Back in June, fresh back from Anime North and high on the success of our Batman Villain's group, I had gotten into a cosplay discussion with a friend of mine. He had mentioned wanting to cosplay the Red Hood (Jason Todd), and I jumped at the chance to add another of Gotham's criminals to our entourage. A few weeks later, he approached me about building his helmet. I was naturally eager to give it a crack.
One of the reasons I was so keen to take on this project was the opportunity to work with thermoplastics. I'd seen many a build and tutorial with wonderflex, but never had the spare cash to shell out for it myself. The wonderflex itself was easy to work with, but definitely produced a very rough product. In the future I'd probably skip it. It was fun, but I can achieve the same thing with less pricey materials.
Originally the plan had called for wonderflex coated in Friendly Plastic. I cannot speak highly enough of Friendly, it's a FANTASTIC product and super easy to work with.
However, having never worked with these products before, I vastly underestimated how much friendly I would need to coat the helmet, and discovered very quickly that I was in trouble.
With no time left to order more in time for Fan Expo, I had to improvise.
I roped my saint of a friend into taking me to the hardware store, where I more or less body-surfed down the automotive department and walked out with an array of Bondo products.
I used my old Iron Man mask as a base, since it had pretty similar facial contours, and then built the back of the head out of cardboard and tape. I used a cheap modelling clay to fill in the gaps and build the facial shape onto the mask.
The Bondo however doesn't leave a lot of working time, and even though I mixed it in batches, it started setting up too quickly and I ended up with a lumpy helmet. I didnt take pictures during this stage of the build, as I was too busy panicking. Lacking a power sander, I feebly attempted sanding by hand, but the results were less than stellar. In a fit of "I have two days to produce a helmet" panic, I foolishly coated the thing in resin as it was, and painted it.
We ended up with a couple of tubs of Crayola Air Dry Clay. While the texture of the helmet was significantly improved, it was also significantly heavier. I do not recommend this product either, unless you're desperate as I was and the craft stores are closed.
I woke up the next morning to find shallow spider-webby cracks all over the surface of the helmet. At under two days to Fan Expo at this point, I was beyond terrified. I threw some more fibreglass resin on it in a desperate attempt to strengthen the clay.
A few coats of resin and a day later, the helmet was saved from the danger of flaking apart, but there were still cracks marring the finish. I spent the morning filling them in with paintstaking layers of white glue.
Finally, though still apprehensive, and with under a day til the con, I conceded there was nothing more I could do, and painted it up.
The result was this lumpy mess. My friend was pleased with the shape, not so much with the finish. So I swore to do whatever I could in the very little remaining time. After a lot of panicked communication to a lot of different people, I arranged to pick up a power sander from a friend before work, and another friend's mother brought me another can of bondo.
A half an hour of futile power sanding attempts later, I realised that the lumpy mess was virtually indestructable, and the power sander did little more than remove the paint. And it was too late to go to the craft store.
Again, Saint Brynn came to my rescue, and a late night trip to Walmart was made, where I desperately searched for any product I could use to smooth out the finish.
In spite of significant struggles (all of which could have been avoided had I possessed enough Friendly Plastic to start with), I actually ended up with a really decent helmet, which is probably bulletproof, at this point.
As usual, the pre-con crunch is the most anxiety ridden period ever, but, as usual, produces the best results.
I went to the Highland Games of Durham in Uxbridge, Ontario on Sunday. Being grown adults as we are, we spent a good chunk of our day doing crafts in the kiddy area.
We raided the kiddy-kilt station to make me a tartan sash to go with my kilt, made flower crowns, won medals for our painted rocks, and spent a good long time painting shields for ourselves.
After spending the day running around with my little cardboard buckler, I had grown very fond of it, and decided to give it a good upgrade when we got home. If I was going to wield a cardboard shield, it'd be the most badass little cardboard shield there ever was.
I started by riveting some proper straps to the back out of vinyl I had left over from my Attack on Titan harnesses, and cutting some "wooden" planks to fit.
I painted a red basecoat, and then added some wood-grain and distressed it
I cut a circle out of cardboard for the rim, wrapped that in vinyl, and added rivets.
Finally I painted the crest on and re-assembled the whole thing. Next thing to tackle is the wooden sword I picked up at the festival.
So like what seems to be everyone else this summer, I've found myself avidly following Shingeki No Kyojin. Somewhere in the back of my head I've been thinking I'd like to tackle a cosplay from the show, but I hadn't intend to put any serious thought into it until closer to Anime North. However, one fateful value village trip later, I walked out with a pair of white jeans and a perfect base jacket, which I promptly hacked apart and modified into something that better resembled the military jacket from the show. I've noticed a general trend among Attack on Titan cosplayers to make the jacket out of leather/pleather-like materials, but, and this is the only time you're likely to hear me say this, I just don't like the use of leather in this context. How many military uniforms do you know that include leather jackets? So I ended up with a brown denim jacket that I'm pretty satisfied with.
I hadn't looked at the costume much for the past couple of weeks, until a friend of mine mentioned the possibility of going to ConBravo this weekend. Being housebound with a sprained foot, I decided to accept the challenge of knocking out the rest of the costume in two days. (while blasting Guren no Yumiya and Wings of Freedom on a loop, of course)
While I don't have a picture of the finished costume yet (no one obliging enough to take pictures of me at arms reach right now, sadly) I figured I'd show you some of my progress shots.
I only managed to knock out one of the smaller patches in time, as hand embroidery is a time-consuming project and it took me roughly six hours to knock out just the one patch.
I decided to go with the trainee logo instead of the more impressive wings of freedom due to the short time I had to knock this project out (I'm no longer attending con bravo now, however).
I hope to get photos of the harnesses and the complete uniform sometime in the next couple of days. I did not end up tackling the maneuver gear this week, as I unexpectedly had to replace my cell phone, which took a large bite out of my bank account.