A month before Anime Expo 2015 we decided to make Pokemon costumes! Specifically Charizard’s Mega evolutions, X and Y. We used a hollow foam body technique because we wanted the costumes to really convey creature proportions yet stay as light as possible. We first started out with looking at a bunch of Charizard concept art, screenshots, etc. and began mapping out how to put a person somewhere in there.
Then it was time to start creating a physical rough draft of the costume out of duct-tape and cardboard. We do this so because tape and cardboard is cheap and we can tweak the proportions easily at this stage with minimal waste when we move on to cutting foam.
When we were happy with the general shape, we cover the cardboard in tape to create a “skin” which, once we draw on our pattern lines will become the pattern pieces for the foam suit. The tail was drafted the same way, cardboard for the x and y dimensions then it wrapped in tape to get the pattern.
Cut up the tape pattern pieces and trace them on to paper so that they will be easier to work with and last longer. We wanted to make sure that this pattern was going to work so we traced the pattern on to more cardboard and stuck it all back together. Looks rough so far, but it’ll work!
Time to start cutting foam. The bodies, legs and tails were all fabricated out of 1” upholstery foam sheets. I used 3M 77 spray to tack the cut foam together at first to test fit the pattern pieces then went back and permanently attached the pieces with Barge contact cement.
Many hours of cutting and gluing later… Bam! Two hollow foam bodies starting to take shape.
The hands were cheap fabric garden gloves with upholstery foam glued on to them and shaped.
Tails added! With more foam spikes and a quick test of the tail flame lights- a lightweight LED string bought of Amazon which came with a battery pack and switch for 6 bucks! The finished tails were hollow upholstery foam painted with Tint-It spray, acrylics and GLITTER because, you know, glitter.
The heads were first sculpted out of a block of upholstery foam to get the shape, then patterned and cut out of EVA foam floor mats then glued together using more Barge to create a hollow and super lightweight heads. Extra upholstery foam was added to the individual heads to create their specific shapes.
We did a lot of research on costume wings and wing harnesses and came across HCC Cosplay which we used as inspiration for our own wings to suit our specific costume needs. The back plates are ¼” Foamed PVC sheets which we cut on a scroll saw and formed to fit our backs using a heat gun.
Then we made arm straps out of nylon straps and sewn on buckles to make the backpacks secure.
For the wing attachments, we used 1” PVC pipes attached on to the back plates using metal C-clamps and then reinforcing the gaps with plumber’s putty.
Then the ½” PVC pipes that made up the skeletal structure of the wings were heat bent. A nut and bolt through the wings held them fast and kept them from swiveling too much. (Though we only got to doing that for X because of time restraints.)
The wings then had ¼” L-200 foam glued on to the PVC using, you guessed it, more Barge.
Wing test!
The toes and claws were both EVA foam which was cut, glued and sanded round. After that they were coated in Mod Podge and White Plasti-Dip.
Now it was time for the fabric. We started by covering half of the costume in tape, drawing where we wanted our seam lines to be and cut the tape off accordingly. So now we had our patterns for the fleece and all we had to do was cut out the fleece and sew it all together! For days.
We wanted the costumes to look as seamless as possible so we opted for a hand stitch used for making puppets call the Henson Stitch. It looked great but it took a ton of time to sew two huge costumes by hand. We ended up staying up for 41 hours straight before the convention to finish all the hand sewing on these suits. It was insane.
The final touches were some acrylic paint accents to bring out the features and… Ta-Dah!! We were done!
I got another awesome RWBY commission, this time from UneekChic for Yang’s shotgun wielding gauntlets, Ember Celica! I was very excited to take on this commission as these gauntlets are one of my favorite weapon designs from the show. I wanted them to be durable, and from my prior experience with foamed PVC on the Gambol Shroud I knew that PVC would be the perfect fit for the job.
First I did a ton of research on the gauntlets and started to make a mockup of them out of cardstock. This way I could easily change the positioning and size of different aspects of the props before cutting any PVC up.
Once I was happy with my mockup I labeled all the pieces and took them apart to use as my pattern. I then traced my pattern of the Foamed PVC sheets and cut them out using a sharp blade and a straight-edge.
