Winter Weekly WIP

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This week on Tutorial Tuesday Alexa decided to play around with Thibra and discovered that you can make a tye-dyed effect with markers.  She also used some of the Tome Clay starter kit tools to create some fun and unique shapes with the thibra.  

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Welcome to week 10, the final week!

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Hey all, Erin from Foam Corps here! Just a short video of my painting process today so you can see the type of brushstrokes and texture that went into transforming these bright, silver pieces into filthy, rusted plates worthy of a wasteland wanderer.

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This week Alexa assembled Zelda’s pauldrons and covered them in Thibra.  She found that using a wet paintbrush works nicely for smothing the thibra around details when layering it over foam.

Kyle constructed the Shoulder/Collar armor for Ganondorf, covered it in Thibra, and added the details from last week on as well.  We found out that UV Resin casted gems stick well to heated Thibra.

Congratulations to our week 9 winners!  You will receive an email with your $30 gift certificate to Arda Wigs.  Be sure to check your spam folder if it doesn’t show up right away.

Next week is the FINAL weekly contest.  We look forward to seeing more amazing progress from all of you. Thank you all for your continued participation!

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Honorable Mention #2 - Overwatch Progress

Lots of work got done this week. Snowball has his paint job finally done. Just have to add his brain and screen next week. Started some snowboarding goggles out of eva foam, Thibra, and acrylic. And Mei's coat should be done by the end of the week. Its my first time making a coat using a sewing machine. My first coat was held together completely by hot glue. I used an old Vogue pattern set and manipulated it to be what I needed. Its going to be a fully functioning winter coat when its done.  

- Lauren N.

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Week 8 Honorable Mention #1 - Mikoto from Fire Emblem

Mikoto progress this week mainly focused on finishing the main white dress, however I did repattern and put together the waist armor. This time the armor was patterned with the actual dress underneath and with more panels so it fits better. The skirt panels for white dress were sewn and attached to the bodice. I sewed an invisible zipper (my 2nd one!) in the back and then hand stitched the lining down so it looks and feels nicer on the inside. I started working on the weird one side vest she has, after patterning with duct tape I have the main part of it sewn.

- Andrea F.

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This week I wanted to get a good chunk of Ryuk's wig out of the way.

 I have never spiked a real wig before, so I tried.... and tried.... and tried. It is so difficult, and it was not looking as sharp as I wanted it to. So, I resorted to my back-up plan: creating a wig out of Craft Foam!First, I created an under-structure that fits comfortably around my head, using 1/2" strips of craft foam. This is basically the skeletal structure for which I placed the cones on. Secondly, I created various sizes of cones and hot glued them onto the under-structure. You can see this best in the smaller picture on the right. Lastly, I took super thin pieces of craft foam and placed them on top of the cones to simulate hair. This is taking me a long time to do, but hopefully I will finish soon so I can plasti-dip and paint it.Also, a fun fact: this entire Craft Foam wig only took 3 sheets of craft foam! Therefore, it is a super cheap method to do, as well as extremely light! One last thing I did this week was to put more details into the bodysuit. I felt like it was a bit dull and needed something. So, I have been stitching "x" shaped stitches into the body suit with a dark grey thread. I figured some grommet patches would look creepy too!

Overall, I am super excited about this wig and cannot wait to see how to turns out in the end!

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Watch Alexa as she shows how to paint different layers onto thermal plastic for a weathered metal look.

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Welcome to week 9!

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This week Alexa drew out and cut pieces of foam for the base structure of Zelda’s pauldrons.

Kyle patterned out the Shoulder/Collar armor for Ganondorf, and used Thibra scraps to cut out the details.

Congratulations to our week 6 winners!  You will receive an email with your $30 gift certificate to Arda Wigs.  Be sure to check your spam folder if it doesn’t show up right away.

We look forward to seeing more amazing progress from all of you next week. Thank you all for your continued participation!

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Hey all, Erin from Foam Corps back again with more armor progress! I only have a few pieces left to tackle, and only one that’s complicated, so I started there. Everything should be downhill from here!

The left shoulder of the Fallout cage armor is a compound curved piece with a center dome and several layers of plating. I used saran wrap and blue tape to take the general shape of my arm, then tested my base shape with a paper mockup until I liked the look. It’s important to remember with strange shapes like this that worbla and thibra can stretch and be sanded--you can force it to curve more than the flat shapes normally would. I used a PVC pipe and a hemisphere-shaped aluminum cake mold as my shaping tools for this piece.

While I tinkered with the more fiddly armor pieces, I also maximized my time by getting the base coat of paint onto the first few completed armor pieces. They look all bright and chrome now, but I’ll be covering them in a thick layer of dirt, rust, and grime soon!

