Work In Progress
Good news! I got data off my dead laptop's drive. No Katsucon pictures are lost. And I also have my Raud progress pictures.
Empty spot in the middle/bottom is where the SSD was.
So, without further ado, Raud WIP!
Rather than my usual approach of plastics, I decided to try out wood this time. It worked great for Suigintou's sword and Chane's daggers, and something else... But for this, not so much. But it wasn't a failure either.
The biggest issue is the look of the edges. If I had a table mounted jigsaw, I could probably get pretty good results. But, with a hacksaw by hand, my circles aren't all that circular, and the top and bottom are pretty different shapes due to accidentally varying the angle while cutting.
For the kinda shuriken-looking things, I opted to use Sculpey rather than my original plan of wood. Since it will be sitting on the wood it shouldn't be subject to much stress. And just in case, there's a wire mesh inside them to help with sturdiness.
The wood parts were coated in a glue + water mix. Then all parts were given a coat of spray paint before using the rub-n-buff. (Since otherwise rub-n-buff seems to not really stick to sclupey, and won't look too good on the wood)
shiny. The egg thing also has wire mesh inside. two layers of it. So hopefully that makes it sufficiently impact resistant. The gold part around it is craft foam. That didn't work quit as well as I hoped. But it didn't work out poorly either. Not sure if I want to replace it with plastic of sculpey or what. Original plan was to use wood for that, but I'm not sure that will work out so well anymore.
The other silver parts besides the egg are parts for covered buttons. Since they're actually covering functional snaps, I filled inside them with wood, so pressing them will press on the snap below.
For the center of the shuriken-ish pieces, I stuffed pleather with polyester filling.
For the trim one of the over the shoulder parts, I decided to glue it on rather than sew. Sort of a cop-out for me, but it was getting to be crunch time. I traced the lower level onto the trim material. Measured out and even width, and then curt out the middle. Then taped down the trip material and glued the back onto it.
white attached, but not cut out (because I could do that at Katsucon), and tracing where to cut the other part of the over-the-shoulder part.
His armor is made of lots of diamond shaped segments. But I wanted to hide where they connect to each other, so instead I made them hexagons. This was a test I dis before leaving.
The real work was done on the airplane / in the hotel Thursday night. (this is from the inside of the armor, working in the hotel lobby)
...and the end result (pic by dear_mo, with a envirion in the BG)
There's still lots to do. But I managed to get it done enough to wear at least for the con. No one who doesn't know the character design wouldn't know anything is missing.
Last Saturday, I hosted a sewing party, attended by yoshikochan, gintaku, and tenshiyaki. Seen here watching a Prince of Tennis musical:
Overall, I think it was the best cosplay work day that I've hosted. We all got I think a decent amount of work done, and had a lot of fun in the process.
I made Vocaloid Headphones...
The base was carved out of foam. It was a pretty coarse shape, whose deficiencies were made up for with the layers above.
The foam was covered by the red inner layer. I wanted to use red metallic paper, but the only sheets JoAnn's had, where in $20 variety packs. So I went with sparkly foam instead. Cheesy, but that's not strictly a problem for Gakupo.
And that was covered with a black craft foam layer.
Yielding this final result
And this mess
A couple days later, I got to working more on Gakupo, painting an eggplant.
Which makes me now ready for photoshoot times.
PS: I'm still way behind on LJ. Hopefully next week things will become more sane and I can catch up.
Empty spot in the middle/bottom is where the SSD was.
So, without further ado, Raud WIP!
Rather than my usual approach of plastics, I decided to try out wood this time. It worked great for Suigintou's sword and Chane's daggers, and something else... But for this, not so much. But it wasn't a failure either.
The biggest issue is the look of the edges. If I had a table mounted jigsaw, I could probably get pretty good results. But, with a hacksaw by hand, my circles aren't all that circular, and the top and bottom are pretty different shapes due to accidentally varying the angle while cutting.
For the kinda shuriken-looking things, I opted to use Sculpey rather than my original plan of wood. Since it will be sitting on the wood it shouldn't be subject to much stress. And just in case, there's a wire mesh inside them to help with sturdiness.
The wood parts were coated in a glue + water mix. Then all parts were given a coat of spray paint before using the rub-n-buff. (Since otherwise rub-n-buff seems to not really stick to sclupey, and won't look too good on the wood)
shiny. The egg thing also has wire mesh inside. two layers of it. So hopefully that makes it sufficiently impact resistant. The gold part around it is craft foam. That didn't work quit as well as I hoped. But it didn't work out poorly either. Not sure if I want to replace it with plastic of sculpey or what. Original plan was to use wood for that, but I'm not sure that will work out so well anymore.
The other silver parts besides the egg are parts for covered buttons. Since they're actually covering functional snaps, I filled inside them with wood, so pressing them will press on the snap below.
For the center of the shuriken-ish pieces, I stuffed pleather with polyester filling.
For the trim one of the over the shoulder parts, I decided to glue it on rather than sew. Sort of a cop-out for me, but it was getting to be crunch time. I traced the lower level onto the trim material. Measured out and even width, and then curt out the middle. Then taped down the trip material and glued the back onto it.
white attached, but not cut out (because I could do that at Katsucon), and tracing where to cut the other part of the over-the-shoulder part.
His armor is made of lots of diamond shaped segments. But I wanted to hide where they connect to each other, so instead I made them hexagons. This was a test I dis before leaving.
The real work was done on the airplane / in the hotel Thursday night. (this is from the inside of the armor, working in the hotel lobby)
...and the end result (pic by dear_mo, with a envirion in the BG)
There's still lots to do. But I managed to get it done enough to wear at least for the con. No one who doesn't know the character design wouldn't know anything is missing.
Last Saturday, I hosted a sewing party, attended by yoshikochan, gintaku, and tenshiyaki. Seen here watching a Prince of Tennis musical:
Overall, I think it was the best cosplay work day that I've hosted. We all got I think a decent amount of work done, and had a lot of fun in the process.
I made Vocaloid Headphones...
The base was carved out of foam. It was a pretty coarse shape, whose deficiencies were made up for with the layers above.
The foam was covered by the red inner layer. I wanted to use red metallic paper, but the only sheets JoAnn's had, where in $20 variety packs. So I went with sparkly foam instead. Cheesy, but that's not strictly a problem for Gakupo.
And that was covered with a black craft foam layer.
Yielding this final result
And this mess
A couple days later, I got to working more on Gakupo, painting an eggplant.
Which makes me now ready for photoshoot times.
PS: I'm still way behind on LJ. Hopefully next week things will become more sane and I can catch up.