Cosplay Tutorials and Inspirations

[mrbob0822]

Alistair Cosplay Tutorial 2.0

Ages ago(2010 if we’re being realistic), I had created my first set of splintmail for Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins.  I had very little cosplay and crafting experience at the time, as well as not having much in the way of money or tools, so it was made almost entirely out of cardboard and craft foam.  I eventually cobbled together a build write-up on that costume, and ever since, it’s been nothing short of astonishing whenever someone approaches me in their own splintmail, or to tell me they’re working on their own, and have referenced that tutorial I pieced together when I didn’t have the greatest grasp on how to do much aside from hot gluing a bunch of junk together and covering it in paint.

Fast-forward to the present day, and I’m still leagues away from any kind of mastery, but I did wind up rebuilding the entire costume, save for a few pieces, from slightly more advanced materials and better techniques.  Do note that while some of this may seem like explicit instructions, this build log is simply a documentation of how I went about making this costume.  Can you build it using Worbla, for example?  I have zero experience with the material, but I’m sure you can, if you want to spend that kind of money on that much thermoplastic. This is simply my personal experience with building it.  Whether you’re here to use the following build log as a guide to help you build your own, or if you’re just here for an interesting read, let’s kick off this journey!

Before(Left) and After(Right (image © Fablegraph)

Before I get into it, feel free to download all of the files, including a PDF of this guide, high resolution photos, templates, and such here.

Keep reading

[cosplaytutorial]

Grey Warden Emblem Tutorial by misi View the full tutorial here: http://misi.deviantart.com/art/Grey-Warden-Emblem-Tutorial-450362136

[frostfyrezero]

I used something like this, but the only difference is that I used the full relief (http://frostfyrezero.tumblr.com/post/96647942565/how-did-i-do-the-griffon-embossing-for-the) instead of the “emboss” style used here. But this one works more if you aren’t into full detail sculpting like I am and just looking for something quick. :3

[thedosianimports]

DRAGON AGE II REF - GREY WARDEN ARMOUR [Mage]

[aicosu]

HARGHSHDGDHFHFBFBF!!!!

[jennacosplaypatterns]

Found this online. Great for those who are drafting hoods.

Hoods are one of those finicky things to draft if you never drafted hoods before.

Example Cosplay: Attack on titan capes

[tumblingmagpie]

I find this more revolutionary than I probably should, given the number of hoods I’ve sewn over the years. But it’s like world is a whole lot clearer now!

[wondertriosews]

Foam Wig Tutorial

I wanted to remake my Rhys wig in a way that would compliment the cel shaded style of Borderlands, rather than fight it the way wig hair does. While I was moderately happy with how my first wig turned out, it still wasn’t what I was going for:

It’s fiiiine I guesssss, but it looks sloppy, it didn’t fit quite right, and it’s not as stylized and chunky as the rest of my cosplay.

I turned to the internet, but I found surprisingly little about making wigs out of foam. I know it happens all the time. But why was there no tutorial?? So I winged it (wung it? no), and now I’ll share what I think was a successful experiment with you all. At the very least, I think it makes a good starting point.

You will need:

Wig cap

Cling wrap

Masking tape

A sharpie

Wig head

Scissors

2mm craft foam

Foam for the hair (I used more craft foam)

Hot glue (a lot of it)

Modge Podge

Acrylic paint

Here we go:

Keep reading

[georg-ee]

ayy any tips for shaping a more masculine/gender neutral body when crossplaying? I crossplay for most of my characters but I have problems with still looking like a female bleh esp in legs and booty, but also just trying to get my torso into a more square-ish shape ahh i hope you dont mind answering this! ((p.s. i really admire you as a cosplayer wowza youre so good yeh))

Thank you! I’ve actually been meaning to make this for a while, so I suppose now’s a good time.

Crossplay is all about the silhouette. Here’s my process for getting a male silhouette.

MY SILHOUETTE

Here’s a roughly what my natural silhouette looks like. Notice that my hips are quite narrow, so these techniques may not be as successful if you have wider hips.

PANTS

When picking what pants to wear for crossplay, I usually go two to three sizes bigger. (Keep in mind that these are usually women’s skinny jeans, since I can find my size easier. A better way would be to just buy the right size in men’s jeans, but I can never find a pair that fit.) This hides the curves of my thighs and makes my calves look more even with my thighs - basically giving me a more straight leg. I always wear the pants at the widest part of my hips.

