Mimi's little box

Someone who likes to draw (:

[angelicdazecosplay]

A very basic how-to guide to make your casual con pics a bit snazzier!

By Angelic Daze Cosplay (angelicdaze.tumblr.com)

[th3lazyn1nja]

Finally finished my Speed-of-Sound Sonic commission for @ayvasva! GOTTA GO FAST #onepunchman #sonic #cosplay #gottagofast #speedofsoundsonic #onepunchmancosplay

[from-the-stone]

After staying up all night crafting, my bracer is finally done! (For now atleast, I’m planning on making small patterns on it) but I’m pretty pleased with it :D The material is made out of EVA foam, and is perfect for creating that leathery look, and I fucking love it okay

[shifty-sie]

Cosplay stuffs: So I’m starting work on cosplaying a Halo ODST marine. This is what I’ve done so far over the past few days…  above is the silenced SMG and below are some shots of my first attempt at the lower leg armor. With that second one, I miscalculated some stuff, and it doesn’t fit me, so I’ll try again tomorrow, and hopefully those’ll come out better. Again, its only my first time doin this stuff so I think its pretty good, considering…

[and-i-will-kiss-deactivated2025]

before i go to bed, here are some thermoformed fun foam/EVA foam. yes, it’s possible and it was made with a bottle cap (cos i needed small orange ‘bumps’ for some pins i need), elastic band or a twist tie and a hair dryer.

i still have to clean the borders and finish the pins, but i’m happy this turned out so well :D

[auroramiku-deactivated20201203]

Sneak peak at my cosplay for ama-con ^-^ it’s almost done just gotta do some minor tweaking :3 lol I’m so excited it’s looking great. I got the design from kamui cosplay. She is amazing and I suggest you check her out.

[philhoyt]

Started with a template and some extra floor mat foam. Cut down then heated into shape. Plasti Dipped, spray painted, and acrylic paint for detail. Hot Glued on two straps to attach to body and arm.

[hi-rezzolution-deactivated20181]

Alright, so, Halloween WIP post! I know I haven’t shared much in the way of these projects lately… even my Facebook cosplay page has been pretty inactive while I’ve kept busy with everything else the world was throwing at me, but I’m back, I’m inspired, and I almost got so into this that I didn’t pick up my phone to take a picture. 

So, the pictures! 

Quick piece of information: every gun that I’ve ever done for a costume has been created via modification– Nerf guns, water pistols, stuff like that. Due to my extreme laziness to go out and an abundance of foam and Wonderflex in the house, I have decided that I’ll be learning how to make a weapon from scratch. The first picture is a mock-up of River Song’s blaster, basically simple line-art from reference so that I could have a pattern to work with. I’ll be tracing, cutting, and gluing in layers, and if all goes according to plan, covering the outside with plastic. I’ll post more as I work!

[grease-and-fangs-blog]

[grease-and-fangs-blog]

Have some low quality photos of my WIP cosplay!

[stellachuuuuu]

Start to finish on my Suspect 7 cosplay from Relic Knights. Check out Soda Pop Miniatures. They’ve got great games and cute characters.

I used white Eva foam. Glued rope to the edges. Coated with 3 layers of smooth-on epsilon. Then painted. The leotard is from American Apparel and sword is a cheap Amazon toy. I made the rest of the costume.

[maddox-knight-deactivated202409]

MAKING ROSE QUARTZ’S SWORD

Pic 1 - I used the foam mats pictured. They are from Harbor Freight, it’s known as EVA foam, and is about 1/2″ thick. I cut out a cardboard version of the sword first,like a rough draft. To make the sword as long as possible out of one piece of foam, I had to cut it out diagonally. This is the cardboard version I used with the finished piece!

Pic 2 - Cut out TWO slices of foam, one for each side. You can use high-power scissors or exacto/drywall blades.

Pic 3 - Close up of the detail near the base of the blade. The sword has those petal-looking parts. I used my Dremel lightly to make these indentations.

Pic 4 - Carving out a channel for the wooden dowel to go through. It forms a handle and keeps the blade stiff. Again, I used the Dremel for this, though there may be a few other methods to make this possible.