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Have some progress pictures from Kyle and Alexa!

This week Alexa drew out and cut pieces of foam for the base structure of Zelda’s pauldrons.

Kyle patterned out the Shoulder/Collar armor for Ganondorf, and used Thibra scraps to cut out the details.

Tune in tomorrow for this weeks summary video and winner announcement!

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This week I needed to get everything finished so I have plenty of time to mess with the wig and makeup, and a couple small things on the wings.

The first thing I needed to do was create the wispy skirt thing that Ryuk wears. How I approached that was by dying cheesecloth with natural dyes, then spraying darker inks in random spots. Doing this will break up the simple dye and make it more weathered and dingy looking. Then I cut the pieces into long triangle shapes and twisted them all up. Lastly, I just glued them onto an under-belt that was attached with Velcro.

The next major part was to assemble the entire belt together. I connected the beads onto the belt using gun-metal colored grommets, which ended up matching perfectly with the paint color! I also added the beads on Ryuk's left side, but you can't see them to well in the picture. I promise they are there! Lastly, was just detail work. This included some hemming, weathering the beads, stuffing the gloves, and adding more padding into the shoulders so they stand correctly.

I'm very happy with how things are coming together! I just need to remember to bend my knees in the picture next time! Haha!

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Have a Tutorial Tuesday....on a Wednesday!

Today Kyle will show you one way to create details on armor using Thibra.  He cuts it out with an x-acto knife and attaches it to the base armor with moderate heating.  It provides an alternative to making details with foam and covering it with a single sheet of plastic.  

Thibra can be used to add details onto other materials besides just itself!  Try applying Thibra details to Worbla, PVC, Cardboard, or even EVA foam with the aid of super glue.

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Hi everyone! Mel here again.  This week I decided to work on the wig and puzzle out parts of the costume that the design didn’t include.  Let’s dive in! For the wig I’m using Arda’s Chibi in Fairy Blonde as my base and using long wefts of the same color.  I always been more partial to styling Sailor Moon’s hair using buns instead of a foam understructure, so I wanted to give another go of that here.  In the past I have tried it on wigs and wasn’t too successful.

The first step was to move the ponytails higher on the head.  I switched out the given elastics to thicker ones as well.  Second step was I divided the long wefts in sections for the pony tails (I used about a third for each ponytail)  Next I put the wefts over the pony tail elastic, letting the ends loose.  These were then curled at the end of the process, using sponge curlers and near boiling water.  Next step I divided each ponytail section of the Chibi base in two.  I took one half, twisted it and then tied it in a not bun around the elastic, leaving the second section coming from the top.  I secured the knot bun using hair pins.  Last step to create the buns, I took the second section of the ponytail, lightly twisted it and then wrapped it around the first bun.  I secured the end with a tiny clip in the back and then stabilized it more with hair pins.  I took a hair dryer on high heat to it as well to help heat set the direction of the buns just incase I need to restyle them again.   Finally I trimmed the bangs and curled them using curls, hair spray, and high heat from the hair dryer. Another thing I worked on this week was figuring out what to do for sections of the costume that are a little difficult to see or can’t at all.  Here’s what I came up with:

For the hair bits I wanted to make something a little more elaborate.  I felt the head feathers were a little too plain in comparison.  I added bigger pearls, larger feathers, and gold embellishments that are similar to others through out the design. For the legs, I tried to keep the same shape and designs you saw on the arm pieces, in the design for the legs.  I also brought the feathers down into the legs, though they won’t be real feathers.  I also wanted the boot covers to peak through so I made the upper part have cut outs.

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Hey all, Erin from Foam Corps back again with more armor progress!

One of the biggest features on the cage armor breastplate is--wait for it--the cage. I decided to make this part out of pex tubing, which is usually used in plumbing. Unlike a low-temp activated plastic, pex takes quite a lot of heat to bend well and it doesn’t hold its shape as much as worbla or thibra does. I had to heat and bend the tube many times and let it cool entirely before it wanted to naturally hold this curve. Even after that process, the tube puts a lot of pressure on the breastplate, so I resorted to some pretty drastic measures to hold the tube in from the back.

By drilling through and using nails as pins, there’s almost no way the tube can pop out--but the last thing I want is to get stabbed by the massive nails I had to use, of course! I dremeled the excess tubes down as far as I could and covered the exposed sharp parts with a layer of craft foam and worbla, ensuring a much more comfortable fit.

I also started patterning and shaping the lower right arm piece, one of the weirdest pieces on the costume. Sculpting the pieces that are supposed to look like junk is surprisingly challenging--I find it’s better to start with a clean shape and add distressing or else the piece risks looking unintentionally messy. Next step will be to add some detail to the lower arm and start adding scratches and dents!

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Welcome to Week 8!