Month: September 2010

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How to make horns for Cosplay

Horns are a pain in the butt.  You have only a few good options when you need them for your cosplay. You can buy real horns…. but that’s pricey, or you can make your own but that can be messy….. or is it!!

Quick background on this project. I needed a set of 4 horns for a shield. These needed to be over 12 inches long and pretty thin. I got lucky on this and had a form I could use, but these could easily be done free hand as well.

Materials:Expanding foam and wire mesh, that is all you will need.

Total cost $9.00 on the mesh (enough for 2 big horns)
$4.99 on the foam (still haven’t used it all up)
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Cost per horn…. about $4.00 dollars for me. Price will vary a bit but this is much much cheeper then other methods and the end product is strong and able to take some abuse.

How to do it:
Start with a general idea of how you want this horn to look
Is it wide at the bottom?
Long and Narrow?
Short and thin?

I used a form from another horn I had

I split the mesh in half lengthwise and used it to wrap the horn.

Once its wrapped and you’re happy with the over all look, I recommend a few dobs of hotglue to help it hold its shape. The mesh is very bendable but it will always have a bit of spring to it.

Horn copy is almost done,
You should be asking your self “Where is the spray foam” or at least wondering why you purchased it at this point. This wire form is a great way get the look of a horn but is not very tough.  I have seen many tutorials out there where people start to cover the horn at this point with paper mache or even fiberglass.

Time to fill the form with the spray foam, I left the end open so I could get the nozzle of the spray foam down in to it to help fill the horn.  There are also a few small holes cut in the mesh just to make sure I can get the whole thing filled.

I have also mounted them on a wooden dowel because that’s how my costume needs them :)

I failed to take any good pictures of the process of filling them with foam, but its not really something you should need help with.  Put the can together, stick the straw in to the horn, and fill full of foam.  If some squirts out of the mesh that’s fine. You can wipe it off once you’re done filling it full.

Here are all 4 of the horns I did drying.  The foam will take 8 hours to cure to full strength and will expand through the mesh and look a bit like an alien egg…. or something..

Next day and the foam is dry. Using a sharp knife, cut away the extra foam and don’t worry about being very gentle, the mesh will keep you from cutting too deep and ruining your hard work.

Total weight of the 4 horns and dowel is under 2 pounds.

Prep your horn with a good sanding of 80-120 grit sand paper and finish with your method of choosing.  Paper mache will work very well to help keep it light.

Hope this helps and best of luck with all your cosplay work!

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What we’re working on

You may have noticed that our posts have been very few and far between lately. Mario has the next two weeks off work, and pretty much every spare moment we have has gone towards finishing our Blizzcon costumes before October 1st so that we can do a photoshoot and get business cards printed out in time.

What are we wearing to Blizzcon? Well, for the first day, Mario will be the male witchdoctor from Diablo 3 concept art, and I will be the female witchdoctor. Now, we don’t want to put out pictures of finished pieces or the finished costume before Blizzcon- we don’t mind people seeing what we’re doing, but we don’t want to get rid of that ‘wow’ factor that you’ll get with seeing the completed costumes/pieces for the first time. So, here are some pictures up close of some of the pieces that are finished, and some that we’re working on:

(These are, from the left: male witchdoctor wig (is up into a bun for storage), female witchdoctor wig, Kalecgos wig and Tyrigosa wig.)And for good measure, a few pieces of our Tyri and Kalecgos costumes (which we don’t mind showing finished progress of)

Both our Kalecgos and Tyri costumes are about 90% done, male and female witchdoctors at about 85%.

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Shoulder Armor Part 2

Ok, we left off with the shaping and carving of the armor.

This picture has them side by side where you can notice a few minor flaws in the shape between them. When you create any two items its almost impossible to get them the exact same and be mirror images for each shoulder.  I have never had any one tell me the shoulders I first created for my Tier 8 priest set were off, but they had huge differences between them.

Continue reading →

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Tyrigosa wig styling tutorial

Just yesterday I finally finished my Tyrigosa wig. Woo! So I thought I’d show you how I made it!

This is the lady I’m cosplaying, so her hair is what I’m going for:

I decided not to make the pigtails so much longer than the hair itself, I may cut the back of the wig so that it’s a little shorter than the pigtails but over all I’m pretty happy with the length I’ve got. Continue reading →

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Shoulder Armor tutorial Part:1

Costume shoulder armor tends to a stumbling point for many  people. It seems scary and over the top for anyone to attempt to make.  The following method was created from both a need for low cost and high durability.

We start off with an idea of what we want to make. In this case it’s a commission for a World of Warcraft armor set.  Priest Tier 10 Sanctified Crimson Acolyte’s Regalia.

I started out by finding good source reference for the shoulder.  I used WoW Model Viewer to get the best photos I could.  For some of you, you may be working off a single image and that’s ok too. Continue reading →

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How to make your eyebrows match your wig!

Many times in cosplay, you see brightly colored wigs, but the eyebrows aren’t colored or don’t match. I like to make my eyebrows match, because if that’s the character’s natural hair, then why wouldn’t their eyebrows match?

Materials needed are a white eyeliner pencil, and eyeshadow in the shade (or close to the shade) of your wig.

Your first step is to make sure your eyebrows are groomed. You want them to not be bushy, because that will make them hard to cover. Once they’re nice and groomed, take a white eyeliner pencil, and completely cover your eyebrows with it. Only get the hairs of your eyebrows, or make sure you wipe the excess off later so that you don’t have weird white stuff around your brows. Continue reading →

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SacAnime pictures! (and kind of a review)

Mario and I had a great day at SacAnime! We drove 2 hours to get there, and ended up stopping a few places on the way (since we found out it didn’t open until 1pm on Friday) then arrived right as they opened. There were a few other Team Rocket grunts, an Ash and some good cosplay! We didn’t get many pictures with our camera, but here’s a flickr with a ton of photos from the convention, and it’s going on for today and tomorrow as well, so they should have even more photos up soon.

There were some good vendors there, a neat pajama company that made full pajamas shaped like animals; kangaroos, chickens, and even monsters. Then of course there was the awesome Pocket, who has a video game based webcomic. There were also lots of weapon vendors, with some good Master Swords and Hylian Shields, and we ran into a pretty good Link, too… didn’t have the camera on us, so we didn’t get a picture.

We ran into a Princess Zelda on the way in, which was pretty awesome.

And of course, an obligatory photo of us fighting Ash for his Pikachu.

We left early to have dinner with friends, but it was still a pretty fun day. If we lived closer we would have gotten a weekend pass, because we think Saturday is the day for cosplay, but oh well. Friday was still a fun day.

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Sewing wefts to your wig!

So you’ve cut apart a wig for the wefts, dyed them, and now you’re ready to sew them into your wig as needed. You can add wefts to a wig for multiple reasons; to make it thicker, longer, or if you need to style the wig half up or in such a way that if you left it as is, you could see through the wig.

Materials needed: curved needle, scissors, thread that matches the color of your wig, pins, wig head, and your wig and wefts. You may also want to get some hair clips so you can clip the hair of the wig up while you’re sewing on the wefts.

I’m adding wefts because I need my wig to be able to have a braided headband look, a half ponytail in the back, and two pigtails hanging down out of red orbs behind the ears. I’m only going to show how I add on the wefts in this post, but later on I’ll make one on how I styled the entire wig.

Continue reading →