Pic 5 - The dowel/core of the sword sandwiched between the two sides. The whole thing is hot glued together. The dowel is somewhere between 1/2″ and 5/8″ so I had to carve a little more than halfway through the foam! Now, I KNOW this is not an ideal core for a foam sword, and if it breaks, there is pretty much no fixing it at all. So this is unfortunately not a LARP-ready sword. There ARE different cores made for LARP foam swords that are flexible and won’t break easy, this is just what I used. I think other ones are made out of fiberglass or something. If you want that, do the extra research and find where to get them. I just need to be gentle with it.

Pic 6 - This is the guard. I used a dog food bowl to get the circle right. I pretty much guessed for the length of the guard. I used my Dremel to bore out holes to stick it through the dowel.

Pic 7 - Here I have the guard put on. For the actual handle part, I used a strip of super-thin craft foam, wrapped around several times. It adds to the thickness of the handle and is pretty comfortable and squishy.

Pic 8 - The rose-shaped pommel of the sword. This is four little pieces of foam glued together and Dremeled into a roughly rose-shaped piece. It’s a bit rough but I’m happy with it.

Pic 9 - This is the best picture I could find that shows the edge of the blade, also smoothed down with the Dremel. This is one time you could easily use  sandpaper in its place. It’s a little rough, because this is one of the first things I tried the Dremel on.

Pic 10 - Before painting, I first used Plastidip on the foam to seal it and keep me from needing a million coats of paint. Bare foam tends to soak up some paints. I’ve mentioned this stuff in my other tutorial posts, and they have pictures of a can of Plastidip in them. I’m out of space for pictures on this post. Use a minimum of two coats, three or more and you’re gold. 

And that’s it for construction and paint-prepping. I’ll need to make a part two for painting it. This was not too complicated of a thing to make. If you’re still here, thanks for reading, I try my best to go into detail as much as I can about my process. I hope this helped, if only a little. I’ve seen lots of cool Rose Quartz Swords out there, I chose this way based on what I’ve done in the past and my experience with foam. Do whatever works for YOU specifically. But don’t be put off from trying something new! If you have any more questions, as I’m sure I missed something, please feel free to ask! I am super happy to help.

Rose Quartz Sword painting tutorial/explanation: http://pkloveboing.tumblr.com/post/136345518754/making-rose-quartzs-sword-part-two-painting

Peridot headpiece tutorial/explanation: http://pkloveboing.tumblr.com/post/135477992344/making-peridots-limb-enhancements-i-still-dont

Peridot Limb enhancements tutorial/explanation: http://pkloveboing.tumblr.com/post/135325836494/i-dont-know-how-to-put-the-words-in-between-the

My cosplay page on Facebook: GemRobotDragon Creations

[ohicosplay]

Cata: For anyone looking for a place that supplies EVA foam, TNT Cosplay Supply is a site with a good range of EVA foam sizes (and styrene)! 

The second picture shows their sample pack (the blue piece is not a sample, just a divider). As you can see, I got a square of 8mm, 6mm, 4mm, and 2mm. 

From squishing the foam between my fingers, 2mm and 4mm feel similar to craft foam you get in most hobby stores. 6mm feels a bit denser than the craft store counterpart, there’s no 8mm equivalent.  It’s not as dense as SoleTech EVA , though that foam is used in shoes. The surface is very smooth on both sides.

My initial impressions are good. At some point I want to do some sealing and heat-forming tests, but I imagine it’ll work the same as the foam you can get at craft stores. I really like the selection of thicknesses and the size of the sheets is  great too. I’ll definitely be ordering from them on my next project.

You can get a free sample pack at the following link:

http://www.tntcosplaysupply.com/contact-us.html

Shout out to @coregeeknet for the heads up!

Edit: They now carry 10mm sheets.  $15.95 for a 24"x 60" sheet.

