Vakyrie cosplay: Wings part 1

      Long before I seriously got into cosplay, I was fascinated by the idea of making wings. Even ignoring the lure of flight, wings are so intricate that the challenge appealed to me. I knew sewing wouldn't get me the wings I wanted though, and that I'd need some experience under my belt before tackling them once I started doing thermoplastics cosplay stuff. With both Thor and Taboo cosplays completed, though, I felt pretty good about taking on that challenge and finally making myself some wings.

     The last 3-4 months have been a lot of research - on what to use for the wing "bones," how to make them move, how to program the things that make them move, how to make feathers, how wings fold and extend in real life, etc etc etc. After figuring out the materials I'll be using and ordering a ton of supplies, I've broken the wings down into a couple broad steps:

Taboo cosplay: Belt, bags, and tail part 2

      With the tail functionally made, I needed a way to attach it. I asked a couple cosplayers I know, and they suggested a climbing harness, which looked way too bulky for what I was after. I figured a belt might work, however, and it would also give me a way to carry some bags for con essentials (and break up the boring waist/ thigh area which looked a little bare after everywhere else being armored up). I still had the thick leather from making the Thor belt, so I trimmed that pattern down a bit and made a belt with loops to attach thigh pouches. 

     I'm not big on buckles, so I figured I'd make it lace closed on the side fronts, giving me a front piece and solid back half. After some tooling, dyeing, buffing, slicking, and hole-punching, I had a reasonable belt base, fitted fairly snugly to my waist and hips. 

     With some input from the gentleman, I grabbed an electrical junction box lid and drilled a hole in it, then threaded the wire from the tail through the hole and bent the rest of the metal into a figure 8 on the other side of the plate. It seemed to make a fairly sturdy base, so I cut out a leather "pouch" and wetmolded it to the plate shape, then sewed it to the belt. Handsewing leather is a pain in the fingers - all of them - and works much better if all the holes line up. Turns out thumbtacks are a great substitute for pins: they keep both pieces in place, don't move around when you're hammering, and allow the base piece to stay flush with the hammerable surface.

     I'll once again spare you the cursing and grumping that goes with handsewing, and just say that it worked out quite nicely:

     I purposefully made the pocket tight, so it takes some doing to slide it in and out - shouldn't be any problem with it accidentally coming out while being worn. With the wire figure 8 behind the plate, the tail is held firmly in place and doesn't bounce around too much, and the belt being well-fitted keeps it lined up well with the spine. I glued the wire to the metal plate, which meant all that was left for the tail was actually attaching all the bone pieces. 

     Still had to solve the "joint" problem on the tail though. The pieces were pretty flat on the ends, so if I bent the tail at all, you'd see the wire. I checked out washers and grommets and even beads, but they were all too stiff - I needed something that would allow the tail bones to flex. On a random whim, I ordered a $2 set of foam hair rollers, and it turned out they work perfectly - cut them down to about 1/4" long and even without gluing them down, they looked like decent "cartilage." 

     With that problem solved, I cut the top piece down to make sure that the first tailbone visible below the vest was a spiky one, and that the tailbones didn't disfigure the vest too much, then went outside on a not-too-horrible day to glue it all together. 

     It took some doing, so I got it all nicely bent into a more natural shape, and everything turned out really well. Only one thing left - bags!

     I waffled for a while on how sturdy to make them, and eventually went with leather that was thin enough that I could sew it carefully on the sewing machine. Two simple bags with lacing along the bottom to keep them against the legs. 

     The narrower one is sized exactly to my cell phone, and the larger one is for keys, makeup, safety pins, etc.: emergency stuff. There's no hardware to close them, because they're not meant to attract the eye, and they're level with my hands, so I don't expect pickpocketing to be a huge issue. I sewed some snaps to the leather laces to keep them attached, then looked at how to attach it to the belt. I had some random extra leather strapping lying around, but it was too narrow, and I didn't have enough to make both bags with the straps doubled up.

     I ordered 1" leather strapping for that final piece; once that comes in, I'll cut it to length, add snaps to connect it to the belt, and sew it to the pouches. After all the fittings and tweaks, it turned out that the belt was a little too large, so I cut about 2 1/2" off the front piece and redyed and tooled it. Once that dries, I'll burnish the new edges, and this outfit will officially be DONE!

