I finished my analysis of Silco’s Act 1 outfit (which is actually me just bullying him for several pages) and I figured somebody else besides me might find this interesting, so here you go :)
Got that punk attitude and like to play Solo? Jump into the clothes of Rogue Amendiares! 🤘
If you're ready for a challenge, even Arasaka Tower will crumple before you 🔥 Our new cosplay guide is now available 👉 https://www.cyberpunk.net/cosplay-guides
Do you know what kind of jacket Bell is wearing (bocw)?
Assuming that you’re asking about this jacket?
If so, it’s very close to in design to the pullover ‘Anorak’ style of jackets with a stomach pocket.
Different manufacturers make them in different styles and colours, but they are very prolific so I can’t imagine you having much difficulty in getting one that suits best.
As promised in my last post, here's my guide and debrief on the Roaring Knight cosplay I did for Katsucon 2026! I'll start with my inspirations, give the tutorial on how I built it, and then I'll get into what I would have done differently/what I'll change next time.
This is going to be a long post, but if you're at all interested in cosplay and/or costume armor construction, I encourage you to take a look. This was my first attempt at doing anything like this, and I learned a lot!
The first step in designing this cosplay was to look at how other cosplayers tackled the same design. I looked here on Tumblr, on instagram, on youtube, google, and pinterest--there surprisingly were not a *lot* of examples to follow after, but the one I drew the most inspiration from was by Scissor'd on Youtube.
They relied mainly on cardboard, papier maché, and spackle for their design, which is what I ended up doing as well. In their description they also linked a video by SKS Props, which specifically follows the Oblivion armor design. SKS Props has a website with all of their patterns uploaded, including this one. I did not print out and follow this pattern 1:1, but I spent a lot of time studying it before trying to make my own.
The biggest thing I learned in studying and making my chestplate/backplate patterns was how to get that sharp angle on the seam of each piece. The key is, your curve angles and lengths have to be different. Cardboard is more-or-less flat for this purpose, but when using EVA foam of any significant thickness, it also helps to use a beveled edge, as SKS Props does in his video.
I also find it crucial to emphasize that I made patterns for these pieces. The chestplate and backplate are the biggest piece by volume in this cosplay, and as such, I paid a lot of attention to detail with them. I would upload this pattern here, but A: I do not know, nor think I can quickly enough learn how to make a proper digitized pattern, and B: having these pieces tailored was very much crucial to making them 'work'. With all of my pieces, the first step was the idea of what I wanted them to look like, and the second step was to measure myself and where I wanted them to sit on my body. I will, however, share photos of my pattern in case you want to study it or take any inspiration from it.
Chestplate pattern:
Backplate pattern:
This is how my first pieces looked when I had all the parts cut out. This specific kind of green painter's tape sucked horribly for keeping the parts together while gluing, and I wish I could remember what brand it was if only to tell you to avoid it.
Notably, I did not make a pattern for the pauldrons, I sort of just cut out pieces and played with them until I liked it. I determined the length of them by holding a ruler out from myself and seeing where I roughly wanted them to extend to--I tried to choose a length that wasn't egregious, because I knew I'd be at Katsucon in extremely crowded areas. While I would have liked the look of bigger pauldrons, this ended up being a good choice--I nearly beheaded several people in the UTDR meetup alone. (Sorry!)
Once I had the pieces taped in an acceptable approximation of their final form, I brought out the hot glue gun. I had my doubts about how it would work, but it actually held up *really* well; any breakage I had was due to the cardboard itself ripping, not the glue falling apart.
If you do this, you have to hot glue along the entire seam. It's tedious, but it gives your pieces a much better chance at survival. I found that my hot glue gun worked best when I ignored the trigger entirely and just held my thumb on the back of the glue stick to apply even, consistent pressure.
This is what the helmet, chestplate and backplate looked like when hot glued together. (At this point, the two plates were attached with over-the-shoulder straps that I had hot glued on to both pieces, so the combined piece could go on over my head and rest comfortably on my shoulders.)
The helmet was probably the most annoying piece to construct. If I were still good at geometry it probably would have been a breeze, but alas, I have long since forgotten how to calculate the surface area of polygons, and so my process was pure trial and error. No amount of measuring vague angles around my head gave me any hints on how to construct it, at a certain point I just had to start taping together scrap triangles to see what worked best.