With all the pieces cut out, I needed to get that curvature to them. So I took out the handy heat gun and started bending the pieces on a PVC pipe of the appropriate curve to give them all a uniform bend.
Once they were all bent to shape, I used super-glue to bond the layers together. I cut out the pieces in gradually smaller parts to make creating the beveled edge easier come sanding time.
I then started the process of Bondo filling and sanding. I did this for about a whole week straight.
When it was finally looking pretty smooth, it was time for the addition of some details. The shotgun shells were made from ½” PVC pipes which I cut in half and glued on to the gauntlets. Which were then gap filled with Bondo spot putty. Then the gun barrel was added, a small pipe which was embedded into the PVC sheets. I also lined the inside of the gauntlets with black soft foam padding.
Then I added the raised edges to give the gauntlets some more dimension. They were made from tiny strips of Styrene which I hand cut up, carefully placed and glued to the gauntlets.
With all the details added it was time for a thick automotive primer coat and some very thorough sanding. Starting around 120 grit and working my way up until finally ending with a 400 grit wet sanding. These babies were smooth!
It was time for a base coat of white acrylic paint to make sure that the yellow would really pop. I used my newly acquired airbrush to paint the gauntlets and I really enjoyed the control I had over the paint. It was really nice (also strangely relaxing) and I’m very happy with the result too!
To make sure that the lines on the raised details would stay crisp, I painstakingly taped them all off and hand painted them black. I held my breath and prayed to the prop gods as I pulled off the tape and…
Hallelujah!! The lines stayed crisp!
With all the details painted up it was time for a final matte clear coat to seal it all in. The clear coat gave it this subtle sheen which really pulled it all together. Then the gauntlets were done and ready to be shipped off to their new owner!
I got a great prop commission from CanonCosplay to make the Gambol Shroud from the show RWBY! I wanted to keep the build relatively lightweight but also durable enough for conventions, so I opted to work with PVC and Styrene sheets which was a new experience for me. I learned a lot about the materials as I worked and grew to love them!
First I drew up some blueprints based off countless screen shots from the show and real pistol references. And if anyone is interested in a copy here is the full-size blueprint:
Click here for a PDF download link
Enjoy!!
I took the PDF to Kinkos, got them blown up to full size and then it was time to start building.
Cut the blueprint up and started cutting out the basic shapes out of styrene and particle board on the scroll saw.
Once the layers were all built up, they got glued together with superglue. The blade was two styrene strips with a threaded steel rod sandwiched in between to add strength.
When the general shape had come together it was time to start the first of many rounds of sanding. I used a combination of differnt sanders to get the job done.
Once there had been a decent about of sanding and spot filling it was time for a layer of automotive primer.
With the use of thin styrene sheets I was able to create more levels and details on the pistol and then it was back to sanding and filling once again.
The scabbard was created using ¼” sheets of foamed PVC, cut out on the scroll saw and super-glued together.
A lot of my current skill set is to the credit of my dad, who is my go to when I need to brainstorm for sultions to my prop making problems. When making the scabbard, I wanted the hole to be perfectly round and though I knew I could attempt to cut it by hand on my scroll saw I only had enough materials for one go at a perfect circle, so I called up my dad and he had the perfect solution! Thanks Dad! Ok, back to the build:
With the scabbard all assembled it was time to do a dry test fit of the blade.. Does it fit..? It does! Hurray! My work was not in vain!
Then the little grooves details were hand sanded in. And this little piece on the scabbard was an interesting process. I created guide out of styrene and super-glued it to the scabbard then, used Bondo to fill the space which I then cut and sanded into the approprate shape.To keep the blade from getting scratched, the inside of the scabbard was lined with foam padding.
Fourth primer coat on and it was really starting to look like it should! A bit more sanding and it was time for the base coat.
The base coat on! Now time for the taping off and accent colors:
And the clear coat! Pretty pretty clear coat gave it a slight sheen and protected the layers of paint. Then the Gambol Shroud was complete! This build was really rewarding and only solidified my desire to make a million more sword-y props. Here's some pictures of the finished prop!