Taboo cosplay: Tail part 1

      One of Taboo's distinguishing features is her tail, and I already had a pretty spiffy spine full of pointy bits, so I pretty much had to make a tail. A lot of what I'd seen online, though, was thick, fleshy tails made of cloth and stuffing, and that didn't seem right for a whip-like, spiny tail. The online tail tutorials all mentioned using heavy gauge wire for shape and rigidity, so I started looking at beads as a way to thread narrower, bone-like items onto a tail. Couldn't really find anything pre-made that looked decent and wasn't very heavy - I did consider using actual bone at one point, but even 3' of small animal tail bones gets pretty heavy - so I started looking for ways to make it myself. 

     In my searches, I ran across foam clay, something I'd never heard of before but that looked promising. It's basically a play-doh-like clay, but when it dries, it turns into eva foam - lightweight and flexible. That seemed pretty much like what I was after, so I bought a small tub of it and sat down to work. It takes 2-3 days for the clay to dry, so I had to balance between trying out shapes and sizes vs not taking forever in the trial phase. I made a few shapes, to get the size and general look down, and set them down on the table to dry. 

Taboo cosplay: Gloves and almost done!

     There are only three items left for Taboo at this point: pants, a tail, and something for her hands. I did some research on making claws for costume, and it looked like the easiest way to do so was to add them to gloves. I got a pair of fingerless gloves and sketched out some claw options, but when I went to trial it, they were very cumbersome, and having pink fingers show through when the rest of me - literally head to toe except face - is covered just looked dumb. 

     Found another site that suggested sewing Worbla bits onto cloth gloves, and the results looked decent, so I figured I'd give that a try. Got some inexpensive gloves from overseas, but they were... not well fitted. So first step, fixing that. 

Backlash cosplay: Dagger

     After seeing me work on Thor, the gentleman decided he wanted to build a cosplay as well, albeit in a slightly different manner. I like looking at things and then seeing how I can make them. The gentleman does not believe he has crafting skills, but he can network like crazy, so he recruited various crafters he knows to do the different parts. Naturally, he came to me for the outfit/ sewing parts, but that's a different post. Rather than have a real dagger made (which would cost goodness knows how much), he asked if I had any ideas. Here's a reference picture:

     I have not yet had much experience making weaponry, but some google searching led me to the idea of making the blade out of a lightweight wood, then building up the handle and guard around it. First things first, though: come up with a pattern so I know what size wood to get. Drew up some sketches, got approval, and cut a rough draft out of an eva foam mat that was too chewed up to use for actual cosplay.

Taboo cosplay: Pauldrons and mask

     The costume is starting to come together! Got the vest with spine, the legs, and the bracers done; ordered a pair of black boots that I happen to know are super comfy, as well as a black underlayer shirt, and, well, we're still ignoring the jeans/ pants issue. Shhh. I'll get to it, eventually. Next up, shoulders and a mask!

     Taboo's "outfit" goes through a fair bit of change between when she starts out in the Wildstorm series and where she ends up, as a fully-armored, bat-winged vampire lady (of sorts). By the time I started the shoulders and mask, the convention in Cali that I was initially making this for had been cancelled due to the pandemic, but I'd still like to have a fairly transportable cosplay for any future travel plans, so I'm still trying to keep her fairly low-key. That means no bulky items like huge, spiky shoulder pieces or a big mask, so I kept it simple. 

Taboo cosplay: Greaves and bracers

     The vest and spine (previous post) was a good starting place for the Taboo cosplay. It gave me a centerpiece and a style to build off of. I briefly played with making a tail, then realized I couldn't do that until I knew where the waistband of whatever pants I'd be wearing was. Put the tail on hold and finally got around to trying to make jeans, but it went a little sideways. Literally - I though I'd tweaked the pattern well, but after washing, the fly was off to one side and they were huge. Frustrated, I set the jeans and the tail aside, and went for something I knew I could make: leg and forearm armor. 

