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: Leathercrafting

All Thor posts can be found here.

     When I started working at my current job, the entire department was a mess. Things were tucked into random hiding places, nobody knew exactly what we had for office supplies, and there was tons of stuff laying around unused. Being the minimalist organizer that I am, I set about inventorying and cleaning up, and discovered a huge (3' tall, 7" in diameter) roll of thick brown paper that no one knew the purpose of. I didn't want to get rid of it, in case it turned out to be useful later, but I did cut off about 50' and take it home for crafting purposes, and it has been absolutely indispensable.

     One of the occasions for its use was the belt for Thor. The character has a wide belt that is clearly shaped to fit closely at the top and the bottom; a belt made from a straight piece of leather will not do that on a curved body. Since my hips are 14" larger than my waist, I've generally just not worn belts in the past, but this outfit required it, so... break out the brown paper! I tried several curves and front shapes until I found one that looked and fit well, and then had to decide what to make the belt out of.

     Many of the cosplays I've seen have made the belt out of pleather or stiffened fabric, and to my eye, it detracts from the overall look. I have never worked with leather before, but, I figured, how hard can it be? Don't get me wrong, the super fancy, fitted, articulated, tooled stuff must take a heck of a lot of time, but one belt? Can't be too bad. And for once, I was right.

Thor cosplay: Fabric parts

All Thor posts can be found here.

     I started the idea of the Thor cosplay back in 2017, while I was still working on my Master's degree. The first piece (bracer) took about 4 months, and the hammer wasn't finished until the end of 2018, mostly due to time and prioritizing other hobbies. While several of the pieces overlapped at the end of 2018, it wasn't until early 2019 when I realized I wanted to actually get serious and finish the cosplay in time for this year's Baltimore ComicCon.

     Most of the things I've made start out with a base pattern and get modded along the way. I'd done a sketch of the Thor skirt and... tabard? Skirt tabard? Frontispiece? Whatever it was called, I wanted it to be on the same waistband as the skirt, because I hate layering things. I started with Simplicty pattern 8719, made a mock-up for the draping back, cut it down, made another for the front drape, cut THAT down, and then laid all three of the pieces out to make the final.

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.

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!