” for the rest of the world, and their opinion is totally subjective.  There is no list that I can point to and say, “Those characters are safe.  You will not be a slut if you cosplay from this list.” If we look at the origins of the word “slut” though, we might get a better idea of what it means.

The word 'slut' originated first as “slutte” and first came into use around year 1400 in Middle English,  defined as “a dirty, untidy, or slovenly woman”.  The term “sluttish” was used by Geoffrey Chaucer to describe a slovenly, unkempt man.  The modern term 'slut' has shifted from its original historical usage to be used almost exclusively as a derogatory term towards women, especially towards those who are considered particularly sexually promiscuous, and is often used synonymously with whore and tramp.

However, with the historic definition in mind, you are a 'slut' if you appear messy or unkempt, so it has no true bearing on how much fabric is hanging on your body.  I mean, perhaps the definition started to shift as people used the word slut to describe someone as disheveled after a quick romp in the hay and has since shifted towards a connotation with sexual encounters, perhaps out of wedlock, but these are just my random musings on how the usage of the word may have shifted the way it has.  My thoughts aside, if you are going by the historical definition, as long as your cosplay and the character you are cosplaying as are clean and well put together, congratulations!  You are not slutty!  Huzzah!

In all seriousness, though, make and wear whatever you feel comfortable with.  If you love the character and feel comfortable, go for it.  People will always have their own personal opinions on what they consider to be 'slutty' and they may be different from your own definition.  Some folks out there will look at a burka and see a woman whom they consider a slut, and others will see a bikini as, “meh, whatevs”.  There is an unfortunate reality, especially for women, that you have to be prepared for trolls and awful people who feel entitled to give you their opinion. It's stupid and it shouldn't be like this, and I wish it weren't, but that's why it's so important for artists and creatives to not tear each other down.

While I don't have the time or expertise to fully dive into the can of worms that is slut shaming, double standards, and sexism in society in this article, I do know that it is an unfortunate reality that some people are assholes. They have their own reasons for lashing out, from insecurity, jealousy or just looking for a rise, and it is not nice to deal with, especially with the anonymity of the internet.  If you or a friend of yours find yourself looking at someone and thinking,  'wow, he/she looks so slutty,” check yourself, your thoughts, and words.  Perhaps you, personally, wouldn't feel comfortable wearing the outfit, or perhaps you are a little jealous of how her body looks in that cute little chainmail bikini.  I just ask that you think of the golden rule.  If you don't want to be considered a slut, then I'm sure she doesn't either.

Put simply, if you want to avoid “sluttiness” in cosplay, don't be part of the problem.  If you don't approve of someone's outfit or the design choices, you can, but please don't use your opinion as a weapon against someone else's character and personality.  Yes, a lot of the characters that get cosplayed are designed for sex appeal, but that doesn't mean that the pretty woman in the costume is a slut and should be judged as such. Slut shaming is a problem but we can change the perception of the word and how we use it.  If “slut” has changed in definition from “dirty and slovenly” to “whore and sexually promiscuous”, we can work to change it to something else.

That said, you do you.  If you are comfortable, confident, and love the character you are portraying, that's awesome and amazing. Go out and rock it! <3 #promotepositivity

[britthebadger]

Question of the Week: What's your biggest Cosplay Pet Peeve?

Photo by HardLuckHeroics, Lissandra made by me, Gnar made with and worn by Miss Morgan

My biggest cosplay pet peeve is answering a question like this.  The problem that I have with being asked about “pet peeves” is that it automatically takes you to a negative mindset. I don't know about other people, but I don't want to dwell on negative feelings related to an art from and community that I love and enjoy.  It takes way too much energy that could be spent creating something awesome, having fun, and strengthening an amazing and talented community.

Of course there are things that annoy me, like not taking responsibility for your own research, slut shaming, creepers, sloppy craftsmanship, and cattiness, but focusing on such negative feelings only breeds more of it.  The thing to remember is that people are people.  They will have their gripes, but by focusing on negativity we create an increasingly hostile community that stews in toxic thoughts. That said, there are many valid and real issues that should be discussed and improved upon, but there is a time and a place for such discussions to occur in a civilized and productive manner.  Ranting about pet peeves is not helpful or healthy for the cosplay community.  It tears us down. So, while I acknowledge that there are genuine issues that should be addressed, reinforcing negative thoughts with this kind of question is not what I want to give back to the cosplay community.  

I choose to focus on the things that I love about cosplay as an art from and community. I love creating something beautiful.  I love to see how people come together through their art, costumes, and fandoms.  I love learning new skills to apply to my art.  I love seeing the ingenious solutions other artists come up with for their costumes.  I love how supportive everyone is.  I love watching people learn and improve their skills. I love how much others give back to the community through their posts, tutorials, and enthusiasm.  I love how some people are inspired by my work.  I love how other artists inspire me.  I love how much the cosplay community has grown and I can't wait to see where we take this amazing, talented, and supportive community in the future.  #PromotePositivity

[britthebadger]

Air Travel with Big Props: My Experience of Travel With Jinx's Guns

One of the questions I get asked a lot by cosplayers is “how do I travel with big props?” If you're driving, the answer is “get a bigger car”, but moving a huge, 150-hours-of-work prop across the country is a headache, especially if you're flying. The safest, most reliable way I've found to transport large pieces is to just crate them up and either check them as luggage on a plane or ship them separately. There are still risks, but at least you know the props will arrive in one piece.

Research

The first thing to consider before packing any big props for air travel are your airline's baggage policies.  Each airline has their own rules for checked and oversized baggage, so once you book your tickets research the baggage policies.  Wooden crates and containers other than conventional suitcases are fine, just make sure they can take the beating that baggage handlers can dish out.  Also double check that the materials used in your costume are safe for airline travel.  Some materials could react negatively with the change in air pressure or could simply be dangerous to fly with. Some airports also swab the contents of oversized luggage to check for explosives, and many paints and plastics can trigger a false positive in these devices.

The most basic measurements to have are the dimensions and weight for each piece of your luggage.  In the US, the common weight limit for normal checked baggage is 50lbs and 62 linear inches (length +  width + height), though the numbers may differ depending on the airline.  Anything over 50lbs will be considered oversized, and the upper limits of what the airline will accept varies depending on the airline.  The oversize baggage policies can sometimes be buried, so make sure to research thoroughly if it looks like one of your pieces of luggage will fall into this category.

The Cases

For my Jinx guns, I determined early on that I would have to build crates for each of the three guns in order to travel safely with them.  Since I also had a bit of a time crunch to get everything packed and limited tools (jigsaw and electric drill), I decided to build simple crates out of wood.  

The case for Zap was by far the smallest and quickest to put together and pack.  I made a well padded carrying case out of 1/4” plywood and scrap 1x4” boards for Zap that fits inside my normal checked luggage, and opens easily with a latch and hinge should security feel the need to inspect the prop.  For fun, I added some paint and labels indicating that the piece was a prop. :P

The cases for the other two guns were more of a project to put together.  I built the crates for PowPow and Fishbones out of 1/2” plywood and 1”x 4” boards with plywood lids that would be screwed into place.  When big props like these are your babies, you want to make sure that they are packed well in solid containers.

Since Fishbones is already a massive prop (45” long), the box ended up being about 48-50” long from the get go.  There was no way it would be considered standard baggage, so I had to assume it would have to be treated as oversize.  Seriously, you could fit a body in that thing.

A video posted by @britthebadger on Oct 28, 2015 at 8:13pm PDT

Boyfriend for scale. :P

I did a test fit of Fishbones to lay out how I wanted to pad the crate and painted on up arrows and fragile warnings with some additional artistic flair on the lid. After finishing up the crate, complete with rope handles at each end, I padded it with mattress topper foam and packed Fishbones in, carefully encasing the prop in bubble wrap and more foam.

Anyway, after building Fishbones' crate and weighing it (about a 48lb crate to hold a 10lb prop!), the overall dimensions of the crate were just outside of the outer range of an acceptable piece of oversize luggage for the airline I was taking. :(

Sometimes, it just doesn't work out, but I still ended up with a safe, solid, and pretty cool looking travel case for a very large, awkward prop! I had to ship it in the end, but sometimes, pieces are just too big to travel with easily.  Regardless, the crate did its job well and Fishbones arrived at our destination and home again safe and sound.

