With our butts thus in gear, production went into full swing and the various random objects we had collected over the past several weeks became useful. Our purchases and other randomly obtained items included:
- Coloured contact lenses
- Morph suits
- An enormous bag of foam off-cuts*
- A thick sheet of grey foam
- A thin sheet of grey foam
- A hot glue gun
- PVA
- A dreadlock wig and polystyrene head
- Two mannequin torsos
- Several cans of spray paint
- Liquid latex
* Giant bag of foam off-cuts still to prove useful
With these items, Jess and I began making our costumes. The perfectly timed and completely unexpected arrival of fellow cosplayer and veteran of many A Crazy Idea, Megan, proved rather helpful.
Jess (left) and Megan (right) as Kankurou and Temari
from Naruto. (Man, I hate anime ...)
We have designed two costumes each for the three-day convention. The first is a reprisal and a general epicment of our Weeping Angels costume from last year's Melbourne Supanova. Though we were proud of the dresses, our lack of experience with wings and a last minute realisation that my body paint was missing caused it to be a general mish-mash of good and bad. However, it was a big hit with the crowd, and as such, we find it worth improving and giving another go.
Jess hard at work in our 'workshop'. The
hanging dresses are part of the Weeping
Angels costume - monsters from the Doctor
Who episode "Blink", and last year, "Time of
the Angels" and "Flesh and Stone".
In our infinite confidence, we bought the foam sheeting for the new Angel wings from Clark Rubber before we had an idea of how to actually make them, and spent a good part of the morning arguing about how best to do them. Naturally, Jess erred on the side of caution (using minimal amounts of our limited sheeting to make smaller, sturdier wings) and I erred on the side of Caitlin (which here means "biting off more than you can chew"). My design for the wings was larger, less sturdy and infinitely more likely to fail.
Being me, I decided to do my way anyway and left Jess
her half of the foam and her smug smile. Megan and I
here cut my wing designs out of the foam sheet (a
completed one is to the left). My knowledge of looking
like a git if I failed only spurred me to ... er ... excel. Or
obstinately appear to.
Meanwhile, Jess took her exasperation elsewhere to work on the character of Sarah Kerrigan from the RTS game, Starcraft. Kerrigan's story is a bit like Harry Potter's*, and having been abandoned on a Zerg planet by Jim Raynor, was forced into Zergy servitude and by the release of the second game had been reborn as the slimy Zerg leader called the Queen of Blades. It is an ambitious costume with many layers and a set of giant, bone-like wings to boot, and it will no doubt show mine completely up when it's finished - though Jess is unsure as to whether she will be able to do the wings before the convention.
*In the sense that it's nothing like it.
Jess' morphsuit arrived a little pinker than
she had hoped. Here, she is testing the
positioning of foam pieces representing
armour. These replace the newspaper
stencils she originally applied (shown on
the chest).
Meanwhile, back at the weepy ranch, I decided that I wanted my wings to be much more curved and three-dimensional and needed wire. But we didn't have any wire. And I didn't want to buy wire. So I took apart last year's tiny stocking-and-coat-hanger wings and raided the wardrobe for wire coat-hangers. Megan and I then spent a considerable amount of time cutting them and straightening them out, cursing the name of the hanger of coats throughout. After this, I bent them into the correct curve and cut them some more, trying to ensure Jess had enough to use if she decided to get all jealous and copy my awesome design later.
Getting two wings on a matching curve using
rudimentary tools and wire for hanging clothes
is not advisable and hurts a lot. I then taped the
wire pieces to the wings (later adding a third,
smaller piece further down).
In the shed, Jess had progressed a little further in her foamy endeavours and was making creepy spider-finger-looking doo-hickeys (which are as best as I can describe them). She tested her bottle of liquid-latex on the costume fabric which immediately soaked in and was ineffective, which was a let down (but further trials should yield results).
Tell me my description wasn't apt.
For me, it was time for a taste of the hot glue gun as Megan and I attempted to juggle a giant wing masking-taped into submission whilst simultaneously ripping off the tape from one wire, gluing the indent where it used to be and slamming the wire back on before the glue dried. Hot glue is fast-drying, which is naturally the attraction, but it made our job exceedingly difficult and ended (again) in a lot of curses and us holding the wire on with our fingers while our skin slowly blistered and fell off due to the hot glue.
I promise that this was harder than it looks.
Before and after: The wing on the left has
been painstakingly glued and I think you
can still see some of my finger stuck on there.
3-Dness a go!
Jess was continuing to work on Kerrigan's armour, which proved more fiddly than gluing coat hanger guts to foam.
Jess and Megan refer to pictures of Kerrigan for ideas on
how to progress.
Jess will later have to paint the foam pieces
individually to match the bone-colouring
of the armour before attaching them. The
pieces will need to be able to bend and move
with Jess' body, since cosplayers need a full
range of movement to walk, sit, eat and drink
at the convention.
My Weeping Angel wings were approaching a shape that I was satisfied with (and were vastly better already than last year's), but they still needed work before I had a base I was happy to texture. Megan and I conferred and decided on papier-mache (a technique I had used for the previous wings). By using only a thin layer, I could make the foam lighter in colour to later texture and paint, and I could also achieve the 3-D shape I wanted without compromising the light weight of the foam.
The weight of the wings was something Jess and I discussed in depth before purchasing materials. A wire frame had been an option from the start but was going to increase the weight exponentially - and I don't need to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that weight is an issue worth great consideration when you know you'll be carrying these things on your back all day. The foam, then, was decided on, and has proved its merit at this stage of production.
Megan and I "borrowed" some newspaper
from the kindling box and soaked it in a
watered-down PVA solution before applying
a thin layer over the wing. Around the edge, we
glued a puffy section to mimic the design of
angel wings.
By this stage, the wind was picking up, the light was heading down and everyone was getting too cold to move. It was almost time to head in (though we're all keenly aware of our lack of time before Thursday). Jess had finished sticking the armour to her torso in a temporary fashion, and had moved onto the arms of the costume.
These pieces have been cut deliberately large
to allow for refining after all pieces have been
placed. The hands will also have claws.
Megan and I, both complaining loudly about the pain in our backs and realising how old we sounded, left the wings to dry with the inside of each covered in papier-mache. Once it has dried, I will be able to assess how to refine the shape of the curve around the edge and papier-mache the back with this in mind. I will also have to work in a system for harnessing the wings to my back at this crucial stage, as later may prove too late to attach anything substantial for harnessing.
Gooey goodness: One side of one wing done.
Megan pointed out that we would be doing
this another seven times to complete both
mine and Jess' if she chose to go with the
same design.
Well, that's pretty much all I have for today! For those looking closely, the tan morphsuit in the photo of the workshop is mine - I will be, if I manage it, taking on the persona of Klaymen from the obscure adventure game The Neverhood. It's a masterpiece well worth a look if you're at all into that most excellent puzzle-solving of genres - it's entirely claymation, though Jess has firmly warned me away from my original hopes of covering the costume in a layer of actual clay.
Rodwen, blagging out.
Ooh, they're all looking wicked!! :D The wings are going to be fantastic, and the armour is looking great, Jess :)
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see the finished product!
ReplyDelete