I always make sure there’s plenty of room in the crotch for obvious reasons. I don’t usually pack, but that’s always an option if I ever wear pants that are really tight in the crotch.

SHOES

Smaller feet are a feminine trait, so I also try to buy bigger, clunkier shoes. Combat boots work really well for this. If the shoes are regular sneakers, I will sometimes also buy a size or two too big for the shoes.

SHIRTS

I often wear padding on my shoulders after I put on my binder (or a muscle shirt similar to this [x] which is expensive but you can always make something similar at home). Broad shoulders are a more masculine trait. I sometimes do chest padding to give the illusion of pecs. This works for me because I have a small chest to begin with, so the padding helps make me look filled out.

For the actual shirt, I try to wear a straight shirt that won’t cling to my waist/chest. If I want something form fitting, slim fit shirt are still pretty good at hiding any curves [x].

So yeah that’s pretty much all that I do to make my silhouette look masculine. Also keep in mind that makeup is almost as important as the silhouette.

Also posing is really important! I always try to pose like the pic below, with my hips turned away from the camera, so that my shoulders look ridiculously broad and my hips narrow. Camera angles are like magic, just practice in the mirror.

HELPFUL LINKS

My Crossplay Makeup Tutorial

FtM’s Guide to Looking Like A Hot Dude

[andsewingishalfthebattle]

Nude Lips for Cosplay/Crossplay

I’ve gotten a few questions about crossplay makeup (since about 60% of my costumes are male characters), so I thought I’d share one of my go-to products: Flesh-tone lipstick!

My lips are naturally full and red. On a normal day, or in costumes where I don’t conceal it, my mouth looks like it’s trying for something out of a 1940s pinup:

…which would be great if I were living in the 1940s, but when you’re trying to play a 14-year-old boy from a cel-shaded source, it’s a little less convenient. ^_^

When I first started cosplaying I used to cover my lips with foundation and powder, which worked really well for photos, but dried out my lips and ultimately caused them to crack and peel when I had to repeat the treatment for multiple days at a con. Then fellow crossplayer @karmada​ introduced me to flesh-tone lipstick – a product designed to cover your lips and keep them from drying out. What a concept!

Choosing A Product

As with any makeup, slight variations in shade or color temperature can make a huge difference in how well a product blends with your skin, so I suggest trying several shades to see what works best with your individual coloring. Stores like Sephora, MAC, bareMinerals, Victoria’s Secret, et al. will generally let you test any color before buying.

For F to M crossplay, choose a matte lipcolor. Many nude colors come in a gloss formula, but shiny lips generally aren’t as desirable for masculine characters, as they make the lips appear more plump and full (a trait associated with a more feminine appearance).

My nude lipstick of choice is Make Up For Ever Rouge Artist Intense, which comes in several matte flesh tones and holds up well for hours of wear. I prefer to have a lipstick tube rather than a pot, for the simple reason that I like to carry it with me for quick touch-ups.

For other color/brand recommendations, check out this post over at Vampy Varnish, which identifies and reviews about a dozen neutral shades.

If your natural coloring is on the darker side, try this list over at Gurl of natural shades that work well with darker skin tones.

Application

(Please forgive my mediocre selfies for this tutorial. My bathroom has terrible lighting, but I didn’t have anyone available to help me with photos, and I wanted to get this posted before I left the country.)

Depending on the opacity and coverage you want, you can apply more or less product. Since most lips have some natural color, you don’t want to blank your mouth out completely with a heavy coat unless you’re going for a specific non-natural look.

Just as with lip liner and lipstick, you can modify the shape of your mouth using neutral lipcolor. Because my lips are full, I generally start with heavier coverage around the contour to make my lips appear narrower. (If you’re using a sheer lipcolor and need more coverage than it provides, you can blend a bit of concealer around the edge.)

Over the center area of the lip, I use a lighter application, and lightly blend it with my finger so a hint of the natural color still shows through. 

I then top the lipstick off with a light dusting of face powder to help set it and further mattify the lips.

Voila! Neutral lips. This type of application could be used for a male character or one from an anime/comic art source that doesn’t have much lip definition.

You can also start with this coloration as a base and then add character-specific lip designs on top (for example, characters with painted doll lips or other stylized mouth shapes).

[mariemetroncosplay]

super cool tut on how to make “lace”

[aicosu]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSs!!!!!