Hey there everyone! I was recently commissioned to build Ratchet’s Wrench specifically, the OmniWrench Millennium 12 from the Ratchet and Clank series! Exciting!
I knew this build would be a great learning experience and would give me a chance to play with a variety of techniques and tools I've been looking to get my hands on such as: Blueprinting using .obj flies and Inkscape, soldering and computing LED currents, and using a scroll saw create angled cuts.
The plan was to have this thing at actual size (well, as close as possible when you assume a Lombax is human size) at about 2 feet long by a foot wide at the jaws, and to have working lights in the wrench! After scouring the web for every picture of the wrench, I collected a bunch of references from an .obj file from this awesome dude that I imported to Blender and spun around for a while as I drew the blueprint up in Inkscape. It turned out awesome!
If anyone wants to make their very own OmniWrench,here's my:
full-sized blueprint ready to print!
For free!! Enjoy!
Okay, after it was all sized up and done I got it printed out at Kinkos full sized. So now came the hard part: making the thing.
First a trip to Lowes to get supplies: several sizes of PVC piping, wood, glues, bondo, sandpapers, etc.
After collecting the majority of the materials, I started putting stuff together! The PVC was cut to size then securely glued together using PVC glue.
The difficult part came when the "jaws" of the wrench need to be made. It was all angle cuts done on my scroll saw (after much trial and error) then wood glued together to form hollow boxes that would serve to house the lights!
So the lights, they were bright blue LEDs I picked up at Fry's. After soldering them all together (and to a battery and a switch) I started stringing them through the body.
To make the blue even.. blue-ier, I cut up some clear acrylic to fit in the holes and used TintIT spray paint to tint the acrylic blue. Though adding the tint did help defuse the light better through the acrylic the lights were still making hot spots.
So to defused the light even more, I stuffed the voids in the jaws with wax paper. This helped to spead the light out a ton and it also is just down right cool looking now!
To make the battery accessible, I built the end of the wrench to have a cap that was held on by a discreet screw. It’s also where I put the small switch for the lights so that it can be turned on and off by a flick of the thumb.
I used strips of foam core as guides to create the thickness I needed on the handle and then filled up to those points with Bondo. Then a lot of sanding and filling and sanding some more.... Eventually...
I got to this! With a coat of primer on it started to really shape up.
Time for more sanding and filling... Finally, it was looking ready for a painting. I worked by painting then masking off the newly painted area then spraying the next part, et cetera.
Waited for it to dry, painstakingly peeled off the masking tape and it was time to add some weathering! Added some black acrylic to the edges and grooves to make it pop as well as some silver Rub n' buff to make scratches and to bring an aluminum color to the rivets.
After that, all that was left was to coat the thing in a generous layer of wax and done!
This took me a little over 100 hours from start to finish, and I learned a bunch of things along the way. It was a really fun build and I’m excited to see it in the hands of the commissioner very soon!
I have been going to Anime Expo every year since 2009 and it was then, at my first convention, that I caught the cosplay bug. So did my sister and my cousin and that's when we formed The Coop Cosplay and we've been dreaming up group cosplays ever since!
As this last year was no different, we wanted to make something giant and ridiculous that we could all wear, BUT something we could actually stay in for a good amount of time without, you know, dying. And as you do, we decided that the most comfortable thing to be is giant Evangelion Units.
These three to exact: Unit 00, Unit 01 and Unit 02
So now that we decided what we were going to be, we had to figure out how we were going to make these things. After doing some research on what other people have done in the past to make their giant robots, we thought what would work best for us is EVA and L-200 foam.
First, I made some plans:
Originally the feet were going to be platform shoes to create the height instead of elongating the torso.
I drew up a scale of how big these things were going to be and where we were going to see out of it, etc. I'm 5'4" so I tried to keep the proportions of the costume as true as possible to the character with out making it all squashed like me. hehe :) To do that I thought it would be best to have our actual heads in the chest area and puppeteer the costume heads.
Once the designing process was done, it was time to start making our pattern:
The ol' duct tape and cardboard technique.
