There are free templates for these Bat gaunts and basic gaunts at thefoamcave.com. All other templates are a measly $5 and there are boot covers, various utility belts, chest emblems, boot tops, etc. for a wide variety of Marvel and DC characters.
These took me less than an hour to make using dollar store black craft foam and Gorrilla Superglue (not regular GG, that stuff expands too much and I hate it). Gorilla Superglue dries in 10-30 seonds, and it will not separate from the foam. The foam will tear before the glue gives, it’s great.
The bottom layer is simply the outside only of the template cut out. The top layer is the template with both outside and inside lines cut out, all with an X-acto blade, then superglued together. Add the bat-spikes, velcro straps and viola!
These gautlets are a bit big for my arms, so all you have to do is scale down the template on your printer or a photo copier 5% at a time until you have the right size for your forearms.
So at dragon*con I debuted my Otachi gijinka cosplay! The fitting and patterning and rhinestoning on this costume was all stuff I knew how to do. I have never worked with craft foam before. So. Here is a post about a craft foam newbie's strugglebus.
For once I decided to take a lot of pictures of my process of something, and I am here to share with you a... well, I wouldn't be so presumptious as to call it a tutorial. Call it a documentation of my first time ever working with craft foam, all the struggles and tears, and all the things I learned along the way.
More Otachi pics can be found here~
This was a super intense process, and this post is mega exhaustive, so this is under a cut!
I followed a lot of much better tutorials along the way for craft foam armor. The one I relied on most can be found here. Every tutorial I found and read was for craft foam armor, and I knew what I wanted to make was going to be much more organic looking than that. So I kinda picked and chose what techniques I needed and generally flew by the seat of my pants.
My first step was just figuring out a general plan of attack while staring at reference pictures. I knew I didn't want to paint the structure, I knew I wanted the pieces to be covered in the same fabric I made my garment out of. I'd planned for this, and chosen a suitably inexpensive fabric that I could buy an excess of. I did a few glue tests to see which adhesive worked best and strongest because I did not want to be worrying about this shit falling apart with everything else I had going on. Surprise, elmer's glue is the bomb! Foam to foam Elmer's glue adhesion turned out to be just as strong as the costlier E6000 option, so I stuck with that as my main bond of choice. Below is my illegible plan of attack.
Then I made a construction paper pattern. Do not skip this step. It was super daunting because I knew the Otachi spine needed to curve along the outline of my own silhouette, being wider at my shoulder, narrower at the waist, and then wide again for the hips. I also knew the spikes needed to progressively grow spikier. There were some tears. Construction paper is cheap though, so plenty of room for fuck-ups. and this is what I ended up with. It was a lot of trial and error and changing pieces by 1/4 of an inch until I was satisfied.
As you can see, the first 9 panels of what I refer to as the casing were different sized pattern pieces. Quite the headache. For what I call the spikes, I had 4 different pattern pieces in varying spikiness.
Then came the cutting of the pieces! I was just using the standard multicolor craft foam you can get at any store. I knew I wanted the spikes to be 3 layers deep, and the casings to be 2 layers deep. I needed the casing to have a bit more pliability because it would be affixed directly to my back, plus the overlap would mean that at times the thickness would be 4. So, all in all, I think it ended up being 162 individual pieces of foam.
The trick about a project like this is to constantly convince yourself that the step you just completed is the big time consuming step. Delusion is the key to happy crafting, my friends. Then I started gluing layers together! Paintbrushes are your friends.
I glued together maybe 6 or so spikes before taking a stab at heat forming. I am not fancy, so I did it over the stove top. Hold the foam over the flame, wait till it gets floppy, then hold it into the shape you want. Wait for it to cool. This step was time consuming but not at all difficult! I did the heat forming when the glue had somewhat set but not entirely - this was why I did gluing and heat forming in batches of about 6 spikes or so. The casing foam was not heat formed - except the tail, which I will get to later.
I let those dry overnight. I also glued together the spinal casing. Now I knew from the beginning that this would need to break into two segments in order to travel properly, so I left one seam open. Note that in the image below the spikes are NOT glued down, just placed there so I could see how everything was coming together!