While Fishbones ended up simply being too big to fly with, PowPow's crate dimensions worked out in our favor.  While my PowPow is 24” long, I'm able to detach the front of the barrels, which made packing and crating this gun far more reasonable.  The dimensions came in under the size limit for normal checked baggage and we managed to just barely squeak by with a total weight of 49lbs!

The Traveling Process

So, regardless of the fact that the dimensions and weight of PowPow and the crate were considered conventional baggage (not oversized), it is a gun prop that could bring up some confusion with security, so we made sure to leave extra time in case of any snags with checking the crate.  When we arrived at the airport for our flight to the event, we were honest and up front with the people in the check-in line and asked if there was a way that we could make sure that the crate would be handled carefully and so that if there was a problem with the contents, the prop wouldn't get damaged or the lid of the crate pried off.  Luckily for us, they said we should just have it checked through the oversize luggage area (we were still only charged for normal size baggage) for special handling and we were able to open the lid and they could go through their security measures without issue.

On the way back home, we went through the same protocol of asking where we could take the crate so that it could be checked out and be a-ok.  We were well received and were directed to some folks at a security station that could handle our situation.  This time, we were very glad we had some extra time since this airport's security team took the crate through some extra measures and were a bit concerned by the large lithium ion battery I had installed in the prop (for the spinning barrel mechanism).  Unfortunately, when I had made the prop originally, I had not been able to incorporate an easy way to remove the battery, so there was no easy way for them to inspect it. Luckily, since we were up front with the contents of the crate, had brought it to them to check out, and explained the situation in a calm and collected manner, they let PowPow be checked onto the plane with us on a judgment call.

Overall, flying with PowPow and Zap was successful!  However, I would recommend that if you are traveling with large props, you will want to be able to disassemble and separate potentially questionable portions of the prop, such as large brick-like masses that could look suspicious to an x-ray machine and make sure that whatever materials or chemicals you end up using in building your prop are considered safe for air travel.

Photo by On Impulse Photography

Thank you for reading!  If you want more updates on my work, you can subscribe to ThoseFuckinNerds on YouTube, or you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as “Britthebadger”. I also stream my work on Twitch, so if you have any questions you can come watch and hang out.

[britthebadger]

Cuddle Corner Work Station WIP Article!

Show of hands: who else loves creating cushy, cuddly nests out of blankets, pillows, and all manner of soft, fuzzy things?  I know I do!  All throughout my life, especially through school, I have found that I prefer to work on my bed or on a couch rather than sitting at a desk.  While I can and sometimes prefer to work at a desk, I don't like sitting conventionally in chairs and will almost inevitably tuck my feet and curl up in the chair.  So, when the opportunity arose to redesign my work space, I decided to create a cuddle corner!  

What is a cuddle corner, you ask? It is basically a small cushy bed-like platform in the corner that I can curl up in comfortably to work at my computer, game, hang out, or work on small handwork projects the way I like; curled up.  Since I also have always loved biology and have a lot of ideas to make sea creature plushies to incorporate into the corner, I decided I would make it into a cute little cushy tide pool!  So, with the help of a friend and some scrap material, I was able to make it a reality!  My very own tide pool corner. ^_^

Creating the Base Frame

The first step was to design and figure out the dimensions of the frame.  I wanted to have the main sitting area of the corner raised off of the ground about 5” and large enough for me to sit against the wall with my feet stretched out comfortably.  With some H31P, we started out by making a 4'x4' square of flooring out of 3/4” thick plywood and 1”x 4” boards.

The pieces were all cut with a jigsaw since it was the only powered cutting tool we had on hand.  We used wood glue and 2 1/2” and 1 1/2” wood screws to fasten all of the pieces together.  Once the base frame was put together with some additional bracing pieces at the back-most corner (where the majority of the weight and stress from sitting would be), we covered the plywood with some thin 1/4”  finishing plywood for a nice, smooth, splinter-free finish, then trimmed it down to the 3/4” plywood with a router and flush trim bit.  Since I would do a lot of sitting in the corner leaning against the wall, I decided to include two rock-themed headboards,The two headboards were then cut freehand out of 1/4”  plywood with the jigsaw.

With the floor frame put together and the base headboards cut, it was time to add some reinforcement to the headboards!  I added a horizontal 1”x 4” plank along each headboard positioned to sit just above the baseboards of the wall as well as a few vertical supports. The supports were secured with 3/4” screws and wood glue and then covered over in white felt fabric (with spray adhesive) to minimize potential damage to the drywall.  I also made sure to cut a hole for the wall outlet with the jigsaw so that I could still use it!  The headboards are not physically secured to the floor frame, but are kept in place by the supports on the back and are wedged between the floor frame and the wall.

Next up on the list was to cover everything with squishy foam padding!  I bought a queen size mattress topper from Wal-Mart and stapled it to the headboards, making sure to leave enough allowance to turn the foam over the top edge.  For the floor frame, a friend of mine provided some 1/2” upholstery foam to add some extra cushion under the mattress topper foam.  Again, the foam was stapled in place.

With all of the foam in place, it was time to start working on the fabric covers!  While I could have created a simple fabric cover, I wanted to play around and have fun with making this cuddle corner into a cute little tide pool.  I dug through a bunch of my scrap fabric from old projects and started patching the pieces together and figuring out good combinations of durability, color, and texture.  I ended up doing a ton of appliqué with a tight zigzag stitch to create the mussels, barnacles, anemones, starfish, and other sea creatures that call the tidal zone home.  I also decided to gather some fabric to create some seaweed dangling from the top of one of the rock headboards for some critters to hide behind!

Once all of the applique was done, it was time to get it secured.  I carefully stretched the fabric over the foam and wood forms and then stapled it in place.  For the floor frame, I tucked under the raw edge of the fabric before I stapled the fabric down to create a cleaner edge.

With the fabric in place, all that was left to do was to push the pieces together into the corner!  Take a look!

All that was left was to deck it out with more pillows, blankets, and other soft things!

Thank you for reading!  If you want more updates on my work, you can subscribe to ThoseFuckinNerds on YouTube, or you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as “Britthebadger”. I also stream my work on Twitch, so if you have any questions you can come watch and hang out.

[britthebadger]

Shiro (Deadman Wonderland) WIP

Photo by WeNeals Photograpy and Retouching

Deadman Wonderland is such a good anime and the first time I saw it, I fell in love with Shiro's simultaneously innocent and dark character. After watching the anime, I was so devastated by the unsatisfactory ending that I sought out and read through the manga for more of this incredible and sinister story.  Reading the manga fueled my love for Shiro even more and with Anime Expo 2014 coming up at the time and since I didn't have anything big planned or finished in time for it, I decided to tackle the project!

When I finally settled on and committed to creating Shiro, I thought the project would be on the quick and easy side of things.  While it was a relatively simple project visually, I had to pay even closer attention to keeping everything clean and well made because the design was so simple.  The single most important part of this costume is the bodysuit.  Going into this project, I had next to no experience with creating bodysuits and working with stretch fabrics. I had to do a ton of research before starting to make the suit and finding the right white spandex proved more difficult that I anticipated. All told, I spent about a month working on the costume.  With that said, I learned a lot from this project and had a ton of fun creating Shiro, so let's dive in!

References

I had a ton of references to pull from for this project because of the sheer volume of manga, anime, and fan art that is available.  I ended up spending a lot of time re-watching and re-reading my source material and hunting through image searches to find references that I liked enough to use.

After finding references for all of the details and lines for the costume, I had to find references that would help me settle on the kinds of materials and makeup techniques I wanted to use.  For instance, while Shiro is just wearing a white bodysuit with red lines, the bodysuit is often depicted as a little more flesh colored, which indicates that the fabric is, well, pretty sheer.  In the end, I used my own artistic judgment and pulled from my research to create a look that I liked.  

Bodysuit

I wanted a very matte spandex for the base suit that wouldn't be too thick.  Since white spandex wouldn't ever be fully opaque without becoming super thick, I was also looking for something that would allow for some translucency and let my skin tone show through a bit as is commonly hinted at in a lot Shiro's visual references and fan art.  

