Backlash cosplay: Shoes

     The gentleman's Backlash cosplay is coming along nicely. He's got the mask made, a wig bought, the pants and knife are made, and all the harness bits made by a leatherworker. What to wear for shoes, though? Superhero shoes never look like actual shoes (unless they're heavy boot-style heros), so shoes are a bit open to interpretation, unless you feel like handsewing spandex over regular shoes. Which I. Absolutely. Do. Not. 

     The gentleman found some sneakers he'd be willing to wear in a color that mostly matched the other pieces. How to make them match the pattern that is clearly continued down to the feet on the character though? I poked around, and found that acrylic painting leather sneakers is actually super common, so this might be easier than I thought. Taped the shoes off, loaded my airbrush with acrylic paint, and went to town. Easy, right? 

     No, of course it's not going to be easy, silly. Acrylic paint is water-based, so it soaked right in to the fabric parts. They should be hidden under the pants, mostly, so I'm not super worried about them (although I did give them a couple more coats after this picture was taken). The tape wasn't really sticking very well to the shoe, though, so nice, clean lines just.... didn't happen. With some work, I found that by gently pushing with dental tools - which are very useful for lots of cosplay crafts - you could coax the extra creepers back into line fairly decently. The shoe on the right has been cleaned up, the shoe on the left has not. It makes a lot of difference.

     Found an acrylic sealer that is supposedly really good for faux leather shoes and put a couple coats of that on after hitting up the fabric areas a bit more. 

     Looks good, right? Unfortunately, I did this before the gentleman broke in the shoes. That bend line that goes across the base of the toes? Yeah.... buggered up my nice paint job a bit. Fortunately, everything else looks ok, so I've requested that he just wear the shoes around the house a lot more, and then I'll do a final overcoat to fill in the wrinkles. He hasn't done that just yet, but I'm counting these done. I did not track time on these, but they were less than 10 hours, all told. 

     The only things left are two red gems for the harness and belt (which a friend of a friend is working on, as I don't have casting supplies and don't really want to get into that), and making an undermask/ headsock to attach the wig and the face mask to. You can order spandex facemasks, but they all have a really loose neck to accommodate sliding the head through, and it gives a really bad turkeyneck look. I found a pattern that lets you make that more fitted and add velcro in the back, so I will give that a try once we have all the materials.