After all the 3-layer spikes had dried overnight, then came the fun part! Covering them in fabric! I cut approximate fabric pieces, with a (way too) generous extra ~inch on all sides. Painted on the elmer's glue, and let 'em dry.
The glued together backplate and tail segments visible underneath the drying spikes. I live in NYC, I'm short on space, sue me. You can see the glue totally changes the fabric color by a few shades. Because I knew I'd be covering this all in scales n shit, I wasn't bothered. Do note though that the elmer's school glue produces a much less drastic change than elmer's glue-all. I wish I'd known that before. I thought the glue-all would have a stronger bond, but honestly they're totally comparable.
A quick break from foam to talk about LEDs. I searched high and low and weighed my options like hella. I thought about EL wire, but ultimately the risk of fuckup was too high. The LEDs I bought were from 100candles.com. Now when I got them I was horrified because they were fucking green. I knew from every review of teal LEDs I had ever read that they would always be significantly greener than pictured, but these were so fucking green. I sent a devastating email to the company, and their customer service was actually stellar, long story short I got refunded for the their-bad green LEDs and ordered a new 4 dozens actually teal LEDs. As you can see on the site, there's a top and bottom to the LEDs and you can turn them on and off by removing the battery. A bit time consuming, sure, but ultimately having each LED be a separate circuit means that if one light fucked up, it'd only be one light and not my entire costume. So it's worth the extra time to take on and off.
Back to foam! Now the most tedious, most terrible part of this entire process. Covering the backplate and tail casing segments in fabric. It was so tedious and annoying to get the fabric stuck in all those little ridges... Before I started this, I cut out the holes in the foam where my LEDs would go. I knew I wanted my LEDs to be as deep into the foam structure as possible, so they would blend into the spine without sticking out too terribly.
See how the glue-all makes the fabric so much darker than the school glue? Ugh. This was honestly just so super annoying. But all bad things must come to an end.
I mentioned that foam to foam with elmer's was the strongest bond. That's why I decided to leave a big ol blank patch in the middle so when I glued the spikes down the bond would be foam to foam.
Back to the spikes! Next step was folding over the excess fabric to the underside of the spike. Notches here were essential to get it to wrap around smoothly. I used E6k for this because I needed the bond to hold quickly so I didn't have to clamp down the undersides. After the spikes were all covered, then it was DETAILING TIME. I used puffpaint, metallic black (which really just looks like a shiny charcoal grey, praise the Lord). Because Otachi is an organic creature, I didn't need to be too precious about perfectionism.
Repeat the step about folding over the excess fabric for the backplate. Notches important again, E6k again. Trim the excess.
I then cut a little asterisk shape notch in the fabric that was over the LED hole. No need to trim the excess here at all, it would never be visible and actually improved surface area for the glue to join the backplate and LED bottom. Those went in really quickly, just E6k around the rim of the hole and a little bit of pressure, and the bottoms were in place.
Once the spikes were fully dry, it was time to glue them to the backplate! Elmer's is great but oh god it took so long. I basically worked up from the bottom, using as a weight to steady the pieces as they dried, letting it sit for about an hour before moving onto the next piece. Make sure you have another cosplay task to do during this time so you aren't just waiting around for hours and hours as you wait for glue to set. The top spike was slightly shorter in foam and slightly longer in fabric so I could just wrap it over the edge of the top!
Check that shit out!! Doing the detailing on the spikes before gluing them was a great call, it would've been really unwieldy to try and detail them after they were attached. As you can see, the second down LEDs I'd popped the tops on just to see.
Now time to paint on the scales! DO SOME TESTS. I did a bunch of tests and looked at many images of both Otachi's scale patterns and also general reptilian scale patterns. Being overly precious about individual scales is a waste of energy. Focus on the big picture. My technique was a little time consuming but it looked GREAT. I freehanded the scale designs, being conscious of how size shifted over the area, and then once I'd finished a casing, I would use a small piece of cardstock (aka the torn off corner of a magazine cover) to smooth over the top of the scales. This kept them from looking lumpy, and instead made them look smooth and sleek.