So with the scale drawing I made, we were able to start cutting out the basic shapes and sizes of the pieces out of cardboard and then strapping them to our bodies to see if it looked right. Using each other (my sister and I are generally the same size) to see if the pieces work is great because we can move around and see what would prevent us from moving fluidly and fixing it before we start cutting that precious foam. When I work alone, the process is similar but I would use a mannequin or duct-tape dummy in place of a human test subject. :)
Once we made the patterns out of cardboard, we could start tracing them on to the foam and actually start making something:
The process we used for the foam was pretty straight forward; trace out the pattern on to the foam, then cut out the piece with a very sharp box cutter blade. Then use either DAP or BARGE contact cement to glue your pieces together and use a head gun to shape those suckers.
I used both contact cements on this build and I actually (currently) prefer DAP glue for several reasons, I find that it has a lower viscosity than the barge which makes it so much easier to spread thinly, which leads to better bonds, less glue waste and cleaner seams. Also unless you live by FoamMart (it's so awesome, it's like willy wonka's factory but foam) which seems to be the only place I can find in SoCal that carries Barge, you have to order that stuff online. DAP on the other hand, you can find in those cute little glass containers with the brush caps for around $5 at Walmart or Home Depot.
Ok, back to our Evangelions in progress. I needed to make perfect round circles on several places on the costume and I made several attempts to free hand them with a sharp blade but they were always crappy looking, so I started looking around for another way to cut some nice holes:
What I found worked astoundingly well is a bit of plastic tubing (which I think was from those epoxy tubes? like mighty-putty) with a sharp edge which I would twist in to the foam clockwise and basically take out the foam like a cookie cutter! It worked great and I whipped out all of the shoes with my new found cookie-cutter tool.
When we got everything cut out, it was time to start filling seams and priming the foam for paint:
To get rid of all those nasty seam lines we used caulking and smoothed it out using a bit of water and our fingers. We did this to every. single. seam. And then left it to dry over night But it was totally worth it, it covered the seams very nicely! Then we primed the foam with a layer of elmer's glue and let it sit over night, again... Well, we actually only let it dry for a couple of hours because we were excited and wanted to take it for a test run:
So we tried it all on and went out side with the lights on and scared the neighbors!
Lights! There is a total of 8 lights on each of the costumes. Two puck lights in the head, two puck lights for the shoulders and four LEDs on the chest and back, which also have a blinking setting, fun for parties! hehe.
The LEDs for the chest and back all ready to be installed.
I had never worked with lighting so this was a fun challenge but I didn't make it too hard for myself, we were coming up to 2 weeks left before Anime Expo and I didn't want to spend the entire time trying to figure out how electricity works, so I bought myself a battery pack and light strip from Radio Shack so that all I had to do is attach the + to the - with a little soldiering and boom! Lights! The rest of the lights were all puck lights for cabinets which you just put in a couple batteries and push to turn on which is really nice when you are rushing to put on your costume and you don't want to be fumbling around looking for the tiny light switch:
Puck lights on the shoulders all installed!
They shine through some colored plastic sheets to make it look all glow-y!
Though, in the future, I would love to look in to some remote controlled lighting systems so I wouldn't even need to touch the costume to turn on the lights! Ah, someday....
Anyway! Back to the Evas, the plan was that we were going to see out of the chest plates so I started looking in to two-way mirrors and helmets that have the same effect, I wanted to something similar to this but I knew that I would have to either get something custom, because the chest plate is not shaped like a helmet shield, or make them myself. So I opted for making them myself! I got myself some dyes and some thermoformable Lexan acrylic and a new pot for boiling my concoctions in. Do not boil dye in a pot that you plan to eat out of, that stuff is toxic, not to mention smelly as hell. First attempt did not go well, as I tried to use just your average cotton fabric dye which had no grab on the plastic, even when I left the sheet in the dye over night, nothing. So I did some more research and ha, believe or not you need plastic dye to dye plastics! Who would have thought right?! haha... So JoAnns carries a plastic dye called Jacquard iDye Poly the "Poly" is the important part, and sure enough, I boiled my dye, threw my plastic sheet in and:
Ta-Dah! Yellow Plastic!
The only problem I found with this is that the plastic would, as you can see from the above picture, get foggy in places after it was dyed. I'm not quite sure what caused this but I think it might have to do with not stirring the plastic/dye concoction enough while its boiling. I hope to perfect that later but for the task at hand, (as the count down clock kept tickin') these dyed sheets would work just fine.