[blogimagicon]

How to make Homemade Cardboard Dummy Head Form, free template 3 size (S, M, L)

download & reference: http://dali-lomo.blogspot.com/2014/11… small: 153mm 6 x A4 PDF: http://goo.gl/mBw4nt 153mm single PDF: http://goo.gl/34nO0v medium: 170mm 6 x A4 PDF: http://goo.gl/hTfLxM 170mm single PDF: http://goo.gl/8lkL8B large: 195mm single PDF: http://goo.gl/PM6rtw 195mm 10 x A4 PFG: http://goo.gl/sYwYXg

Source

[aicosu]

Oho yes! Good!

[ohbuckle]

Facial prosthetic from John Blake. Just followed along with this video and it turned out great!

For a more economical facial hair solution, you can try doing a lay up with fibers and spirit gum like this one.

[aicosu]

the worbla form is ingenious and the beard mastery is phenominal. everyone please follow ohbuckle!

[colorfulcipher]

How To Make Horns Out Of Fabric

Hello everybody! Today I will be showing you how to make horns with fabric! If you, like me, are not good at making them with sculpey or model magic, then this is a good alternative.

(This is my first tutorial, also english is not my first language. Please bear with me.)

I’m gonna make Nepeta’s horns, since they have a simple shape and you’ll be able to understand the process better.

To make your own horns, you’ll need:

- Scissors (I use these ones because they are pretty sharp, but feel free to use bigger ones)

- White fabric

- White thread

- A piece of paper

- Stuffing

- Yellow, Red, and Orange paint

- Hair clips or a hairband

 1. First,  draw the shape of the horns you want to make on the paper. It’s better to draw them slightly larger than the original ones, since once they’re stuffed they’ll become thinner.

I also suggest to mark which parts will be painted with which colours. It’ll make the work easier later.

2. Once you’ve done that, cut the shape and pin it to the fabric. Be sure to fold the fabric in half, “right” sides together.

  3.  Repeat it until you have four pieces of fabric.

4. Now, sew the pairs together. Remember to leave the bottom open, or you won’t be able to stuff them!

5. Now, start stuffing the two horns. After they are the shape you want, take another piece of fabric and draw a circle the same size as the bottom of an horn.

 6. Repeat it and cut the two circles. These are the base of our horns.

 7. Start sewing the circle under your horn. When you’re halfway, add some more stuffing, then finish sewing.

8.   Repeat for the other horn. After you’re finished, your horn should look more or less like this:

 9.  And now, let’s start painting our horns! I suggest not to use the paint straight out of the jar or the tube, but to mix it with other colours. 

We are going to start with the base. Mix your red with a tiny bit of black, and paint the horn alternating between brushing and tapping gently with your paint brush. Use a lot of colour, because the fabric tends to absorb the paint!

10.  Repeat the same process with the orange and the yellow paint. Try to blend the egdes as you keep going! And don’t worry if the horns seems a bit too soft, they will harden after the paint dries.

11.  After you finished painting both the horns, leave them to dry during the night. If, the day after, you notice that you’ve missed a spot, don’t worry! You can always add more paint.

12. Now, the final touch! Choose how to pin your horns to your wig. You can either sew a hair clip under each horn, or sew them on a hairband. My horns have two little hair clips sewed under them, but for bigger ones, like Tavros’ or The Condesce’s, I suggest the latter.

Here we go! Now you have your own horns made out of fabric! They are incredibly light and won’t break when they fall!

Now, some of you are probably wondering: okay, but does this works with more complicated horns?

The answer is yes, it does! I made my Aradia’s horns using this method and they came out pretty well. (And I used hair clips for these, too)

And that concludes this! I hope this works for all of you out there, and good luck with your cosplay!  

[dragonnan]

Artist’s tip: After creating the fabric horns but before painting them, brush on a layer of gesso and allow it to dry overnight.  (2 coats of gesso is a very good base). This will harden the horns as well as give you a fantastic painting surface that will allow the paint colors to be more vibrant as well as not soak in.

Gesso is available in many brands and can be found at art stores and some fabric/craft stores.  I think you can even get it at Walmart.  

[colorfulcipher]

I’ve never thought about that. Thank you so much for the addition!

[sizvideos]

Video

[durkin62]

If this shits cheap I’m buying 20 pounds of it and making cosplay armor.

[roar104]

Pics of some finished shit?

[matchaprotocol]

I remember this stuff in product design class. Best shit ever.

[scam15o-blog]

little-dragneel WE NEED THIS!!

