søndag 30. august 2015

Isabela from Dragon Age 2 (Closet cosplay)

Even though closet cosplay doesn't require a tutorial as other "built from scratch" cosplays do, I still think t can be useful to show what goes into a closet cosplay. If you unfamiliar with the term, it basically means that you create a cosplay using clothes and accessories you already have in your closet. Since I have been making costumes for a few years now I then have a lot of suitable stuff.


Photo by Danarki

These are the components of my Isabela cosplay. I chose her because the theme of Torucon this year was Pirates and Bandits, she would be perfect. So perfect actually that there were two other Isabelas at the same con. 



What did I use?
There's a little bit of Demon Hunter (corset, pants and shoes), Lilith (leather armband) and Vault dweller (gloves) in this mix. The wig is the one I have previously used for my Dragon Warrior, just had to cut it a bit. The jewelry is what I normally wear, and the bandana is from a second hand store. Most of the effort was from sewing more white fabric square to the bottom of a white shirt.

I even had brown contact at hand from my massive shopping spree in Japan. All set to rock a mighty pale Isabela :)



Photo by Katrix 

Photo by Danarki 

Photo by Danarki


Photo by Rojano Photo




 All the Isabelas, Necklace on the left was made by Rachel Moore, Isabela on the left by Eirin Prestvold, me and Isabela on the right by Usapin and Hawke by Cecilie Rekevik. Photo by Katrix 




onsdag 19. august 2015

Building Mercy's wings from Overwatch

Another reason I wanted to make Mercy is that I have never made wings before and thought this could be a great challenge. Also these mechanical wings look really cool. Here's the tutorial for the staff and the rest of the costume.

They also look heavy. And for my first iteration did not make the yellow feathers, which is not a problem as Mercy also walk around with the "feathers" turned off. But I did include the feathers for my upgrade before thte CSPLY.eu photoshoot.

The build The first thing I did with wings was to make a simplified blueprint (outlined using vector drawing) scaled it up to my body size  and printed it out. This blueprint would be my guide. 

Then I had to think about how I would attach the wings to my body and flag pole holders embedded i the back piece was my solution. 


The back piece for Mercy is not that big to begin with and I wanted to keep it as small as possible. 

To add support I screwed the pole holders to a Plexiglas plate


And built the rest of the back piece around it. Starting with cardboard to get my overall shape.


Adding foam to build up details.


To make it sturdy to be able to hold the weight of the wings I covered in in worbla. 

Painting. I used spray paint and it is still a little too shiny. Must remember to put on a matte clear coat.

I built both the wings and the back piece simultaneously to know that they would fit together. Here is a sum up of the wings. 

I had my blueprints

Which I traced over to 10 mm foam board. Also known as Kapa 

I used an electrical saw to cut out the pieces. (Still took forever)

Layout test

The attachment between the wings and the back piece was made from the rest of the flag pole (eg. an alu pipe). I drilled small holes down the pipe which I would press nails thought to get it to get stuck to the foam board. 

Adding nails

Gluing the pieces together. 

For the top part of the wings I needed a double curvature piece. To make it I took a PVC pipe and added ting foil and masking tape to build up my shape. If I had more time I would have made it smooth, but when in a rush this worked. 

Then I added worbla over my mold.


 New assembly test

 To smooth out edges I used paper mache.

 Started with painting

In the middle of the wings there are two other complex parts which also have a red light in them. I build the base out of 5 mm foam board and covered it with worbla. Then I carved out a hole for the lights and filled it with polymorph. 







The finished wings, a
t least the first iteration until I make the yellow feathers.
Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus


Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus 

Yellow feathers :D
To be able to move around I scaled them down a little. I used a 2 mm clear acrylic sheet (only thing that you can buy in the city center of Oslo). The feathers were spray painted yellow.




The final wings
Or maybe I will upgrade them with lights, because everything is better with more lights. 
Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus

Phot by Kyman Cheng for the CSPLY.eu photobok project. 

Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus