Black Gold Saw: Sword

So I realize this post has been a long time in coming (give or take a year or so), but I am finally getting around to the sword construction post for Black Gold Saw!

(pretending that I didn't completely forget about this)

My sword is quite similar to Stuart's - we went to Home Depot and bought a giant piece of that pink 2" thick insulation foam together and got them to cut it in half in the store (meanwhile having to awkwardly explain just why we needed almost six feet of insulation foam when we were clearly not making home repairs).

Unfortunately, Black Gold Saw's sword (what a tongue twister) features an entire edge that is serrated, so I had to measure and sketch out every zig and zag along the way.  

The top bit ended up being nixed and enlarged later

 And then came the fun part.  Carving.  Carving carving carving carving.  Expect to spend many many mind-numbing hours on this part, and be careful - X-Acto knives are sharp.  (You might think this obvious, but when you are trying to distract yourself from the tedium by watching bad television, your hand might accidentally slip).  My poor apartment had more pink insulation foam on the floor than actual carpet by the time I was done with this.

In order to get the hilt to fit snugly into the sword, I cut a rectangular strip down the middle of the sword so that I could insert the PVC pipe.  I remade the top part of the sword out of leftover foam (made it larger), so I just cut a hole through that and stuck the PVC pipe all the way through.

Just so.

Then came the joys of expandable foam, and here comes the warning: DO NOT GET THIS ON YOUR HANDS, CLOTHES, FLOOR, OR ANYTHING THAT YOU ARE REMOTELY ATTACHED TO.  Wear gloves, and then prepare to never be able to use them again.

Terrible quality picture is terrible

And once it is dry (you should leave it at least overnight- poke it with a stick to be sure it is hardened), you can shave off the extra foam.  However, here is something I was not aware of that caused a few problems- when expandable foam is cut, it actually shrinks noticeably in volume.  Do not shave the foam completely flat against the sword - you will end up with this weird warped indentation down the middle of the sword that I have (and was unable to mask).  Once that is done, cover the entire thing in masking tape.

Add paper mache, and voila!

Finally, spray paint/acrylic paint it until it looks the way you want it to, then seal it with Mod Podge (but get matte, not glossy...I accidentally used glossy and my sword was much shinier than it needed to be).

The handle was made with Delight air-dry paperclay , and I sculpted the skull on top with stone clay.  

The finished product:

Stay tuned for another sword tutorial!

~Kathryn

Maniwa Houou - (or how I learned to dress like a giant chicken)

It's that time of the year again - con season!  I spent the last weekend at Anime Central in Chicago, which was a new convention for me.  Photoshoot pictures will be forthcoming, but in the meantime I figured that I should make a construction post on How to Impersonate Local Wildlife (---> maybe if you live near Chernobyl and your local wildlife includes a six foot tall, bright red avian monstrosity).  Give a warm welcome to Maniwa Houou of Katanagatari.

Chicken?  No, no, see, he's a PHOENIX   >__>

So we can argue about the fact that the white bit at the top is probably his hair, and that beak is just sitting on his hair, but let's be honest- your wig hair is NEVER going to do that properly.  So just go all out and make a full-on chicken helmet.

Let's start with the helmet, which was probably the most craft intensive part of the costume.  I started with a chicken wire base that I molded onto the shape of my head - which is easier said than done.  Chicken wire is surprisingly inflexible (or perhaps I am just unaccustomed to using animal enclosure materials), so after wrestling for an hour or two and pulling out far too much hair, I just went ahead and used my head-shaped wig stand.  And make sure that you leave a hole in the back of the head- this is necessary for the "hair" that will end up sticking out of the back of it.

Make sure to tuck in those stray wires..chicken wire cuts hurt

Another word of warning:  After the clay is applied and hardened, the helmet will be considerably tighter than it was when you fitted it.  I basically have to force the damn thing onto my head - take this into account unless you enjoy crippling migraines.

I used half-gallon milk cartons to stabilize the beak section, and then just masking taped the living daylights out of the whole thing.  I used cereal boxes as the weird wrap-around face claws, and stuffed cotton into the open spaces to keep it from falling in on itself.  I also did a layer of paper mache, but it quickly became evident that it would not end up being smooth enough.   So what did I resort to?  My go-to material for everything, stone clay!  I also poked four holes in the top to make sure that I had somewhere to stick those floating diamonds.   Let it dry, sand the shit out of it, and you've got yourself a giant chicken helmet!  Life accomplishments, man.

Who DOESN'T love shitty quality bathroom mirror pics - This is post paper mache, pre stone clay.

Then just paint, seal with mod podge, and voila!  You are now ready to terrorize small children.

The floating diamonds (because I really have no better word for the things sticking off the top of his head) are just wire with craft foam glued onto it and painted.

And now for the "hair."  Due to its weird-ass gravity-defying anime-tastic shape, I decided to make a giant squiggly thing carved from a two layers of a three-foot roll of black craft foam with wire mod podged in-between the two pieces for malleability and stability.  Note to self: make sure the wire is thick and sturdy enough.  Thin wire just ends up dragging pathetically behind you, and you want some nice gravity-defying action going on.

Apply mod podge on the outside for shininess like whoa

And now we move on to the feather cloak.  This gave me more trouble than anything else in the entire outfit.  Not because it was particularly hard: just because my stubborn-ass brain refused to use sensible materials like felt, and instead originally opted for fabric.  Twice.  With disastrous results.  I was determined to get the totally unrealistic three-dimensional shape of the feathers from the anime, so I forced myself to step outside the box and then throw the box out the fucking window.  After much trial-and-error (but let's be honest, it was mostly error), I just took two pieces of felt, cut it into a zigzag cloak pattern, sewed them together, and stuffed it with the innards of a poor, innocent, $1 pillow from Goodwill.

USE FELT, IT WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE MUCH EASIER

The gloves were equally irritating to make.  I ordered shoulder length yellow gloves from WeLoveColors.com  - incidentally, the same place I got the matching tights - and I prepared to turn them into claws.  So, in a moment of my infinite wisdom, I bought orange fabric dye to color the hand part of the glove.  Thing that sounds like a great idea in theory but ends up smelling really dreadful and burning your esophagus: dyeing fabrics.  The lines were just drawn on in normal black pen.  The claws were easy enough- I just bought long fake fingernails, trimmed them to points and painted them black.

Why does almost every cosplay I do seem to have claws

The belt was just yellow craft foam with those yellow chains you can find at Home Depot hot glued on in sections.   The craft foam itself was attached to a wide belt with sticky velcro (not one of my better moments), but crunch time is crunch time, I'm afraid.

The tail was also made out of two layers of craft foam reinforced with thick wire.  Craft foam is your friend...make good use of it.

The pants were fairly simple - I just found some white wide-legged yoga pants online, hand-sewed on some red panels and put elastic into the bottoms so that they would come in at the knees.  

As for the tights, I ran out of time to actually paint them properly, and ended up using electrical tape cut into thin strips, which worked to great effect.  The downside is that it takes a bit more prep-work every time you want to wear the costume, but it probably looks cleaner in the long run than actually painting them.

And the final product....

Do I look like a crazy person yet

And after spending an ungodly amount of time sweating in this heat-absorbing costume, this is how I felt after getting back to the hotel room:

Minus the whole "being a dude" part

I'll make a separate post for the sword- I think this madness has gone on long enough, as it were.  I'll be back with sword construction and photoshoot pictures.  Join us next time, on "What the Fuck is That Crazy Person Wearing."

Dance, chicken, DANCE

~Kathryn

Insane Black Rock Shooter cosplay part 5: the breast plate tutorial

Hi guys!  Now that I have caught a mild cold from Stuart, I finally have some time to sit down and make another IBRS progress report (kinda late lol).  I think this would be useful for whoever is trying to make light-weight armors.

First, let's recap.  I have already shown you the fun foam pieces I made out of a modified shirt pattern I had:

in order to make them with a little bit of depth to look like the armor IBRS is wearing, I had to add more layers of foam.

This gives you an idea of how thick the breast plate is

Comparatively speaking, the armor I made was not nearly as thick as the figure's.  Next time, I would probably use something like a thick yoga mat to make the armors.

The foam I found in Scrap Exchange that I used for the middle section to add thickness to the armor.  I cut it according to the pattern I already made.

Hot glue the thicker foam onto the already existing fun foam layer

add tape to get rid of bumpy areas and glue another layer of fun foam on top of the grey foam.

This is what the back looked like, I used some masking tape to hold the layers while the glue was drying.  I have not found anything better than hot glue yet to stick foam together.

Smoothing out the gaps by filling it with hot glue and scrape the surface with a piece of card

details on the filled gap

then mod podge the surface to prep it for contact paper

I also taped the edges with black electric tape to hide the grey foam.  I think model magic would work as well and make less creases, but I didn't have any at that moment.

with the contact paper glued on.  Contact paper sticks really well to craft foam once you mod podge it.  However, it becomes extremely unforgiving with mistakes.  Make sure you have a card ready to squeeze out those bubbles.

pieces of the back armor, I made this a little thinner because it would bend more easily for a better fit that way.

mod podge

with electric tape and contact paper.

The basic breast plate is finished.

The sides are held together with elastic and Velcro.  Do buy the industrial grade Velcro, because the regular ones just won't be sticky enough to hold the armors together.

After few adjustments, I added more details to the breast plate and voila!  Oh also, since craft foam can kind of hold a shape after it is been heated, I recommend heating it and bending it before you apply mod podge and contact paper.  They will become rather...burnt.

This displays all of the armor pieces I made for the cosplay.  I did acquire some thicker craft foam from Michael's later on that I used for some of the leg armors.  Other than that, the shoulder piece and some of the arm pieces are all thickened with the method described above.  I wanted to show you guys the details for my other armor pieces, however, I was too busy to take photos and this is the only one I have now.  Q_Q

Anyhow, let me know if you have any questions!!!

btw, I'm doing this Otaku House contest right now for this costume, please vote for me!!!  Thank you!

- Mimi -

Insane Black Rock Shooter Cosplay Progress:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Post-con Posts! Black Gold Saw - Jacket

If you couldn't tell by the sudden deluge of updates, we're baaaaack and ready to finish up our cosplay tutorials from this con.  Or, in my case, to sarcasm at you some more.

And here I was thinking that the half jacket was going to be the hardest part of the costume.  Ha.  Ha ha.  Ha.  If only.

To begin, I started looking around for the right kind of fabric, and I ended up with a type of black pleather that I found on sale at Jo-Ann Fabrics.  I tried to avoid very stretchy fabrics that would probably wreak havoc on any sewing machine (more on that later, I'm afraid).  After digging around in the pattern section, I came up with a cropped jacket that was close to what I was looking for and was relatively simple to make, an important feature for someone as sewing-machine challenged as I seem to be.

 It looks so pink and happy, doesn't it?  Won't look that way for long, I'm afraid.

Minor alterations were made to the collar and front, but most of the changes were made to the length of the sleeves in order to make them come past my knuckles.  Also, sewing on sleeves makes me want to throw things.

Look ma, no sleeves!  

 I was surprised at how (relatively) well the fabric got along with the sewing machine, but alas - it was not meant to be.  At the end of the project (i.e. the ends of the sleeves), the machine decided that enough pleather was enough, a decision heralded by a sound that (I can only imagine) was akin to that of a cat being thrown backwards into a wood chipper.  (...What is wrong with my brain, that that is the first mental image I come up with.) So, the rest was done by hand.  

The white stripes on the upper sleeves and collar were painted, and the stars were made as stickers from a pattern I drew.  As I discovered, drawing perfect stars is not as easy as it sounds.  Not that that sounds particularly easy to begin with.  The collar was held together at my throat by two hook and eye fasteners.

Stars and stripes!  How patriotic.

A word to the wise, though: Experience dictates that, in temperatures upwards of 90° F, pleather and any pleather-like materials tend to...melt.  Spending prolonged amounts of time outside in the summer in the name of awesome photoshoots may lead to said melting.  And pleather is not the most comfortable (or breathable) of materials to begin with.  But it must be said, the jacket (unlike some other parts of my costume cough belt buckle cough) survived the entire convention, and that is all I asked of it.  Overall success!  

More on horns, contacts, and photoshoot pics to come!

~Kathryn

Murumuru cosplay - the final touch! (a small wig tutorial)

Murumuru's costume was super easy to make...until I started to work on the wig, which was a disaster.  My original plan was to attach the two LONG ponytails I purchased from Arda wigs to my Eruka wig.  Let's just say that it didn't work out very well, the Eruka wig had to be preserved for the second appearance of my Eruka cosplay and it was way too thin to work with.  So I had to purchase another wig last minute from cosplay.com (due to the fact that Arda was closed Q_Q).  

The wig took way too long to arrive.  It got shipped out after I made a paypal dispute with cosplay.com.  So, don't buy from them.  

Here's the wig untouched.  It was a lot darker than the "silver" ponytails from Arda.  The quality of the wig was pretty good, except that they stitched up the eyelets in the back where you could adjust the size of your wig.  tsk tsk

Murumuru has this weird bang thing going on where it lifts up and makes a little pocket thingie (this is hard to explain Q_Q) kind of like Sephiroth's hair.  It took me ages to find a tutorial on how to make this happen, but I did find a Japanese tutorial HERE.  It uses a frozen glass bottles to form heated fibers.  Aslo..apparently this type of hair is called the middle M letter (途中Ｍ字).

so I took some hair, heated it up with my hair dryer and then rolled it down with a frozen glass tube I found. Then I teased the down side of the section and brushed the top smooth.  Hair spray was then applied to keep the shape of the "M".

Done with both sides.

I have to say, I thought my job was done after this since the ponytails were clip-on.  I was totally WRONG. There was no way on earth those heavy clip on ponytails were going to stay on that wig.  Especially when I have to make outer decorations for them. 

taken from THIS POST on cosplay.com

Now, the image above is where I got my inspiration to make my ponytails.  However, instead caulk, I used hot glue.  I know that some of you are probably frowning at this point, but I was in such a time crunch that I had to use whatever dried the fastest.  I made two little stubs on the wig and hotglued them to harden.  Then, I took the clips off of my ponytails and carved two pieces of pink insulation foams to fit/hotglue into the ponytails.  Last but not least, copious amount of hot glue were applied to the foam and the stub to hold both together.  You have to be VERY patient and hold the ponytails up until all of the hotglue is dried.  The drying process took about 10min.

After attaching the ponytails, you will notice that your wig has gotten so heavy that it is impossible to put on. Do not worry!  Just sew some wig clips in the front and you are good to go!  It will just hurt a little bit because your hair line will get pulled back really tightly.

Photo courtesy of  David Song

Photo by Stuart

and Voila!  My entire costume :D  More photos will come since Katsuya Weller is awesome and has posted some preview shots of our Mirai Nikki photoshoot already!