     Some googling led me to "The Armor Archive," really meant for actual metal armorers, but hey, good enough for me. Downloaded a copy of the greaves pattern, then played with it til it was roughly the shape I was after. Ran into a hang-up, of course, on what color to make it. The character has a purple base layer with black armor bits, but dang if I could find either a reasonable pair of purple pants, or even purple denim. Finally decided to just wear black pants, and make the greaves and bracers both black and purple, to break up the unrelieved black color scheme. Since I still had purple denim left over from the vest, I just glued that onto the greaves first, then cut out leather bits to glue around it, giving it a 3D look:

Taboo Cosplay: Vest

     This year has definitely gone off the rails. Initially, the gentleman and I were planning on going to a comic convention in California in May, but then the pandemic happened, and plans went out the window. Initially, my plans for the year were to do Valkyrie as a full-on, heavily involved costume for the local con in October, and another travel-friendly cosplay for the con in Cali. The travel-friendly one has gotten more complex, however, since I am no longer constrained by the May travel date, so Valkyrie might get pushed off to next year.

     Anyway, after the success of the Thor outfit, the gentleman was intrigued by cospaly as well, and started putting together a costume of one of his favorite characters: Backlash, from a group called Wildstorm that was somewhat obscure even when it debuted back in the 90s. Backlash's female companion/ partner is Taboo, a character that I find interesting, so figured why not make that my "quick, travel-friendly" costume? The gentleman is doing a militaristic take on Backlash, so I figure I could do similar, starting with a vest. Using the same pattern that I did for Valkyrie, I threw together a vest out of purple canvas (just under 10 hours), and made some "stripes" to be the armor bits.

Thor cosplay: End result

Note: links to the post for individual parts are at the end of the post.

     I started costuming in 1996, my senior year of high school, when I learned there was a ren faire opening nearby and they wanted workers/ actors. We weren't wealthy, so when I was hired and took a look at buying an outfit (for a part-time job, mind you), I balked at the prices, thinking "I can probably make that on my own!" The first year's outfit wasn't anything fancy, but it worked and I was encouraged to keep going, trying for something better the next year. 

     I stopped working ren faires in 2006, but still made clothes and occasional costumes for fun. In 2017, I decided to take it up a notch and try my hand at thermoplastics, adding armor to my costumes. It took 2 years (while working on my Master's degree and other things), over 176 hours, and... well we won't talk about the cost... but I finally finished my first thermoplasic cosplay and debuted it at Baltimore Comic Con. I did not enter the costume contest due to scheduling conflicts, but if the number of times I (and my friend who came with) were stopped and asked for pictures is any measure of success, I'd say I made it. 

Thor cosplay: Helmet

     The final piece for the Thor cosplay, once I made sure everything else worked well, was the helmet. I have always had difficulties finding hats and headbands, because my head is larger than "one size fits all," and it turns out that cosplay helmet patterns have the same limitations. I started with a motorcycle style helmet pattern, but both it and the material I started with (1/4" thick foam covered in Worbla) just didn't work well. It was huge, hard to fit, and heavy, which is a shame because it took many hours getting to that realization point:

Thor cosplay: Breastplate (part 2)

The link to part 1 is here, and ended with the second version of the breastplate formed and ready to be decorated:

     Since I'm not very good at freehand painting designs, particularly on a curved, irregular surface, I decided the best way to add a design to the bottom edge would be to cut it out of something and stick it on so it wouldn't move around. Initially I thought craft foam would be best, but I tried a section and it was weird having squishy designs on a "metal" breastplate, so I ended up using a single sheet of Worbla. That actually turned out to be easier, as I could just lay the pieces in place and heat them up to get sticky, rather than faffing about with adhesives.

     As per usual, however, while I was prepping to do that, the gorget (neck armor) started bothering me. In the comics, the gorget is two pieces, and I'd thought I would just add a line in the middle of it to resemble two pieces, but the more I looked at it, the less I liked having a huge, fixed gorget. I set aside the designs for a moment and went back to making paper drafts of an articulated gorget and broaches to cover the ends. Eventually ended up with a decent pattern, and was ready to move on:

Thor Cosplay: Sabatons

     Sabaton being just a fancy word for foot armor, and Thor definitely needs foot armor. I had a pair of black boots with about a 1" heel that I figured would work well as a base, and downloaded this pattern to get a general idea of how sabatons work. Obviously, I couldn't follow it perfectly, since it's made for a non-heeled shoe, but it made a good first attempt. Several tweaks later, I felt I had something good enough to cut out of foam:

     A functional difficulty for shoe armor is that it has to flex with your foot. A breastplate or bracer doesn't need to move, but if you make fixed joints on a shoe, you're not going to go far. I used random bits of wire to test the pattern pieces out, but that wasn't strong or pretty enough for a final go. After some hunting, I found screw rivets (aka Chicago screws), primarily made for binding books, but conveniently the right size for, say, sabaton joints. With the screw side on the interior, it looks a lot like rivets you'd see on actual armor. I covered all the pieces with Worbla, poked (a lot of) holes in them at what felt like the right points, and had a pretty decent, functional piece of armor.

Thor cosplay: Breastplate (part 1)

     I'm pretty sure I warned you that there would be a lot of thermoplastics/ cosplay posts coming up, as it's what I've been occupying my time with a fair bit lately. I started work on the breastplate for the Thor outfit back in August, as something to turn to when Mjolnir hit setbacks. The first step, obviously, was to find a pattern. I found a decent base pattern on the website of a cosplayer in Ukraine, bought it for $4, and started (of course) tweaking it. It was one of the few I'd found that wasn't the stereotypical "boob cup" armor, so I figured it'd be a good starting base.

     That doesn't mean it was perfect, however. For starters, it was obviously drawn for someone roughly fitting the word "waif," so there was a fair bit of enlargement required. Secondly, it was clearly built for said waif to have huge tracts of land, to quote Monty Python, apparently filled with helium, as there were no shoulder straps and the top was cut inward at an angle that would break your clavicle if you tripped and fell. So, major tweaks aside, after a couple tries, I had a decent pattern... on paper.

From this:

To this:

Thor cosplay: Mjolnir

    On January 17, 2018, I started work on Mjolnir, what I figured would be the easiest or at least most forgiving part of a female Thor cosplay. In and around various other projects, I built an external framework, filled it with foam, and watched it explode awkwardly out badly-joined seams. On March 26, I gave it up as a bad idea.

 

     Version 2 started off on May 27th, using a solid core this time: two yoga blocks. I carved a channel for the handle, used a butter knife blade to ensure it would all stay together (this was before I knew about contact cement), and filled in the gap with caulk and extra EVA foam strips.

Greenhouse/ craft area

     For the last few years, I've built a small but useful greenhouse under the back porch to keep potted plants over the winter. It was cramped and simple, but it did its job, and gave my gentleman somewhere covered to smoke in nasty weather.

     Unfortunately, because it was small and just closed in with 2x4s, the smoke would largely come back in the house with him when he re-entered, and then slowly seep out all the sides... including the one where the air intake for the HVAC sits.

New skills but not standalone

     One of the things I really appreciate about thermoplastics is that it requires a lot of secondary skills to create a finished product. I enjoy exploring new things, and learning how stuff works, so limiting myself to just 4 hobbies was a bit of a downer, even though I realize it's necessary to really make strides in any of them. Thermoplastics is nice, however, in that it requires at least a minimum level of skill in several other things. Deconstructing a 3D concept into 2D pattern pieces, molding and shaping forms to fit the wearer, a reasonable knowledge of glues and adhesives, some amount of painting, how best to attach pieces to the wearer (velcro, straps, ties, etc), and knowledge of a wide range of materials.

A setback

     Since most of the weekend was horribly rainy, I put cosplay on the back burner and did a full house clean. I was pleased to discover that I have a complete winter wardrobe ready, and only had 2 plastic grocery bags full of stuff to donate - mostly stuff I hadn't worn all summer or all last winter. The weather finally cleared up this weekend, but Saturday was taken up with a convention (no cosplay - we got off to a late start), which meant Sunday was occupied with domestics. I did get to put a final coat of clearcoat on Mjolnir in the morning, thinking that was the end of painting, and I could finish off the handle and at least check that off my to do list...

     It got a little breezy when we were out; when we got home, Mjolnir had fallen over and messed up the paint on two corners. I sanded them down, put a new coat of paint on, then a new clearcoat. Propped it up carefully so it could dry, and left it alone for an hour or two. Brought it in, went to hand it to my gentleman for his opinion, and it dropped, hit the floor. Three more sides messed up, and the painful realization that this is not going to work. The clearcoat is stiff, and there are too many angles on it to try to be careful and ensure it doesn't hit things (I know I will not be able to prevent it dropping, falling, running into things, bumping other people, etc etc at a con). So... I guess back to the drawing board.