[aderukitten]

It is! The heart base is made out of instamorph and the inside is filled with string led lights.  I added reflective paper to increase the brightness 

[mimiisquirrel]

o::::

[shiromanju]

here’s a color tutorial for a very lovely person!! ehehe I’m sorry if this isn’t very helpful I tried my best in explaining the best I could;;;it’s tough putting something instinctual into words

I don’t have the right to tell anyone on how to color, etc.  This is just how I do it from my experience and what I find visually appealing!! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!! I will try to answer the best I can;;;

[crayonchewer]

If you don't mind, what's the coloring style you used for the Goomy picture? I'm trying to find out more about different styles for my own art.

Aww man, I knew I should have saved the file for this one! Luckily it was last picture I drew so I still remember the process for it. So here’s a quick ‘n’ easy little tutorial on how I did that particular Goomy pic. :D

Step 1): Draw your thingy! Here I drew my favorite pile of goo using a marker-like crayon brush in SAI.

Step 2): Add some color under that lineart! These can always be tweaked later.

Step 3): Slap a shadow on it! On a layer above the color, I added a textured purple shadow and set the layer to “Multiply,” then added a fringe effect on it which gives it that darker color on the edges.

Step 4): Sprinkle some more color! Here I took the pink from Goomy’s mouth and applied it to some areas to give more depth and to also break up that boring shadow. This layer is set to “Lumi & Shade” at a lower opacity and placed over the Multiply layer.

Step 5): Splash even MORE color! Here I added a nice blue at a lower opacity to contrast with the pink and other colors going on in the palette.

Step 6): BOOM! A background has been born. Checkers have never looked so good.

Step 7): Time to get fancy. Here I copied the lineart layer twice, then stuck them all the way back behind the very first color layer. Then I take one layer and readjust it to the left, and take the other layer and readjust it to the right. From there, I took one of the layers and made it the same pink from earlier, and then did the same with the second layer and made it blue for contrast. Then I put both layers on Lumi & Shade, giving it a sort of CRAZY 80’s NEON LIGHT kinda vibe.

And with that, voila! You now have a funky-fresh booger baby ready to boogie on into the night.

PS- Don’t be afraid to tweak these steps and experiment with it too! Some of the best methods are found by total accident (( which is how I came across this particular style, haha )). Have fun and happy arting!

<3, crayon-chewer

[rock-bomber]

May I ask how do you do your drawings? Is it photoshop? For example for your avatar, what's the brush setting. Also, whats that shading technique you used for the Mew? The one so comic-esque. Thanks for your time.

Sure! I’m always happy to answer any questions~ So, I mainly use Paint Tool Sai lately and then I use Photoshop CS2 for touching up. I have 2 primary styles of coloring: Painted-Lineless and Hard-Lined. My Mew avatar would be an example of one of my hard-lined drawings. I mainly use 2 brushes and 2 erasers in Sai:

I really like using round brushes with soft ends for sketching as well as soft coloring and blending. So for my Mew drawing, I used my soft brush, Luke, for the initial sketch:

After I finish the sketch, I draw the line art using my hard brush, Guy, and then I smooth out and shape the lines in places I see fit:

When doing a hard colored picture, I’ll use Guy. I’ll do blocky, sharp shading like this:

Now, this is a point where I’ll take the drawing over to Photoshop. To make the pixel-y pattern, I like using Photoshop because it’s a lot easier to use the pixel brush there. You can find the brush here, I have it set to 2 px to make a larger block:

And then I just checker it to make more depth in the shading. However, this is a stylistic choice specific to my 151 Pokemon Challenge I’ve been working on. It’s really useful for creating that retro kind of look on a drawing!

That’s the gist of how I tackle a hard-shaded drawing. Now, I tackle a lineless, painted style drawing a bit differently. I’ll use my Sableye drawing for example. I still start off sketching with my soft brush, Luke:

But after that, I put a rough, base coloring underneath and maybe clean it up just a little bit:

From this point, I merge the two layers together so that I only have one and I’ll “paint” on it with Luke and clean up edges with my soft eraser, Asch.

After I’m done with the character, I’ll put in a background and ta-da!

So that’s my process in a nutshell. Sorry if it’s not super informative, but I hope this helps a bit!