In total, the helmet ended up being 9 triangles, not including antlers. four on the front, five on the back--8 is entirely feasible, I just happened to have an *almost* perfect fit that needed just one more angle popped in. It is not a perfect diamond shape; if you're able to secure it into two pieces and have it go all the way around your neck then power to you, but I had neither the ability nor desire to do that. If people were going to see a little bit of neck and/or hair, I was fine with that.
The antlers are mounted just behind the first side seams, and they're constructed almost entirely of triangles. The first 'stem' is a triangular 'tube' with a cap at the end, and then the second stem is basically a really long pyramid with two really tiny pyramids stuck to it.
For the visor, I just used a perforated vinyl sheet, like the ones often used for fursuits and other similar masks. To my surprise, while visibility was limited, the loss of hearing range was actually much worse. I was practically unable to speak when wearing the helmet, because nobody could hear me. This could maybe be remedied with ventilation holes and/or a built in voice modulator (which would also just be sick as hell), I'd love to hear ideas from other people who do detailed helmet craft!
Another important construction note is, if you want those angles to stand out, do not use right-angle triangles. I think there's a few hidden in the helmet, but in general, you can start with right-angles and just *slightly* shear down the edges to get a more pronounced look.
The hip pieces and leg pieces more or less followed a similar design philosophy to these. I sewed belt loops onto an old pair of leggings to attach velcro through for the hips, and for the shin guards I threaded velcro straps through my boot laces. Now I understand why velcro gets such a bad rep in the armor community. The velcro I used was very secure, but it also had a tendency to rip off with the opposite piece, usually taking a fair chunk of paint with it. This indicates to me that it's not an adhesive issue, but a construction issue. In the future, I might consider laces--or simply avoiding events where other people are likely to bump into me. (I cannot, in good conscience, recommend being short at a con. The huge armor did not help other people avoid bumping into me, it just made me a bigger target. In the future, I will consider taller platform boots.)
The next big step was smoothing out the armor. I had the skeleton down, but before I painted it, I wanted to fill in the seams and cover the corrugated edges. For this, I used alternating layers of spackle and paper mache (papier maché for the other french purists). Both of these materials suck in different ways. Spackle is smooth and hard, but prone to chipping, and any attempt to sand it down will leave it patchier than when you started. Paper mache looks and feels smooth, but it has no greater desire than to peel up, flake off paint, and tear in inopportune places.
If you are, like I was, dedicated to not using EVA foam, this will kind of work. You will, after way too many hours, get a good-looking, if fragile, final product.
Don't be like me, guys. Just get the EVA foam. I will elaborate on this more at the end.
As it was, I finally got things workable. I did not take a picture with just the paper mache and spackle on cardboard, but I have a picture with just one coat of primer:
It took several more coats of primer to get the bright white I wanted--my white primer was also doubling as my white trim. This was not efficient, but it did eventually work.
This is the primer I used for everything; Rustoleum 2X Ultra Cover Primer Spray in white. Honestly, it worked really well. It didn't have as much coverage as I might have liked, but honestly, I was expecting too much from it as a primer. In terms of how it primed, it did really well, smoothed things as well as I could have asked for, and prevented any non-paper-mache related chipping. When I was finished priming, I simply used painter's tape over the areas that I wanted to remain white.
In retrospect, I should have done another coat of primer on top of the tape to prevent bleeding, if I really couldn't be bothered to use a white paint. (I *did* do this on the sword pieces, and it helped... a little.) The paint bled pretty severely, and it was only through a combination of posca markers and acrylic paint that I got the lines looking fairly sharp again.
The black coats of paint were done with Rustoleum 2X Ultra Cover Spray Paint in Gloss Black. (Not sponsored by the way, and I don't know if I even really support the company, just trying to be transparent about what I used!) The coverage was really good, I think I only did about two coats on most parts.