The plastic was dyed, but I didn't want people seeing our goofy mugs on the inside of the costume but we needed to see out! So some more research and I found the work of RoshProps, who makes some bad-ass helmets! I did a light coating on the inside (the side which our faces would be looking out of) with Kyrlon Looking Glass which worked awesome and we could still see out of it! Though I don't recommend this technique for something you will be wearing at night or in dark places but we did and we were able to see pretty well!
On to the paint job, after a coat of elmer's glue to seal the pores on the foam it was time to start painting:
I used a method of a coat of Plasti-Dip, then Automotive primer adhesive, then desired paint color and then a coat of high gloss. Most of the time was spent taping off different sections for painting, but after it all dried and I took the paint off I think it looks pretty darn swell! Nice and shiny!
Lastly was some weathering to make our Evangelions look like they've seen some battles:
We used just plain old black acrylic paints to get into the cracks and make everything pop. We also used Rub n' Buff to make it look all metallic in areas as if the paint had been chipped off to reveal the metal.
Then Ta-da! We finished our costumes and had a great time at Anime Expo 2014. I really learned a lot about foam making these costumes and it is a great material to work with.
Things I learned:
- the 1/2" EVA foam worked really well for this kind of costume. It works best in places where it doesn't have/need to bend. If I was to change anything on these costumes I would find a way to make the mid-section pieces so the foam wouldn't have to bend when we put it on. But for places like the chests and arms it worked great because there was no points where the foam creased when we moved about.
- Rub n' Buff is awesome. You slap that on your paint job and it looks and least 20% better. And less is more, that stuff works really well in small amounts. Use a Q-tip to apply it.
- Using caulking is awesome for seams on the foam! I would love to do some tests and find out what caulking works the absolute best but until then just some cheap Alex Plus worked great.
- Lights are really cool and I want to COVER all costumes in lights.
I hope to be making some more costumes with foam very soon!
Thank you so much for reading and I wish you the greatest of luck with your costumes!
I am a huge fan of Skyrim and I've been wanting to make something from the game since it came out. So I finally got around to doing it and I wanted to do this right!
So I did some research and found WM Armory's build which was AWESOME, and saw he had blueprints for the dagger up for a buck twenty-five so I bought one of those!
I got myself some 1/4" Poplar wood, traced the blueprint to the wood, cut them out on my scroll-saw, which was the first time I've cut anything on the scroll saw!
Then I glued the pieces all together and got to sanding!
For sanding, I used a combination of my dremel, orbital sander and good ol' fashioned sandpaper.
After I had done a good amount of sanding I drilled a hole in the handle and the blade, then attached them together with a small threaded steel rod and some gorilla glue.
All attached and sanded! I used wood-filler to fill any nicks, holes and mistakes I made. Ready for some details!
I did all the little weathering with my dremel which took a while but I think it made it look pretty darn cool. Then I did one full last sanding with a 250 grit then it was time to prime!
I gave it one generous coat of black automotive primer then sanded the whole thing again this time with a 600 grit until it started to shine!
I used cardboard for my first mold walls but on the other side I used foam-board and it worked much nicer and was much cleaner. I sprayed mold release everywhere then I poured the second half of the silicone and let it cure over night and prayed that I did everything right, haha...
The next day I pulled the two parts apart and it worked! Now it was time to see if I could cold cast some daggers!
I cut out some foam board in the shape of the silicone so I could have something rigid to wrap the duct-tape around to hold the mold together.
I forgot to take pictures of the casting process but I used Bronze Powder, Smooth Cast 300 and followed smooth-ons
video on cold casting
which was very helpful. 20 minutes later, I pulled the casting out, buffed with some steel wool, weathered with some acrylics and...
Ta-dah! I had a fun time making a little Skyrim-esque shoot with my new dagger, I love the weight that the bronze powder adds to the cast, (it weighs about 10 oz. now) it really makes it fun to hold.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, there is a few imperfections on it but I think it was user error when I was pouring the mold, hopefully the next one will be better!
