Infinity War came out two weeks ago and it was absolutely fantastic. So I made my decision to use the craft foam I'd been holding onto for a while. I'll be making Thor's costume from the movie.
I will be forgoing the sleeves seeing as it's insanely hot in Atlanta but I can't actually recall if he wore those at all in the movie. I feel like this was more promotional than anything else.
I've made a few sketches for the armor and the bracers and making my lists for what else I need. I'm thinking I'll need more craft foam but that's easy to come by. Probably the most expensive part will be the pants and the boots oddly enough. From what I've looked into, the pants are most likely motorcycle pants with knee pads. I'm still trying to find a truly identical pair but I've found a couple similar ones that would work.
I'll be working on these over the weekends along with gathering supplies and research on how to put it all together. I'll be posting the updates at least every two weeks.
I always enjoy being crafty on my days off. It makes me feel productive. Decided to put on a little Doctor Who while I finished this belt too.
I had to take another trip to the craft store to buy some more paint. I wanted a roughed up look for the components, seeing as they're probably "scrounged together" by Oswin after she crashed. Below are the finished components. Not too bad for my first attempt at making things look old and rusted. Something I'd do differently next time: start with a flat gray as the base color and highlight with the metallic.
Here is the finished belt, minus the whisk which would go in the middle.
Attaching the buckle was a bit tricky. I still needed it to be functional for threading the other end of the belt through. All of the big components are attached with industrial strength velcro. I figure if something is going to get knocked off at some point, I should be able to attach it. The two smaller things are held in place by an elastic band. I wove the band underneath the metal panels which were screwed down tight. It was a bit of a pain to cut holes into the leather for the screws, but it worked out well. Everything is held in place nicely. Hopefully nothing will come apart on this and my whisk, dress, and shoes will arrive soon.
I got overly excited about an idea I was tossing around as a simple cosplay. I realized this character had yet to be introduced into the Doctor Who world last year so she'll probably be all over the place this year. Regardless, I've been hustling to finish my Clara Oswin Oswald cosplay I started a couple days ago.
This is my costume of choice. The clothes are simple. They're on the delivery route as we speak (I assume). I could not find her exact dress but I was able to find a very similar one courtesy of a tutorial I watched about her. Unfortunately, since it would be shipped from somewhere back east, I opted for a similar one from Target that was on clearance. I'll have to do a little bit of hem work with it though. Hell, I might just go get it fitted.
Moving right along, the biggest challenge for Ms. Oswald is definitely the belt. Lucky for me, there are tons of good pictures.
At this stage of the game I've got everything but the whisk. I've looked everywhere I can think of to find the damn thing and everyone just has regular whisks. Guess I'll have to order it through Amazon.
A few of the gadgets on there won't look like what's pictured. Here's what I've done so far today.
Here are my little gadgets and what have you for the belt. Got a picture before I went to spray paint most of them. These are mostly random chargers I got from a bin at Good Will. The little parts are some clearance things from Michaels, pieces of some sort of electronic I broke apart, old fuses, plastic, broken hooks, and ends of Christmas light bulbs. Completely random things that when put together and painted don't look too bad.
The first and awkward coat of metallic spray paint. I'll probably have to do at least two more coats to make sure everything is covered before I rough it up.
Clara has a silver watch so I bought a white one and began to paint it silver with some model paint. Note to self: don't paint on desk. I ended up getting silver paint on it that wouldn't come off.
A little random bonus for myself: TARDIS key perception filter. I used some left over parts from the electronics I broke apart. That's sort of what it looks like, based on the paused images I saw from the episode.
I plan on finishing before next weekend. I'll start putting together the rest of the belt soon and just have to wait on my clothes to arrive in the mail!
I was set to be done with this project a week ago. But unfortunately, I had bought the wrong spray paint to gloss my finished mask with. I had bought white instead of clear and ended up having to sand everything I had worked on.
Although this was annoying, it gave me the opportunity to get a better, clearer coat of red than I had. I decided to go with the spray paint again.
It came out great so this white gloss incident was a blessing in disguise. I continued to repaint everything I had with the better paint brushes I had bought. The annoying paint clusters had all been sanded off and everything looked better. The only issue I had was the yellow paint cracking. I decided to go through with the final phase anyway.
Finally, here is my finished mask of the wolf girl, San, also known as Princess Mononoke.
This isn't the typical mask associated with the wolf girl. She is known more for the full faced mask and is often cosplayed with that mask. I am honestly not a big fan of the mask. It reminds me of deku shrubs for some reason. I preferred the half-faced mask and thought she looked much better with it.
It's been about a year and a half since I first started my adventures with molds and resin. It was a very bumpy road that I learned a lot from and will, honestly, probably not go back down unless I have to. There are other better ways to make things now, I've learned and I can't wait to try them.
I almost completely forgot about this blog. It's just what I needed to get a little kick into my cosplay work. I've had San's mask sitting on my dresser for over nine months now (about three months until Con!) and I decided to dust it off and paint it tonight.
It will definitely take a couple of layers of red to get a solid coat. Then I'll still have to do that yellow and black. Shouldn't be too hard, right? Right.
I've recently come across a new (to me) and exciting way to make armor, etc. Thermo plastics are the new way to do things because it seems so easy! I've found several different ways to manipulate Wonderplex and Worbla through the Cosplaysupplies.com website and oddly Pinterest, where I first saw an armor demo. It will require a heat gun but if that's all I need, I'm super dandy with that!
Other than this wonderful discovery and my random inspiration to work on San's mask, I've just been preparing to move. Should be an exciting endeavor.
I just wanted to say that as hard as I worked to finish San's costume I did not get it finished for Dragon*Con. However, I am proud to say I have learned a lot about costuming from working on it and I will definitely allow for much more time this coming year to finish my costumes.
As for Con itself, it was a blast as it was last year. Things did get a little out of hand one night, but I came out alive and that's all that matters. Next year I plan on it being better than the last and I will have at least one awesome costume completed!
Wow. I didn't think that things would get so complicated when finishing my mask but they sure did pretty quickly.
Good news was I was able to finish this in about an hour's time. Bad news was it wouldn't dry on its own. I waited a day for it to dry before putting it in front of a fan for a few hours. Eventually it did get there (mostly) and it was time to take it apart. Here comes more bad news.
While trying to remove the silicone I caused two tears. The first one on the back wasn't too bad. That part of the mask you won't see and I'll probably remove. The other part was on the front so that sucked. Tape didn't work to hold it together and I didn't have any super glue. Not even sure if glue would have worked anyways. So, I pressed on and carefully did the last step to make the resin copy. I was successful in mostly eliminating the front tear. The rear one was too bad though so resin seeped out. I ended up ripping apart the craft bandages and silicone to get the resin out. But here's the end result:
What's up with that weird indentation in the front, you say? I guess the key that was right there didn't fit back into the mold and I didn't notice. The shadows make it look much worse than it actually is and I think a little bondo will do the trick. I had to cut most of the back off so this would fit my head. I can see out of it, thankfully but something tells me I won't be wearing it over my face much.