After a lot of searching and pondering, a white bathing suit lining proved to be the perfect base! I also picked up some red spandex for the stretch appliqué, a long hidden zipper, and some ugly floral clearance spandex for patterning and mock-up.  With all of my fabrics finally picked out, it was time to start patterning!

One of the big things I wanted to avoid with this bodysuit was a big ugly side seam.  After a lot of hunting, I finally found an excellent patterning tutorial for creating body suits that only had one seam down the back and an inseam along the inside of the legs for the main body.  Since I was working with stretch fabrics, I also had to do some calculations during the patterning phase to accommodate measurement reductions for stretch.  

Reducing your pattern for stretch is an important step to include because it assures a better, snug fit.  This bra band reduction tutorial is an excellent walkthrough I found for how to do the calculations.  I opted for a 2% measurement reduction for every 10% of stretch so that the suit would fit well, but not be too tight.

After taking all of the required measurements and crunching the numbers for the stretch reduction, I laid out the pattern in paper and created my mockup using a zig zag stitch. Overall, it fit pretty well! I had to make some overall adjustments and tweak the pattern a bit, but that's what the mockup was for.

Once the base pattern adjustments were made to the mockup and pattern, I started drawing out where I wanted the red spandex appliqué to go on the mockup while I was wearing it.  I then transferred the markings I made on the mockup bodysuit to the paper pattern and cleaned up the lines.  It was finally time to cut out the pattern with my final white spandex!  Since the white spandex was very slippery and I wanted to make sure that all of my appliqué would be placed symmetrically, I kept the fabric pinned to the pattern until all of the appliqué was applied.  

Luckily, since the fabric was so thin, it was easy to see the pattern markings through the fabric as I went.  Before I started adding any appliqué, I tested the settings for the appliqué zig zag stitch on some scrap fabric.  Once I was happy with the settings and the amount of stretch allowance I still had with the appliqué, I started sewing it on at the foot and worked my way up the suit, making sure everything stayed symmetrical as I went.  Again, since the spandex was slippery and prone to stretching while I was sewing, I had to make sure everything was securely pinned in place as I went.

After spending a long time sewing all of the appliqué, I finally got to sew the body suit together!  Since I don't have a serger and I wanted to make sure that the suit would stretch properly, I used a 3-step zig zag stitch for the seams and reinforced the seam with another zig zag stitch.  After trying it on, making some minor adjustments, and installing the zipper, I trimmed the excess from the seam allowance and the suit was done!

Gloves

The gloves for Shiro gave me a bit of a headache at first with patterning, but they came out pretty well in the end!  Though I hate creating gloves, since these are basically mittens, I was more willing to make them from scratch. I picked up some distressed pleather, batting, and brown flannel at the fabric store and got to work.  

I started by creating a muslin mock up to figure out my scale.  I essentially decided to create something resembling a boxing glove.  I used the simple brown flannel to create a liner for the glove that would actually fit my hand.  The pleather outer layer was patterned a bit differently.  The palm was essentially the same, but I had to expand the back of the mitt so that it could be gathered to create the poofy, big boxing glove feel.  I basted a few layers of batting to the inside of the pleather before I gathered it so that the batting wouldn't shift around.  

Once the gloves were all sewn up, I added two ½ wide leather straps with buckles around each wrist.  I tacked the straps to the glove so that they wouldn't slip off or mysteriously disappear in storage or transit.

Wig

Let me just say this: while Shiro's wig is pretty simple styling-wise, it's an untame-able monster when you are wearing it for a full day. The wig is long and loose and is very prone to tangling.  That said, with diligence and an unreasonable amount of leave-in conditioner, the wig came out very nicely.

I started out with a silver Le Tigre wig from Arda Wigs and some extra long silver wefts I had around.  At the time, I was planning the wig styling with the possibility of hanging upside down in mind, so I added a ventilated hairline to the wig, just in case. Once the hairline was set, installed some wig clips and I went about cutting and layering the rest of the wig.  I heat trained some of the wefts toward the crown of the wig back with a hair drier and went to town with the leave-in conditioner.

I also made a tutorial timelapse video of the process that goes over the styling process in more detail.

Collar

The last bit of construction for this costume was the collar.  I wanted to make sure that the piece would be well-proportioned and sturdy, so I ended up making it out of a combination of EVA foam, Worbla, Apoxie sculpt, and leather.

I started first by patterning and shaping the base shape out of EVA foam.  I sanded the texture off of the back of the foam and shaped it with a heat gun and rounded the edges with a Dremel. Since I needed a way to get the collar on and off, I created a seam at the back center of the collar.  Next, I covered the outside surface of the EVA foam in Worbla and tabbed the Worbla over the edges.  This stiffened the piece up significantly, but still left enough flex that I could still get the collar on and off.

Now it was time to sculpt the bulk of the details out of scrap Worbla! After the sculpting was done, I decided to try smoothing out the nasty Worbla texture with about five to ten layers of wood glue. After the first five or so layers, I hit the collar with some sandpaper.  It was through this process that I discovered that wood glue is a very deceptive filler agent for Worbla.  When I thought the piece was smooth, the sandpaper revealed that there were numerous low spots all over the piece!   Suffice to say, the filling and sanding took awhile and I wasn't entirely thrilled with how the woodglue worked to smooth over the Worbla texture.

Once the collar was smooth enough to my liking, I installed four small D-rings to the back of the collar with Apoxie sculpt.  I then made some straps to cinch the back of the collar closed.  I really like the straight-jacket feel the straps give the collar!  I covered the exposed foam on the inside with some white spandex and used Goop glue and contact cement to glue it in place.  I also installed two additional D-rings to the bottom edge of the collar that would be used as attachment points for two small velcro strips sewn onto the suit.  This would be so that the collar wouldn't bounce and slide around while I was wearing it.

The last step was to paint the collar and seal it with a clear coat!  The collar was hand painted with acrylics.  After playing around a bit, I settled on a light blue-gray base color.  Since black shading would make the piece look too dingy, I decided to weather the details with shades of red to allude to Shiro's sinister and violent backstory.

Final Touches

So, one of the issues to wearing a thin, white, rather sheer body suit is, well...it's sheer.  This meant that I had to chose my undergarments carefully so that I would still be decently covered in public.  I considered white undergarments for a brief moment before I realized that white undergarments would only be distracting and look strange in photos.  So, to maintain the feeling of a sheer bodysuit with skin showing through, I went with nude colors instead.  I got a bombshell bra and wore it strapless and a seamless thong to minimize the lines that would show through.

The final step to becoming Shiro is, of course, the makeup and the issue of bare feet.  To fix the barefoot problem, I bought a pair of clear flip flops to wear around conventions.  For the makeup, I use GEO Xtra WT B68 Red contact lenses from Pinky Paradise.  I use Mehron Paradise body paint as the base to make my face, neck, and exposed portions of my feet white.  I then set it and smooth it out with white powder.  I pencil my eyebrows white and only do a hint of contouring on my cheeks with some red eyeshadow, finish up my eyes with white and red eyeshadows.  Before applying the false lashes, I carefully use a disposable mascara brush to coat my own eyelashes with some of the white body paint.

Photo by ESI Media

There you have it!  One crazy, adorable, terrifying, insane, secret experimental prison inmate ready to go!

Thank you for reading!  If you want more updates on my work, you can subscribe to ThoseFuckinNerds on YouTube, or you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as “Britthebadger”. I also stream my work on Twitch, so if you have any questions you can come watch and hang out.

[britthebadger]

Elise (League of Legends) WIP

Photo by ESI Media

Only a spider is safe in her web, and I was most definitely lured into Elise's lair!  The moment I saw the teaser image for Elise's release in October of 2012, I fell in love with her seductive backstory and creepy nature.  Her design is dark, alluring, and complex, which also made for a very fun and challenging build.  It took me three months of actual building time and another few months of planning to get the costume ready for AX 2013.  So without further ado, let's jump into the process of building the Spider Queen!

References:

I ended up pulling inspiration from a lot of different sources for Elise. The teaser art caught my attention first and then I particularly fell in love with the character concept art drawn by Zeronis.  To me, it portrays her as incredibly regal and includes a lot of beautiful detail, texture, color shading, and forms that aren't included in her other references.

I really wanted to accentuate elegance and length for this costume since Elise is all about 'dem legs and her sinister mode of seduction. Believe it or not, one of the common questions I am asked is how I made Elise's armor.  Fun fact: The majority of this costume is made of fabric.  There are some armor pieces made from thermoplastics (which I will go over later), but since this would be a very high stress costume to wear, utilizing different kinds of fabric along side a few armor pieces would make for a much more comfortable garment, and allow for more texture play and depth for the costume than just making everything out of the same material.

Patterning:

Everything about Elise is slick and sexy.  This meant that I had to make the pants, bodice, and all attachments for armor and extra extremities to be form fit, sleek, and tight to the skin.  

I first started out by patterning out the pants and bodice by creating a duct tape form of my torso and leg.  There are a number of ways to create a duct tape form/pattern.  You can put lengths of duct tape onto an old shirt, saran wrap, or in my case, old plastic shopping bags. :P I had Ian help me out with wrapping myself in duct tape and cutting it away.  Once I cut away my duct tape form, I drew out my pattern on the duct tape and cut out my brand new duct tape pattern pieces! I was still pretty new at pattern making, so it took me a couple of tries to get the correct seams and fit, but I managed it in the end!

Bodice:

Though she Elise is a sexy, seductive spider with a pretty strong case for using a lot of armor pieces or vinyl, I used what I knew from my studies in biology to include a richer, more diverse texture base for my fabric choices for the costume.  Since she is regal and even the most sleek-looking spiders have tiny hairs and feelers all over their bodies and legs, I opted to use a combination of red stretch velvet, black and maroon microsuede, and matte black vinyl fabrics.

The bodice pattern ended up being pretty tricky because there were so many seam lines and pieces to incorporate.  I also had to plan how I would get in and out of the darn thing plus engineer a very open back that would eventually have to be rigid enough to support two of the four spider legs that come out of Elise's back.  

After some trial and error, I came up with a pretty good solution.  The corset was made primarily with the black matte vinyl with plastic boning for some added structure.  The very back-most panel has two layers of Wonderflex sandwiched between the vinyl and lining to create the base for the legs.  To get everything on and off, there are two short zippers; one at the top of the shoulder and the other between the two back-most panels of the corset.  I ended up layering and shaping Worbla for the breast cups and spikes and covered them over with the black vinyl.  The fabric is glued onto the Worbla with contact cement.

Since I couldn't quite make out what Elise's hair situation was from the references, I opted to go with creating a hood for her rather than use a wig.  I used red stretch velvet and black microsuede for the bulk of the hood and black matte vinyl for the neck covering.  There is a hidden zipper for getting the hood on and off and it's attached to the bodice with three pieces of trim at the front.

Next step was creating the hip covers and crotch-thong piece.  I took some artistic liberties with the hip pieces and added some layering.  I used the black matte vinyl for the outside layer and the maroon microsuede for the inside.  I found that the hip pieces were a bit too floppy, so I added in some channels for some wire so that they could be posed a bit more and have a stiffer quality to them. Creating the channels also added some nice detail and form lines to the hip pieces.  Once the pieces were made, I sewed them to the corset and cleaned up the top edges.

I really wanted to avoid any awkward bunching with the crotch piece, so I basically created a Worbla codpiece for the front and covered it over with vinyl.  The front straps of the crotch piece are sewn to the rest of the bodice and the back tabs attach with snaps that are located underneath the hip covers.  Looking back at the bodice, I think I could have made it better and with a more efficient design to get it on and off, but overall, I'm pretty happy with how it came out. ^_^

Pants:

When I started working on the pants, I decided to create fully footed pants with an integrated sole on the inside of the pants from a butchered pair of high heels.  This decision was HUGE and was based around the idea that the pants would be attached to the shoes permanently. While this would make getting the costume on and off a bit more difficult, I was more concerned about eliminating any visible straps around my foot that would break up and ruin the line of my leg down through the shoe. Again, I was aiming for length, elegance and sleek lines, and since Elise is all about the legs I made the decision to make the pants and shoes all one piece.

After creating a duct tape pattern (sadly, I don't have any WIP photos of the pattern), I started with creating a base legging out of red stretch velvet that goes down to my calf.  The black microsuede fabric was then sewn on top of the red legging.  I added in a single layer of Wonderflex sandwiched between the two fabrics for the thigh because I wanted to make sure that the black fabric wouldn't wrinkle and interfacing wouldn't be stiff enough.  I did add interfacing between the microsuede and lining for the pant below the knee.  The pants simply slide on and off with a drawstring at the waist and a hidden zipper along the inside of the calf and ankle to assure a tight fit below the knee.

Shoes:

Before heading into talking about the shoes, I would like to include an important disclaimer: While the shoes look awesome and really tie the costume together, these shoes are PAINFUL to wear and are not easy to walk in.  I always have a spotter with me when I wear them.  I am only able to stay in this costume for an absolute maximum of 3 hours a day with lots of breaks leaning on a tall stool because of how hard the shoes are to wear.  I constantly shift my weight back and forth between my feet because of the height of the heel. While shifting my weight like that has the added bonus of looking very in character, it also helps to keep me from losing circulation in my feet and toes.  

With that out of the way, I originally got the idea for these shoes from Nikita Cosplay and Sikay Cosplay's rendition of Shiva from Final Fantasy XIII.  They created clear plexiglass platform shoes to build off of and I took that idea, but since Elise only walks on points, instead of just creating a simple platform, I added in a high heel. The shoes have a 5” heel (that's a really, really steep heel!) in addition to a 10” platform.  This puts the toe of the shoe at 10” tall and the heel is 15”.  I am about 6'7” in the shoes with some additional height from the shoulder spikes.

I started by patterning out the pieces that I would need out of 1/4” thick plexiglass.  I drew out my own foot shape, then created a larger foot-shaped base that would give me better stability.  I then patterned out a piece that would go down the center of the shoe and three perpendicular supports at the ball of my foot,middle of my arch, and back of my heel.  The plexiglass was glued together with industrial strength acrylic cement.

With some help and quality time with Arms, Armor, and Awesome's belt sander, I shaped the toe spike out of wood and carved a groove down the center of the back of the spike so that it would slot onto the middle structural pane of plexiglass.  After gluing the toe spike in place, I created an aesthetic and balancing sole, separate from the internal integrated sole in the pants, out of four layers of Wonderflex that rests directly on top of the toe spike and plexiglass. After painting the toe spike, I did some dry fit tests, and wow, the world looks so different from up there!

With all of the shoe pieces ready, it was time to put these monsters together.  I first installed screws through the internal sole, pants, and external sole into the toe spike.  I then sank some additional screws and cut slots through the arch and heel of the internal sole, pants, and external sole for added security and to run a leather strap down through the middle plexiglass pane.  The pants and shoes were officially inseparable.  Once all of this was done, I added some clear adhesive rubber sole material to the bottoms of the shoes to help reduce the risk of slipping.  I also made some squishy toe pad inserts to add some semblance of comfort to the shoe and I always pad my feet with thick moleskin to reduce rubbing.

Gloves:

The last of the fabric pieces that I made were the gloves and sleevelets. I made the upper arm sleevelets out of black microsuede and some stretch velvet.  I added some interfacing to create a stiffer tip at the point.

Gloves are one of those banes of my existence when it comes to crafting. Luckily, they came out ok for Elise! Since my hands don't usually fit into conventional gloves (I have long fingers, but pretty small palms and a really short pinky), I wound up having to make them from scratch.  

First, I found a glove-making tutorial and patterned out the palms, fingers, and gussets and then extended the pattern to include my forearm and the crazy elbow spike.  The gussets were really fiddly, so I sewed the gloves by hand and I added a layer of Worbla around the upper half of my forearm between the vinyl and liner to stiffen the elbow spike.  Lastly, I made the finger spikes out of a single layer of Wonderflex and used contact cement to glue the spikes to the fingertips of the gloves.  The gloves have a zipper along the wrist to let me put them on and assure a tight fit.

Armor:

The armor pieces for this costume include the knee guards, face spikes, and shoulder spikes.  I created all of the armor pieces out of Worbla and Wonderflex.

The knee guards are made entirely out of Worbla.  I just heated and teased the dome shape for the knee and then added on the edge details.  The face spikes have a base of Wonderflex and then I sculpted scrap Worbla on top of it to create the three dimensional sculpt.  I didn't really try to smooth out the Worbla texture because I wanted these pieces to feel a little pitted and organic rather than perfectly smooth. That said, I still applied a couple of coats of modge podge to the Worbla before applying the final paint.  

Both of these pieces are attached to the costume with safety pins that I attached at a fairly flush angle to the inside of the armor piece with friendly plastic.  This negated the need for straps and still kept the pieces flush.

The base for the shoulder spikes were created entirely with Worbla and wire.  To sculpt the actual spikes, I decided to try out working with Great Stuff expanding foam.  I sprayed it on and carved it WAY down once it was dry.  Once my base sculpt was done, I went back with some more foam to fill in some of the big gaps and then wrapped the foam with masking tape.  

I used Claycrete, an instant paper maché material with a slightly pulpy texture, to cover the expanding foam and shape the spikes.  I didn't really like how the masking tape worked under the Claycrete as it was a bit too slippery to try and sculpt the Claycrete over it.  Regardless, after waiting about 48 hours for the Claycrete to dry, I had a pretty hard, cool textured surface to work with.  I hit the Claycrete a little with some sandpaper, but left the organic texture for the most part because it seemed to work well for the costume and texture play I was going for. The shoulder armor has a pair of clear bra straps that go underneath my arm and are safety pinned at the front to the bodice in the same way as the other armor pieces to keep it from slipping back.

Note: While expanding foam worked decently well for Elise's shoulder spikes and legs, I haven't really used it in costume construction since building Elise.  It just stays a bit too puffy, even after carving it down.

The last step for the armor was to apply paint.  I used acrylic paints with a dash of red metallic acrylic paint.  I sealed the paint with a couple of coats of glossy Modge Podge for some extra shine.

Spider Legs:

The spider legs coming out of Elise's back required a ton of trial and error to make.  We went through at least three joint designs and then another three hinge designs until we settled on what we finally went with.  Originally, I hoped to be able to install animatronics to make the arms move, but that ended up being a bust because there was no space whatsoever in the costume to hide the big, bulky motors and batteries that the electronics would require.  I opted instead to install hinges in each of the joints so that the arms would bounce and flex with me as I moved.

Since the arms would have to remain light, but sturdy, the base of the arms is an incredibly light and stiff epoxy-fiberglass composite pipe I was able to get from TAP Plastics.  After cutting the pipe with a hacksaw at an angle to allow the pipe sections to bend realistically, we went about figuring out a good hinge mechanism.  Since the pipe is round and we had a very specific kind of movement in mind, we ended up designing some custom hinges with a slot for a spring so that the arm would bounce instead of staying limp. Once the hinges were in place with rivets, I patterned out the shape of each arm segment out of cardstock and hot glued the paper pattern into place.

With the cardstock pattern in place, I applied expanding foam to each of the arm joints and used the paper pattern as a guide for how far to carve down.  I then applied Claycrete over the expanding foam, the same as I did for the shoulder spikes, but omitted using masking tape between the expanding foam and the Claycrete.  The sculpting for the Claycrete layer went much smoother because it could grab onto the expanding foam and wouldn't slip around as easily.  It took about 48 hours for the Claycrete to dry, then it was time to paint and seal the arms the same way I did with the armor.

After the arms were finished, I made the attachment system.  We created a small plywood base for each arm.  The arm is attached to the plywood with some metal brackets riveted in place and covered over with some Wonderflex to hide it.  The top two arms are screwed into place through the back of the shoulder armor into the arm's plywood base, and the bottom two arms are screwed on through the bottom of the Wonderflex-reinforced panels of the bodice.  Once the arms are screwed in for each session of costume-wear, I cover the screw heads with nice, soft moleskin to reduce rubbing and injury to my skin.

Makeup:

Last, but certainly not least, the final step of bringing Elise to life is the makeup.  The process for putting on her makeup takes me about 3 hours and a bit of outside assistance to get my back and stomach markings.

Photo by ESI Media

I first put on the red contacts which are GEO Xtra WT B68 Red from Pinky Paradise.  I also glue down my eyebrows with stick glue so that they will be hidden when I draw on Elise's crazy eyebrows later.  Next, I apply (with some help) Mehron Paradise body paint with a kabuki brush to my face, arms, stomach, etc to get my base white and then set it and further smooth out the color with white powder.  I also use red Mehron Paradise body paint to create the base red eye markings and further shade and set them with shades of red eyeshadow.  I finish up my face and eyes, false lashes, etc and get some help to contour the rest of my body with eyeshadow and get the stomach markings drawn on with eyeliner pencil or black body paint.

Photo by ESI Media

I look pretty silly in the makeup without the rest of the costume on. :P  

Photo by Ed Tan

For a final touch, I pop in some Scarecrow Shredder double fangs and once the costume is on, I'm ready to start spinning my sinister webs!

Photo by ESI Media

After the costume was done, we also took on a big cave photoshoot project where we built a cave set in TheH31P's (of TFN) garage. Check out the full BTS article to see more about the shoot!

Thank you for reading!  I would like to extend a special thank you to Ian as well as everyone around me who supported me through this long, grueling, and rewarding process!  

Photo by DuoShot from AX 2013

If you want more updates on my work, you can subscribe to ThoseFuckinNerds on YouTube, or you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as “Britthebadger”. I also stream my work on Twitch, so if you have any questions you can come watch and hang out.

[britthebadger]

Jinx (League of Legends) Fishbones Gun WIP!

Photo by On Impulse Photography

“Three guns means never having to say, 'I'm sorry'”-Jinx

You know what? Fishbones was the last of Jinx's guns I had to make! Due to the time crunch for getting everything ready before PAX Prime 2014, I only ended up having ONE WEEK to put together this giant lovable shark rocket launcher.  It was incredibly hectic and stressful to get everything done on time and there are definitely points that I would like to improve on for this prop, but we got it done in time and Fishbones came out of the maelstrom of crafting looking pretty good!

You can check out the past articles I wrote for how I made the main costume, Zap, and PowPow! In the meantime, let's dive into the making of Fishbones! <3

References:

First off, I had a very limited time frame to make a decent quality and durable prop, so I had to cut time requirements wherever possible.  I had already made some drawings of my own from different references and I ended up pulling most of my inspiration from the 3D model, which helped a lot.

Luckily, I was able to save a lot more time by obtaining a set of pdf blueprints for Fishbones and raw casts of the jaws from Volpin Props!  I've loved his work for a very long time and his castings and build for Fishbones' jaws are simply beautiful!  Check out Volpin's blog article for how he made his Fishbones replica for some truly beautiful work and detailed information! <3

Anyway, on to the rest of the build.  Fishbones is a BIG prop, I mean...gun, I mean...sharkzooka, I mean...rocket launcher. :P When I was first planning out the scale of all three guns, I knew that I was looking at something like a 40-45” long prop.  I started out with drawing out the pieces I would need at the right scale.  At the end of the build, this prop ended up being 45” long and about 10-12 lbs.  Not too shabby for a time crunch!

The Tube:

Lucky for me, Fishbones' core shape turned out to be pretty simple.  It's a tube with stuff around it.  So, naturally, it seemed like a good idea to start with building the base tube.

After a lot of thinking through easily available tools and materials along with the time limit, I opted to make my tube out of a combination of 4” and 6” mailing tubes, EVA foam, and fiberglass.  The mailing tubes would be lighter than PVC pipe and I used 1/2” thick EVA foam for spacers and wrapped around the 4” mailing tube to create the 5” sections.  I beveled whatever edges needed it with a dremel.  The fiberglass was to strengthen the tube so that it would be suitable to drill into for the plates and fins.  Once the fiberglass was on, Ian helped me out a ton by sanding it smooth.

The Plates:

I cut the plates out of 6mm Sintra with a box knife and heat bent them around an 8” and 6” tube form.  I made sure to leave extra room between my bent plates and the tube so that I could add in EVA foam spacers between them for attachment and the “floaty” feel.

I decided to use the 6mm Sintra because it was already pretty thick and sturdy and I wouldn't have to spend tons of time sanding to get the surface smooth and paintable, and I used apoxie sculpt to create the base beveled edges and sanded the bevels down smooth.  I used a 1” drill bit to create the holes in the big top plate.  The shoulder rest was a simple bent piece of Sintra and I added some cushy EVA foam to it for comfort.

The Fins:

I wanted to create the fins out of a light, easily sandable, yet durable material.  Since I didn't have time to create hollow fins, I elected to first create the fins out of EVA foam blocks, then coat them with fiberglass.  This would also allow me to drill into the foam to install attachment posts for the fins to the rest of the gun later on.

I started by creating foam blocks for the fins and shaping the bevels with my dremel and sandpaper.  I then applied a layer of wood glue in the hopes that it would help prevent the foam from soaking up too much of the fiberglass resin.  I'm not entirely sure if it helped, but it didn't seem to hurt.  I then went about adding on the layer of fiberglass.  The rough fiberglass surface was sanded down and I used Bondo to help fill in the low spots.  The top tail fin also got some Sintra plating, and I carved the handle for the gun out of some scrap wood.

Paint and Assembly!

At this point in the build, I had maybe two days left before the first morning of PAX Prime.  Before starting anything with the paint, I did some dry-fit test runs for the plates and fins to figure out the height and how many EVA foam spacers I would need between the base tube and each plate.  For added security, I also included posts of threaded rod that would be secured and glued in place on the inside of the base pipe, go through the EVA foam spacer, and through the plate to sit flush with the top of each plate.  The fins were also secured in the same way, but the threaded rod extends partway through each fin and is glued in place.  Five minute epoxy was my best friend through this process.

Once I had my attachment points planned out, I pulled an all-nighter until about 10am the next morning without any caffeine to do the paint job. Since I didn't have an airbrush, all of the painting had to be done by hand and fast.  I mixed my acrylic paints to get a good range of blue and purple shades and added a very slight wash of metallic silver. I got about an hour of sleep and then continued working to finish stitching the belt that goes around the big plates and the shoulder strap.  Thanks to some amazing help from Ian, we got the rest of the gun fully assembled the morning of the first day of PAX Prime as I was getting my tattoos painted on by Makeup by Crystal!  WHEW!

And there you have it! I was very lucky to finish Fishbones in time for PAX Prime 2014, but I did it! It was an incredibly stressful process and not one I would like to go through again, but I certainly learned a lot from it!  

 Photoset by Costographer

Thank you for reading! I would also like to extend a special thank you to Ian for helping me with sanding, priming, sanity and handling me during the creation process of Jinx and over the weekend of PAX Prime 2014.  Building, carrying, transporting, and managing so many different pieces for this costume would not have been possible without him. <3  If you want more updates on my work, you can subscribe to ThoseFuckinNerds on YouTube, or you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as “Britthebadger”. I also stream my work on Twitch, so if you have any questions you can come watch and hang out, or message me through my other social media.  

[britthebadger]

Lissandra (League of Legends) WIP Article

Photo by Steve Groves of ESI Media 

Hi everyone, welcome to the Badger Den! This is my most recent costume, Lissandra, which I'm debuted at PAX Prime 2015! This build took me 2 years and 4 months to complete from initial conceptualizing to roaming the con floor.  I think it's my best work to date and I thought it would be fun to talk about the work that went into this crazy, gigantic costume. Sooo...here goes!

REFERENCES:

I scoured the internet for different references to use to create a look for Lissandra that I liked.  I pulled the majority of my inspiration from the 3D model because it was one of the few cases where I liked the 3D model more than the splash art.

DRESS:

I knew that I wanted the dress and neck piece to be flexible, so I used leather for the bulk of the dress with some microsuede fabric for texture. I found an outstanding purple leather hide and a beautiful white goatskin for the edging and I fell in love with the combination. There are 12 layers total.

I started off with draping and patterning the layers in muslin.

For the base layer, I made a comfy black satin dress to reduce chafing. I then split the rest of the dress into a skirt and bodice.  

All of the leather pieces were hand-sewn because of the thickness of the leather and the stitches I wanted to use.  I sewed the edging together with a Mexican Basket Weave Stitch, and used a Double Loop Applique Stitch to attach the edging to the dress.

The skirt has four layers made of leather and microsuede, and it wraps around my waist and gets laced down the front just behind the tabard. The bodice is made entirely of leather and has seven layers. It goes on over the skirt and zips up the side.

I left enough room in the bust to allow for padding to give the extra amount of cleavage that Lissandra has.  I had to use three bras, gel inserts, and a sock to get the right amount of umph.

NECKPIECE:

When I was designing the neckpiece, I knew that I NEEDED to have good, flexible neck support because of the weight of the wig and helmet.

I shaped a block of  thick upholstery foam to my neck, and added a closure zipper on the left side towards the back. I used contact cement to adhere foam pieces to each other.  Then I covered the foam in comfy black fabric and added a few pieces of boning along the inside  for support. On the outside I covered the neckpiece in the same leather that I used for the dress.

Once I got to this point of the build, I noticed that what was left could be summed up particularly well by the song, “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”. It became my theme song for the remainder of the build. :P

Wig and Headpiece, Codename: HEAD

The wig is the main reason why I needed the neckpiece to provide good support. It is HUGE and oh so heavy. Instead of wearing the wig directly, I put it on a motorcycle helmet.  Not only does it save my own hair from being ripped out, but it also serves as a good base for attaching the headpiece.

The wig started out as a silver Le Tigre from Arda Wigs before I screwed it onto the helmet.  I also purchased long wefts of powder blue, periwinkle, and aqua to add some color depth to the wig as well as extra silver wefts.

After combining the wefts and adding color to the wig, I made three base cores of batting for the braid to add bulk without adding weight.  Once the batting cores were made, I wrapped more wefts around them to extend the base wig, cover the batting, and create the braid. The braid pieces were sewn to the base wig.

Before I could finish the braid, I had to create the poof at the back.  I shaped a pad out of some scrap upholstery foam, covered it in white fabric, then styled the wig over the pad.  After braiding the wig and applying tons of hairspray, the wig was done!

The headpiece was also a monster to build.  Since the headpiece measures 40” from tip to tip, I designed it to be as light as possible to keep neck strain to a minimum.  

I shaped a master buck from a 10lb expanding foam block.  After many, many, many hours of shaping, carving, and sanding, with saws, rasps, and sand paper, I managed to fill in the gaps and smoothed it with gesso, Bondo, spot putty, and apoxie sculpt.  

Once the master buck was finished, I took it down to my good friends over at [Arms, Armor, and Awesome (LINK: https://www.facebook.com/tripleacosplay/?fref=ts )] to cut it carefully in half and then vacuform the pieces.  I used .04” thick high impact styrene for the opaque regions and also pulled the top of the form in .04” thick clear PETG plastic. I did this so that I could create a light setup for Lissandra's passive.

Final Headpiece Lighting Code Video

The lights are NeoPixel light strips hooked up to an Arduino Micro from Adafruit.  There is aluminum tape along the internal bottom side of the headpiece to help reflect and diffuse the light.  The headpiece is attached to the helmet with a Worbla mini-helmet with embedded magnets. In the end, we managed to reduce the weight from the 10lb buck down to 1lb for the final headpiece.  Final paint was applied with airbrushed Tamiya acrylic paints and sealed with an acrylic clear coat.

Lastly, the stripes along the underside of the headpiece fill in the gap between the helmet and headpiece. They are made from leather and kept in place with velcro and magnets.  The goggles were made with leftover PETG plastic that I tinted blue with very thinned out Tamiya acrylic paint, a butchered pair of thrifted ski goggles, and mirrored window tint.

Pauldrons, Codename: SHOULDERS

Let's just be honest. Lissandra's pauldrons are ridiculous. Those things are huge. Anyway, I wanted to deviate a bit from her original concept and add lights to the shoulder spikes because how cool would it be if the spikes were made of ice and glow?!  

For the spikes, I first shaped 10lb expanding foam into bucks. I then smoothed them out with gesso, Bondo, and apoxie sculpt and vacuformed them with clear PETG plastic.  Before assembling the two halves of each spike, I painted the inside with Tamiya acrylic paints so they would look good in daylight while also remaining cool and translucent when they glow.

The rest of the pauldron was shaped from Worbla, craft foam, and EVA foam.  Now, Worbla tends to have a nasty texture that gets fuzzy when sanded and I needed a really smooth, clean, and perfect finish. Since the armor is not supposed to be flexible and I'm impatient, I got rid of the nasty Worbla texture with very thin layers of Bondo. After many hours of sanding the Bondo layer, I added edge details with apoxie sculpt.  

After many, many hours of sanding the apoxie sculpt, I installed the shoulder spikes and sculpted the remaining details with more apoxie sculpt. In order to attach these beastly pauldrons to my very tiny shoulder, I fashioned a mini pauldron that is fixed inside the massive one and fits over my own shoulder quite nicely.  

There are straps and buckle attachments around my bicep and from the top of the shoulder to a small harness I wear under the dress.  I wanted the straps to be soft, comfortable, and integrate well with the rest of the costume, so I used soft deerskin lacing to make a five strand braid sewn together with a herringbone stitch for a highly adjustable system of holes for the buckle to go through.  

A video posted by @britthebadger on Jun 15, 2015 at 10:44am PDT

The lights are made up by a 24 NeoPixel ring for each pauldron and controlled by an Arduino Gemma.  I mounted the lights to EVA foam and diffused them with batting. The EVA foam pad is attached to the inside of the shoulder spike with velcro.  

For the painting and finishing touches, I used an airbrush with Tamiya acrylic paints and a clear acrylic coat to finish the paint job.

Ice Crystals, Codename: KNEES

For the crystals, I 3D modeled 15 base shapes in Blender. Once I was happy with them and got them down to an average of 15 faces per crystal, I exported the files to Pepakura and unfolded the  models into flat shapes. Once that was done, I exported the files as a bitmap to Inkscape, where they were simplified further and re-scaled to their proper size.  

We put our final files into a laser cutter and cut the crystals out of 1/16th inch acrylic. Lucky for us, there is a MakerSpace nearby with a laser cutter that we could use.  We made two sets of the crystals, one at full scale for the outer edge crystals and one at a smaller scale for fill.  That brought us to a total of 30 crystals that would make up the base. The tallest crystal is 27” tall.

After we got all of the pieces back, I dry fit all the crystals to make sure everything fit together and no pieces were missing.  I used an airbrush to paint the backside of the acrylic pieces so that they would be tinted, yet translucent enough for lights.  Since I painted the backside of the facets, the paint is protected from scratches and I got to keep the natural shine of the acrylic.  Once that was done, I assembled the crystals with acrylic cement.  

Moving Platform, Codename: TOES

The the most common question I got while I was making this costume was, “How are you going to be able to move with all of those crystals?” Well, here, I'll tell you!  

After many, many hours of thinking through how to get Lissandra's gliding motion and easily move around the con floor, I hit on a brilliant idea and I got myself a powered wheelchair off of Craigslist!

Used powered wheelchairs are pretty easy to find and surprisingly easy to take apart and modify.  Everything I needed was already there.  The controller, motors, brakes, weight capacity, frame, battery power, and tight maneuverability.

We designed a wooden frame that fits around the wheels to hold the crystals.  It's designed to break into two pieces for travel and transport.  It's pretty ugly, but it does the job! I stand on a 17” platform which puts the entire costume height at around seven feet. I have a “butt bar” that that hides under the dress that I lean against and supports me while I move around.  The back panels have hinges so that they flex over rougher ground and the back-most point has a rolling caster wheel.

The crystals were cut to slot over the lights and onto the wooden frame with pins and velcro which made everything easy to assemble and disassemble.  The lights are NeoPixel strips from Adafruit connected to an Arduino Uno.

Ice Crystal Finished Lighting Code Video

After doing some lighting tests, I found that I still needed some fill lights behind the crystals, so I added in some puck lights with some scrap lighting gel to tint the light to the correct color.  The final touch was crinkling up some cellophane and placing it between the crystals with some hot glue to fill in any gaps between the chilly ice!

Makeup and Final Touches:

With everything finally built, I had to deal with the very last details to become Lissandra: the makeup!

Since Lissandra is, well, a witch, I got some truly wicked acrylic nails (I mean TALONS) done at a local nail salon.  After figuring out how to function with them on, I was able to give the very best head scritches!

For the makeup, day of, I had Ian and Miss Morgan use the airbrush to apply Proaiir Hybrid makeup paint to my arms and chest.  It applied very smoothly and didn't rub off, except in very high-friction areas (such as the under arm pauldron straps).  For my face, I used Mehron Paradise makeup for the base and set it with white powder.  I finished off the contouring with shades of blue and purple eyeshadow.  It was nice that I only had to apply makeup to the lower half of my face, but I looked pretty silly without the headpiece on! :P

Video: Arriving to PAX Prime 2015 in Style!

Once the makeup was on, it was time to roll to the con floor!  I'm extremely happy with how this costume turned out!  I look forward to wearing it again at local cons!

 Photo by David Ngo

Photo by Diegator

Thank you for reading!  I would like to extend a special thank you to Ian and his friend, Dane, for helping out with the coding for all of the lights as well as everyone around me who supported me through this long, grueling, and rewarding process! Also, a huge thank you again to Ian and to Hard Luck Hero for being my handlers at PAX Prime!  I wouldn't have been able to make this gargantuan costume happen without their help!

TLDR: timelapse video of the making of Lissandra via ThoseFuckinNerds ^_^

If you want more updates on my work, you can subscribe to ThoseFuckinNerds on YouTube, or you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as “Britthebadger”. I also stream my work on Twitch, so if you have any questions you can come watch and hang out.

[britthebadger]

A timelapse and WIP video from my stream footage of some of the work that went into building Lissandra.  It was a 2 year and 4 month designing and building process from start to finish.  While in costume, I glide around on a modified powered wheelchair to mimic Lissandra’s smooth movement.  

Check out some of the other WIP photos on my Facebook page and Instagram. <3

[britthebadger]

GNAR (League of Legends) WIP: A Collaboration Project with Miss Morgan

Photo by Diegator

Gnar, GNAR, GNARRRR!  Working on Gnar with Miss Morgan was an awesome six month project.   I made the boomerang first for a workshop, but I wasn't planning on creating the rest of the costume until Miss Morgan said she wanted to make a Gnar and we jumped on the idea of turning it into a collaboration project.  This was my first full costume collaboration where I wasn't the one who would be wearing the final costume and I gotta say, Miss Morgan ROCKED it!  

Like always, the first step of any project is the planning and design stage. Luckily, Morgan and I were on the same page with the overall design of a cute humanoid Gnar. Since the boomerang had a realistic vibe to it, I wanted to pull that same sort of realistic, feral feeling into the rest of the costume. We wanted to make a unique look for the costume by adding little details wherever we could, and we ended up with the following design sketch.

When we first started choosing materials, we knew that the biggest hurdle would be the fur.  After some research, we came to the conclusion that we DID NOT want to use faux fur fabric because faux fur is expensive, we would most likely have to dye it ourselves to get the correct colors and gradients, and the dying process uses water-based acrylic paints (not smart when you live in rainy Seattle).  Instead, we found a good yarn tail tutorial on YouTube and decided to brush out and blend yarn for all of the fluff.  While yes, the yarn method is very time consuming, it had some undeniable benefits: yarn is inexpensive, comes in a wide variety of colors, it's far more customizable, and it looks more natural.  Morgan was a champ and did the majority of the fluff making, brushing, and sewing.

Mini tutorial time!!! Creating Yarn Fluffs:

Cut your yarn to lengths of about 6-8”.  It looks a bit like spaghetti.

Tie your yarn into a bundle with a knot in the middle. We used three strands per for the arms and legs and six strand bundles for the tail.

Brush it out with a cat brush. You can brush multiple bundles at a time.  

Use a hair straightener to relax and straighten the fibers

Do one last quick brush and tada! You have a yarn mustache!

Use a needle and thread to sew the knot of the fluff to your base. Curved needles work well for this. ^_^

Feel free to brush out the fluffs after they are sewn on and enjoy!

With this decided, we started on the biggest, fluffiest part of the costume: the tail.  This tail was not for the faint of heart.  It is a bit over 5' long (it's longer than I am tall!!!) and the core is a giant four strand braid made entirely out of yarn, which lets the tail curl and flex naturally.  We made the core in three sections and sewed them together before we started adding fluffs.  It attaches to Morgan's waist by a carabiner at the base of the tail to a D-ring on a thick leather belt.  The tail took four months and ten pounds of yarn to finish, so we were both incredibly relieved when it was done.

The legs and arms were the next big fluff project.  For the legs, Morgan first created a sock out of knit fabric with a wide elastic around the top edge.  Then we shaped some thick upholstery foam for the hocks and glued them to the sock with Barge Contact Cement.  Next, we created an over-sock that fit over the hocks and wedge platform shoe.  The over-sock is tacked in place with thread and sewn to the bottom edge of the shoe.  For the arms, Morgan made gloves out of the same knit fabric and sewed the fluffs onto it.  The claws were added on later.  

With the leg base sorted out, Morgan sewed the fluffs to the sock.  To make sure the leg maintained the right shape as she was sewing fluffs on, she stuffed it with a duct tape form of her leg.  Lastly, we added some leather ties around the knee and ankle to bring back some definition in her leg.  

The ears were the last fluffy piece of the costume.  I created a cardstock template for the base ear shape. Once the scaling was figured out, I sewed a wide headband into the wig and installed two nails through the headband and wig to support the ear.  The base of the ear was made with Wonderflex to allow for flexible, sturdy ears that Morgan could play with. The inner ear ridges were shaped out of friendly plastic.  The Wonderflex base was then set onto the nails and wig with more friendly plastic.

I added on a couple of layers of batting and white spandex to the back of the ear for bulk and covered the front with white fleece.  The two fabrics were then sewn together around the edge and I airbrushed the fleece.  I was particularly fond of how the veining came out.  Once this was done, it was time to sew on the fluffs!

With all of the fluffy parts of the costume done, let's take a look at them bones!  Since I made the boomerang first, before Morgan and I had even decided to do a collaboration for Gnar, we'll start there.

The boomerang core is entirely made of pink insulation foam.  I carved the basic shape out of the foam  with very coarse rasps and sandpaper, then coated the foam in two layers of Epsilon. After the Epsilon had cured, I sculpted details and reinforced the teeth with Apoxie Sculpt.  Next up was priming and painting.  I used acrylic paint and did a ton of various color washes, wiping and rubbing away excess paint to make it look like real bone.  The paint was sealed with a clear spray paint, and the teeth got their own super hard and glossy coat of clear 5-minute epoxy.  Lastly, the leather strap was weathered with scissors, an Exacto knife, sandpaper, dirty paint water, and acrylic paint to make the prop look well-loved.

The hair bones were the next piece I decided to tackle.  During the designing phase, I thought it would be more functional to have the hair bones separate from the skull since it would also allow them to act like hair chopsticks.  I started the sculpting process by making an armature out of wooden kebab skewers, tinfoil, and masking tape.  The rest of the sculpting was done with Apoxie Sculpt since it's super solid and holds organic detail very well.  I tried my best to keep my sculpt fairly realistic so that it would stay consistent with the rest of the costume.

After the Apoxie Sculpt was cured, I painted the bones much in the same way as I painted the boomerang and sealed the paint with a clear protective coat.

The last of the big sculpted bones was the skull!  I based the structure of the skull off of an owl skull since the skull in the base character appears to have binocular eyes. Since the skull was another bulky bone, I used the same method as I used for the boomerang and created a base shape out of pink insulation foam with rasps, sandpaper, and a Dremel.  Once I had my rough shape, I coated the skull with two coats of Epsilon to harden and protect the foam.  I also used 5-minute epoxy to adhere a barret clip to the underside of the skull so that it would clip onto the wig easily.  Next came the Apoxie Sculpt detailing!  I ended up shifting my shape a bit and also added in the zygomatic arch by creating a wire armature directly into the foam. Lastly, I primed and painted the skull to match the other large bones' paint scheme, did a clear protective coat, and coated the beak with 5-minute epoxy (same as the boomerang teeth) to give it added protection and some extra shine. It looks so cute, cool, and creepy all at the same time!

With all of the large bones done, it was time for probably my favorite part of the costume: the wig! It's actually more like a mane than a wig, but who cares!?! I love how it came together.

The base wig materials was a Fire Orange Malinda wig as well as a set of Cobalt Blue and Light Copper Red short wefts from Arda Wigs.  We sewed in blue wefts to the bottom back of the wig as well as some of the light copper wefts to the center back of the wig to create a cool color blended effect. We also added a few big dreadlocks out of both colors of weft and sewed them in. 

Once this was done, I created the top knot and matted ponytail with a lot of back combing and teasing. After creating a bunch of smaller matt, braids, and dreads in the wig, I added in boiled and cleaned chicken bones from a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, a few feathers, beads, and small rocks to complete the look.  I especially loved using the vertebrae at the bottoms of the smaller braids to act as hair ties.

With the wig done and looking awesome, it was time to focus on the actual clothing for the costume, which consists of a leather top and skirt. The overall design of these pieces was pretty simple since we decided to have them lace up the sides.  Morgan first patterned them out of muslin, then we cut the leather, then we punched the holes for the lacing and started customizing the pieces.

For the skirt, we added some soft goatskin to the top of the skirt to hide the edge and create a nice comfy waist band.  Morgan  did some basic weathering and ratted up the edges with scissors, an Exacto knife, and sandpaper.  I went back over her weathering to add dirt and grime with dirty paint water, sandpaper, and acrylic paint.

The pieces for the front of the top were sewn together with a herringbone stitch.  We also added some straps to the top for added support and so we had a surface to attach the brown neck fluffs.  Next up was weathering the same way we did the skirt.  I added some trinkets, bones, and stone beads to the top for some points of interest.

Onward to the final touches!  I whipped together a four strand round braid trinket belt out of leather lacing and pouch for Morgan's phone out of leather.  All that was left then were the teeth and claws!

The hand claws were made with a base of acrylic nail and friendly plastic sculpted over them.  I did some light washes for paint and sealed them with 5-minute epoxy sculpt to make them super shiny and durable.  Once they were made, we attached the claws to the base glove with E6000 adhesive.

The toe claws were sculpted directly onto the base shoe out of friendly plastic.  They poke out through the over-sock for the leg and were painted and sealed the same way as the hand claws.

The tooth tusks were probably Morgan's favorite part of making the costume.  Since friendly plastic is commonly used in dental work, I figured we could mold some carefully over her teeth.  We took a small glob of friendly plastic and made a cast of her lower canines and waited for it to cool.  Once the base glob was set, I went back and added some more friendly plastic to the base to shape the rest of the tusk.  Lastly, since teeth aren't perfectly white, Morgan obtained some theatrical tooth stain from PNTA since it would be safer around her mouth than other paints and would be the right colors.

And there you have it!  Morgan ran around PAX Prime 2015 adorably yelling, “Demaglioooo!”, and making some of the most awesome faces.  I had a blast with this collaboration project with her and we both learned a lot.  I especially look forward to shooting Morgan in this costume up in the mountains sometime! :D

Photo by Diegator

Photo by Journeys in Color

Thank you so much for reading!  I hope this helps and if you have any further questions, feel free to ask! ^_^

Photo by Vensy

[britthebadger]

@tanknine took this awesome mini Polaroid of us after he interviewed me in Jinx! I love this picture and it gives such a cool physical reminder of my experience at AX this year! <3 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iEqTeygtbng&feature=youtu.be

[britthebadger]

Faces of Anime Expo 2015 Part 2

As with my previous ECCC and Sakura Con black and white hall portraits series, I decided to bring my camera to Anime Expo this year to capture images of some of the super talented artists that I got to meet over the weekend and highlight their work. <3

Check out the full gallery on my flickr page! ^_^

[britthebadger]

Faces of Anime Expo 2015 Part 1

As with my previous ECCC and Sakura Con black and white hall portraits series, I decided to bring my camera to Anime Expo this year to capture images of some of the super talented artists that I got to meet over the weekend and highlight their work. <3

Check out the full gallery on my flickr page! ^_^