When I peeled the tape and touched everything up, I sealed it with Rustoleum Protective Enamel Custom Spray 5-in-1 in Crystal Clear. (I think the product may have been renamed to 'Gloss Clear' since I got it). In retrospect, this was not the right product to use. As it says in the label, this is an enamel paint, and it is probably mainly used for automotives. It is brittle, and very prone to chipping/cracking, especially on broken or flexible parts. The cardboard/hot glue base was actually quite flexible when necessary, which did *not* pair well with this. I would suggest others trying to recreate this use the same line of 2X Ultra Cover/American Accents paint, or something else that's... not enamel. None of these issues presented themselves immediately, but long hours of con wear made them very apparent in time.
The last step in this cosplay was probably the easiest: the gloves. I'll be honest, I broke down and got some elbow-length gloves from Amazon. I don't suggest you do this or support Amazon, to be clear. None of my local stores were carrying anything remotely 'plain black glove'-like, somehow, and my sewing prowess is not up to making gloves yet. (Maybe for Rosie...) As it is, I just cut out roughly 1" diameter circles of white scrap felt, and haphazardly sewed it on, using loose stitches so I could reuse the gloves for other cosplays.
Aaand that's the full guide! (This isn't an AI edit, to be clear. I painstakingly edited that silhouette with my own hands, and used a royalty free image from unsplash!) Now for the debrief and thoughts about what I'd do different next time.
My main takeaways: paper mache is the enemy. There's a reason EVA foam is the standard, as much as I loathe to concede to plastic products. (EVA foam is recyclable, though it tends to degrade in quality, as most recycled plastics do. If it's viable for your application though, I encourage you to use it!)
I do, actually, quite like having the cardboard skeleton. It adds some extra structure that I think pure-EVA applications lack, and it's also a much more sustainable material for workshopping with. This entire cosplay was done with the remains of half an IKEA box! That being said, I do not like having the cardboard, let alone with paper mache and spackle, as the top layer. No matter how much spackling and sanding and smoothing you do, you will always be able to see those ridges--it's one of the few complaints I have with Scissor'd's designs, actually. Also, those corrugated edges are a nightmare to cover up, and the paper mache on them was the most vulnerable and prone to breakage.
In future attempts, I think I will use a cardboard skeleton (maybe even this one) underneath EVA. That will create a much sturdier end product, and one that will hold up better to the stress of con. I also think the chestplate was just slightly too wide, as it severely limited the rage of motion of my arms. I also want to entirely rework the hip piece, as I think it ended up too broad, and contributed to a look that was more curvy than skeletal. For what it was, though, I'm quite proud of this attempt!
I'm also very satisfied with the way the helmet shape turned out (sorry round-face knight truthers!), and the way the paint looked. I know it takes a little more effort to do spray paint on EVA foam without damaging it, but I think it would be worth that effort. I love the high-gloss look it gave my knight, and the plain unpainted black-foam knights start to look a little samey, at a point. (Said with love!)
If I am able to get my skillset to such a point, I would LOVE to add LED elements to this cosplay, specifically the helmet. One of the other knights at Katsucon had both a helmet and sword that lit up, and I absolutely adore the concept. I think a blacklight would go crazy in a knight cosplay, but I'm not sure how feasible it is... While at Katsucon, I got to attend a panel by Cape & Coil (an electrical engineer) about adding electronic elements to your cosplay, and he had a lot of really good advice to give--I encourage everyone reading this to check out his page and his powerpoint, it makes circutry about as digestible as possible. He's also said he loves assisting cosplayers with adding these elements to their own work, so if you're looking for electrical cosplay advice, he's probably a good source!
Some smaller details I would have loved to add would be white-out contacts and a black wig, which I just frankly did not have time for after all the armor construction. I also have personal issues with contacts, but I think I could get over them for the sake of a sick cosplay... I've seen a few cosplayers go all-in with the 'lost dess' look under the helmet, and I absolutely adore it. I tried to allude to it with my makeup look, but someday I'll break out the big guns, so to speak!
If I remake this, I also want to add in some small elements like rib detailing on the chestpiece. I also saw in my initial research that one person had used a matte black on their armor to add in some titan-like details, which I also love--I'd link to the person who did it, but unfortunately I cannot find their cosplay again!
Much love to anyone who has read this far. If you have any more questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me! This is my first honest-to-god attempt at a cosplay (instead of just like, closet cosplay or disneybounding), and I couldn't be happier with it nor the community I found at Katsucon. If I get any big important questions, I'll reblog this with the answers!