     Update: I sanded all the paint off and tried to grind down the edges where the plast-dip had started coming up. Something happened (not sure what) and the coat of plasti-dip ended up wound around the Dremel head, and ripped off over half of the hammer head. So now it's back to being a naked set of yoga blocks. :(

More Thermoplastics!

Exciting, what?

To summarize:

    1) The first stab at Mjolnir was a horrible, horrible failure. I read an article about building the exterior, then filling it with expanding foam to make it solid. I can do that, right? Well, yes and no. I cut it out, glued it together, and planned on filling it a bit, waiting for that to dry, filling it more, letting that dry, etc. Surprise! Most expanding foam cans are single-use only, because there's no way to stop the applicator from, you know, getting dried, expanded foam in it. So I quickly grabbed a length of pvc pipe, shoved it in there, mostly straight, and filled the whole thing up. 

     Three hours later, it had muffin topped out the end, and seemed pretty stable. I cut off the excess, glued on the end, and left it sitting on the treadmill (don't ask why the treadmill, I have no idea). I wasn't too keen about all the gaps at the joins, though, so I stalled for a bit, trying to think of how to fill them. Three days later, I heard an odd noise, went downstairs, and found the foam had not set up on the inside, and had exploded out one of the seams, forming the most bizarre stalagmite formation around 3"-9" tall on the treadmill. I apparently did not take a picture of it, which makes me sad because it looked hilarious, but alas. I cleaned up as best I could, threw the whole thing out, and went back to the drawing board.

     2) In the meantime, a couple of the guys at Kenpo Karate class had destroyed two of the practice knives I made, so I went back and tried again. The second batch is half rubber cement, half hot glue, to see if either of those held up longer. I also decided to try spraying them with plasti-dip, a rubbery

coating material that made them less harsh against the skin, and (hopefully) less likely to pull apart at the seams. Class has been on hiatus for a bit, so I haven't had a chance to test them yet, but they look much better.

     3) Back to Mjolnir! If I couldn't fill a hollow form, the next idea was to make it out of a solid block of foam. Surprise, surprise, there aren't many calls for solid blocks of EVA foam 9"x9"x6"... but... yoga blocks are roughly 9"x9"x3" soooooo... I got two blocks, hollowed out the handle area, then cut a hole in the pvc pipe and shoved another butter knife blade (from the Kenpo stock) through

it, to prevent the head and the handle separating in case of use. Scuffed up the edges, and glued the two blocks, handle, and knife blade together. After it all set, I spent a hour or so bonking absolutely

everything I could see (it's very therapeutic and giggle-inducing), just to ensure it was secure (it is).
     Next step, fill in the gaps and cut it to size. I use regular bathroom caulk (I can't remember my logic here, but I'm sure there was some) and extra bits of foam from the mats to fill in the center gap, measured out the sides, and discovered that a saw works amazingly well on EVA foam for major shaping. Went outside and used a mouse sander to even it out, and voila! Mjolnir shape!
     Once the shape was right, next step is decorating, and apparently life hated me, because it proceeded to rain, be stupidly high humidity, or some combination of the two for literally a month and a half. I set Mjolnir aside and worked on the next piece for a while (see below), but finally got a break today when the weather was gorgeous, and humidity was "only" 59%. I set up an assembly line and got two kenpo knives and Mjolnir painted, and the next project glued together all in 3 hours' time. I was slightly delayed by the fact that the textured spray paint I found for Mjolnir would run no matter how thinly you sprayed it,
so I had to paint one facet at a time, and hold it level for ~60 seconds so it didn't run. There are 18 faces to Mjolnir. It took some time.
     The first time I painted it, when the humidity was too high and I was putting it on too thickly, I had sanded it down, and gotten a nice brushed metal look. I debated doing that again, but I'll be honest, I like how it looks without it. So now I need to find another decent day to put the final gloss coat on, then work on the handle and the strap and Mjolnir will be DONE!

Thermoplastics - practice knives

Taking American Kenpo Karate lessons through a local community college. The teacher instructs us on empty hand as well as knife techniques (the theory being anything you can do with one can be done with the other to greater or lesser effect). Unfortunately, only one student has practice knives, so we don't get to do much actual practicing.

Until I show up, and think "hey, I could make those out of thermoplastics..."