[little-dragneel-deactivated2017]

COULD YOU IMAGINE THE COSPLAY SHIT ONE COULD DO WITH THIS????

[sunfloweraspen]

Hey guys, just wanted to butt in here.

This is exactly the same stuff as Instamorph. And guess what? Instamorph is actually cheaper. A 400g (gram) bag of Plastimake is $30 (Can you say ouch?) Where as a 12 ounce jar of Instamorph is only $17. Why is this important? 12 ounces =  roughly 340 grams. That’s almost that same amount, but wayyyy cheaper. Not only that, but it seems Plastimake is currently out of stock? Further, Instamorph also has colour packets  for $12, and Plastimake’s are $15.

I’m not saying Plastimake is bad, i’m just saying if you aren’t exactly rich, it’s good to have a cheaper alternative that’s just as good.

There’s your daily dose of marketing info for the day, happy crafting! :D

[bugscription]

I NEED THIS OMG

[mortallyposting-deactivated2018]

Instamorph is good and safe for making sharp teeth and jewelry for cosplay as well btw

[valloir]

tristan-talks theprettyalexa

PROPS??

[banora-white-aka-dumbapple]

I picked up this cool special effect makeup book and thought I should scanned some of the cool stuff in it. Sorry if you can’t read the text. just let me know and I can just type out what it say.

[miimows]

WOW.

[adiostoreadumb]

What is this book called??

[codezilch-deactivated20200615]

It’s called “A Complete Guide to Special Effects Makeup” Conceptual Creations by Japanese Makeup Artists (Tokyo SFX Makeup Workshop) it’s a really neat book which was made by artists who have done work for Alien vs Predator and Land of the Dead

[weeablo]

Tips for working with foam!

So for cosplay, one thing commonly used to make armor, weapons, etc. is foam sheets like these ones (usually find these at the hardware store)

or thin craft foam like these (easy to find at almost any craft store)

now i realize we talk about these a lot and that it’s pretty common knowledge to cosplayers around the world that this stuff is great but hey i figured i’d show you exactly what i’m talking about

ANYWAY here are some easy tricks that it took us a while to figure out when using foam for cosplay crafting

1) USE HEAT GUN! IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE!

(this one here is a regular craft one but you can also buy the ones that are more industrial power tools)

these are great for working with foam for a few reasons. first, they gently melt the top layer of the foam to make it less absorbent and less textured (it melts all the little teeny bubbles in the foam, making it smooth). this is important for if you want to paint your foam and/or make it look metallic. second, it also works great for bending foam and having it keep its shape. if you run your heat gun over it for a bit and then hold it in a specific shape until it cools down it will hold the new shape but still be malleable (this works especially well with regular thin craft foam; the thicker you go the more times you have to repeat the process to get it to stick.

2) GO CRAZY WITH THE POWER TOOLS

we’ve found it SUPER useful to use our bench grinder

and a handheld dremmel tool with a sanding tip like this

these are a great way to smooth edges and shape foam. box cutters and x-acto knives tend to leave a really rough edge so to clean that up you hit it with either of these to smooth it out and shape it (**or round edges**). the dremmel also was great for helping weather things by grinding and denting it.

3) PLASTI-DIP IS BEAUTIFUL!

this stuff works great to give your foam a smooth, hard surface. it makes the foam less squishy and gives it that authentic metallic texture. AND its a great way to prime pieces for the real paint (especially if you’re using colored foam).

edit: also this plasti dip stuff helps a lot to keep your pieces more resilient. this way when your wearing/using them, and you knock into something, it wont dent as easily.

And the great thing is all of these (excluding the bench grinder and besides a dremmel works just as well it’s just smaller) can be found at a local craft or hardware store no problem so enjoy your beautiful creations :)

[renarosal]

just some eyeliner tutorials… (p2)

[cowbuttcrunchies]

Cosplay Tutorial: How to Create Worbla Feathers

By popular request: it’s the worbla feather tutorial!!

For Tsukki’s Legend of Karasuno cosplay, I decided to go with a heavy crow motif, and what better way to do that than covering myself in feather armor?  I ended up crafting close to 100 in total between the shield, gauntlet, and pauldrons, using a few different tweaks for different armor pieces.  However all of my feathers were made in one of two ways: either by sandwiching worbla around foam for a very thick, large feather, or by stacking two pieces of worbla for a thinner but very sturdy feather that is thick enough to etch deep details into.  Read on for these two methods!

Keep reading