So the backplate's looking awesome!! Now time to turn to the tail. Heat forming the tail was a big ol' headache. I ended up ripping out some of the previous bonds of the casing to reglue it to give a bit of an outward curve so the tail wasn't just straight down. Gluing on the fabric cover was even more of a headache. Wrapping around excess, gluing in LED bottoms all proceeded as normal. I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of it, but I did rig three wire stabilizing joints so that the tail's curved shape wasn't just relying on the delicate heat-forming. I glued on two little foam 'straps' to certain key points on either side of the inside of the tail, and then threaded some heavy gauge wire through the 'straps' to help maintain its shape. This both pulled in the tail's curve, and helped push it out if it got smushed. This way the tail could remain hollow and lightweight, but I didn't need to worry about the foam being unstabilized.
Gluing on the spikes required a bit more creativity because I couldn't use weight to hold on the bond until it dried. Behold my innovative duct tape system.
This was actually way more time-efficient. I pulled the duct tape very taut and let it set for a few hours. After the tail was all done, I painted on the scales.
One last step was cutting and gluing on some thin bits of grey felt to the underside of the spikes to hide the colored foam.
Now for the underside! I simply took a big felt tapered rectangle and hot glued it around the edges of the tail that would be visible. I wasn't too careful about this - I know Otachi has more detail on her tail, but honestly no one would see this. It gave the nice illusion of a rounded underside while still keeping it hollow.
I quickly patterned a makeshift claw pattern on my fashion fabric, stuffed it with polyfill, and glued it with E6k onto the bottom end of the tail and felt tube, and added some speedy details. I was in crunch mode at this point, I think it was Tuesday before the con.
The last problem was simply attaching all this to my bodice! I am wearing a corset underneath my bodice, the bodice is ultra-fitted and boned with spiral steel. Because I knew I could trust the fit of my bodice, I just decided to directly attach the column/tail to the bodice. I had a handful of heavy duty snaps, I cut grey felt to cover the back foam of the backplate and the top of the tail back. I sewed eight snaps onto the back plate felt and two onto the top of the tail felt. After measuring, I sewed the corresponding snaps onto the bodice. Once I finished sewing, I glued the felt using E6K to the back of the column/tail - I went super heavy on the glue directly behind the snaps, because I absolutely did not want the snaps to tear the felt off the structure. There was a single snap attaching the backplate to the tail, but I don't think I bothered to snap it in even.
Aaand that was it! Wahoo! Tail done! SPECIAL SHOUTOUT THANKS TO RONEN, CECILY, AND ANYONE ELSE WHO GENERALLY HELPED ME GETTING INTO THIS COSTUME!!! It does require another set of hands, and I am very lucky to have great friends willing to help me snap it all into place!
So I hope that was helpful! Happy costuming, my friends!
Hi! I came across your awesome cosplay blog and I noticed the very cool arm Cata made for her Gaige cosplay. I need to make a similar arm for my cosplay this July. I plan on making Bucky Barnes' bionic arm from the Captain America 2 movie. Could you tell me how you went about making the Gaige arm? Thanks so much and any help is much appreciated. I can't send the picture of the arm I'm trying to make, but I can email it to you or something.
Queadlunn- The arm started out as a heat-formed styrene piece for the forearm with Bondo over top for surfacing. The upper arm is entirely craft foam layered up (sometimes 3 or 4 sheets thick). We painted the arm with Krylon spraypaint and then finished it with Rub-N-Buff to achieve the metallic effect followed by dry-brushing for weathering. Do not seal the Rub-N-Buff, we haven’t tried everything but, from what we hear, the only thing that may work is Future Floor Polish
At this point I would not suggest doing heatform plastic, although it ended up working it caused some mobility and comfort issues. Now I’d use heatformed craft foam or FiberFix with Bondo for the forearm piece. For the upper arm foam worked quite well but make really sure that mobility and fit are good. So much of our build was experimental I can really only say what didn’t work well for us. While our arm turned out okay it did have a lot of limitations. Having a good cast of Cata’s hand and arm would have helped quite a lot.
Resources such as The Replica Prop Forums (therpf.com) are great.WM Armory Foam Fabrication Tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbQ2gb_QvFsEntropyhouse Craft Foam Armor Tutorial: http://entropyhouse.com/penwiper/costumes/helmsdeep.html
Let us know if you have any other questions and good luck.
