#ryuji project

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

I just realized I never posted my good Skull photos from the photoshoot I had at the end of last summer! Now that I’ve finally finished the base game and Royal is out, it’s as good a time as ever to show ‘em off.

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

I miss conventions so much...

It was this time last year I first wore my Phantom Thief Ryuji cosplay to a convention, and while a fullbody black pleather outfit might not have been the smartest choice for a 100 degree summer day, I had so much fun with it. I met this Joker at the photoshoot and we just kept doing goofy poses until we couldn’t think of anything else.

(Joker is @ninpixel on Instagram)

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

I’m working on the next of Ryuji’s graphic tees! The printer wasn’t working so I traced the graphic from my computer screen onto a piece of paper and then used a light box to trace it onto the shirt with water-erase marker. It’s still early in the process but I think I’ll wait until daylight comes back to buckle down on outlining everything in black.

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

Ahh your so talented i loved your ryuji cosplay you are a perfect ryuhi i just wanted to ask how did you do it i always wanted to cosplay him in his phantom thief attire but never knew how if you have tips or trick or how you done it ?

Thanks! To be honest, most of it was based on combining techniques that had worked in previous costumes I made. But I can offer a combination of general advice and a couple of tricks! (This is gonna be a long post, sorry in advance.)

TIP ONE: choose your fabric really carefully! I ended up choosing a black, slightly textured, slightly stretchy pleather for my fabric. The biggest issue I saw with a lot of Ryuji cosplays for sale is bad fabric choice. Too shiny, too matte, or made from too-thin fabric. Ryuji’s bodysuit is the one that looks the most like it’s just made from sturdy ol’ biker-jacket leather. 

Compare to Ann, whose bodysuit is almost as shiny as her mask - it looks like it’s made from high-gloss PVC, or Joker, whose outfit seems to be entirely made from suit fabric.

Another important thing in an outfit is texture contrast. That’s why the gray fabric I chose for the back panels is absolutely smooth - no texture whatsoever, just a smooth plasticy surface. On its own it was too thin and crumply to work for the stiff panels, but once I backed it with an interfacing and layered them together, we were set to go. 

TIP 2: MOCK-UP AND FIT! Once your fabric is chosen, the next important step is getting the bodysuit to fit you as perfectly as you can. You don’t want it loose enough to crumple or sag anywhere. (I managed this by making a duct-tape bodyform while wearing a binder, but I’ve done this step many times before without one.) Then, I took my bodysuit pattern (the basic Simplicity one), cut it out of mock-up fabric (a huge bolt of cheap linen), and edited the fabric blocks to fit the bodyform. Those fabric blocks became my new pattern, and I knew it would fit BEFORE i ever touched my scissors to my real fabric.

This is also how I got the back panels to fit! This is a useful trick I learned from making the scales on my Transistor dress. I just took the edited pattern and cut it out of mock-up fabric again. I sewed it up just like the main pattern, then I drew on that linen version where I thought I’d like to have the panels. After a few rounds of edits in linen, doing them in the real fabric was basically painless!

TIP 3: SAND SAND SAND

All of the “metal” pieces (mask, spine, belt buckles, shotgun shells, knee and elbow guards) aren’t metal, I’m sorry to say. The guards are Worbla, and the shells are wood, and the rest are 3D printed. What do all of them have in common? I spent twice as much time sanding them than I spent on the rest of the costume put together. And yes, that was the most necessary step of the whole process. 

Here’s what the mask looked like straight out of the box (ordered from LevelOneProps on Etsy, great quality stuff there!). See how you can tell where the print lines are really easily?

What you want to do is sand those high ridges away, but it’s easier to also fill in the gaps while you’re doing that. That’s where Automotive Filler Primer Spray and Detail Bondo come in! Automotive Filler Primer is a sandable spray paint that builds layers of material and helps fill in imperfections, and Detail Bondo is a red paste that does the same thing. Regular bondo is a lot tougher, but a lot harder to control in fine detail. Then you take your sandpaper, start at about 100 grit, and sand to higher and higher grits while adding layers and layers of filler primer. Here’s that same mask, half-finished. See how the gray primer fills in the grooves and leaves those striations when you sand away the higher layers? The bondo is on the areas that the filler primer wasn’t covering fast enough, like the undersides of the cheekbones and around the eyes.

Keep going! Slowly! Wet sanding is your friend here - less dust, and the water helps the sandpaper to not get clogged as fast. I spent forever getting everything to as smooth as 220 grit would get me. Then I spent another forever getting everything to as smooth as 320 grit would get me. Then I spent an afternoon polishing everything to a slick 600 grit before giving it a final coat of paint.

TIP FOUR LAST ONE I PROMISE: RAISE UP THOSE DETAILS! 

Costumes are full of weird lines, dots, and edges that really don’t mean much of anything. In most cases, they’re just drawings! Nobody’s thought out what you’d have to do to actually wear it. My advice is, whenever possible, take those little edges and dots and lines and make them into raised detailing. Use a zipper like piping! Use heavy-duty snaps like rivets! Use actual leather rivets! Instead of painting that design on, can you applique it? Embroider it? Bead it? Cut it out of craft foam? It all goes back to variations in texture. Texture makes costumes look more interesting, and in almost every case, vary it or make it Different and you’ll have something that’s just good to look at!

This was really fun to write up, and I hope I helped you out! I’m always happy to talk about how I made anything, so if you’re wondering how I made anything in particular, feel free to ask!

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

My finished Skull that I wore yesterday! There’s only a couple of tiny details I’d want to fix, but overall I’m so happy that all the individual pieces fit together so smoothly.

I’ll be posting more pictures from the Persona photoshoot, and I’m planning to get some nicer pictures soon, but for now here’s a shitty gif of an idle animation.

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

My Ryuji skit from the Youmacon Masquerade is online! I took home Best Master Skit for this (which was physically much bigger than I anticipated!). I got the idea in September, a couple of days before contest registration opened, and signed up before I had made literally any part of the tearaway costume. 

The contest was stressful but I loved hanging out in the greenroom with everyone, and I want to come back with something even more fun next year.

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

The top part is 99% done! Just have to add in the eyelets so that I can bolt the spine on, and add the two silver buttons to the front! Right now the spine is just held on with the magnets, but one wrong bump and they’ll go flying.

The ammo belts still need a lot of attention, though...

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

I think I’ve gotten faster at this; even with a quick break to switch to a smaller brush, all of the black took less than 2 hours! I like fabric painting a little too much, I’m considering just going ahead and doing all of Ryuji’s shirts this way. Color will be added tomorrow after the new Joann coupons hit and I can restock on paint.