Overwatch Soldier Costume How-To

Last year at BlizzCon 2015, Mario, Dino, and I wore our wildly popular Overwatch Soldier costumes. Originally, I was supposed to wear Pharah to BlizzCon but due to tight scheduling, we decided to put her off until 2016 so we can do her the justice (ha, get it?) that she deserves.

Photo by Winged Mammal, edited by Alice Roy

Mario and his brother Dino had already decided to make Overwatch Soldier costumes, inspired by the guys that we see in the background of some of the Overwatch art, like this one:

Capture1

We made the decision to wait to finish Pharah the day before we were going to leave for BlizzCon, and though I was devastated, I quickly decided to make a quick version of the soldier costume for myself. I’ll cover how we put my costume together at the end of the post, and it’s a much easier (though not necessarily cheaper, depending on your materials) way to make the costume. Continue reading →

November 24, 2014 by RampagingCoconut

Tablets for Cosplay: Why Our iPad is One of Our Favorite Cosplay Tools

So, I’m going to be straight with you guys for a second: given a choice, we would not have an iPad. However, Mario won one in his company Halloween costume contest a few years back wearing his Priest costume, and so we have one. (If you’re wondering, we would have gotten a Microsoft Surface.)

Either way, there is one function that we use 99% of the time on our iPad: Dropbox.

Dropbox is a place to put all of your photos, documents, etc- but we use it almost exclusively for cosplay reference photos. Above is an example of all of our reference photos, and we try to keep it really organized.

Instead of printing out a ton of reference images, we’re able to access all of our references images whenever and where ever we need them, without a wi-fi connection, which makes it absolutely amazing for taking with to fabric stores to make sure all the colors are exactly how we want them.

In addition to this, we keep it on hand for painting reference, and for when we’re working on patterning out a costume because in the folders, we put every angle we can find of the character we’re creating.

Even if you don’t have a tablet, Dropbox works on your smart phone, too- it’s not as nice since you don’t have a huge screen, but it works in a pinch!

(Just fyi, this isn’t a paid advertisement or anything, Dropbox is just something I feel like more people need to know about!)

November 20, 2014 by RampagingCoconut

Zagara Costume Break Down

Photo by Steve Groves of ESI Media

Holy cow you guys, am I in love with this costume. This was the very first costume I’ve ever made that I was just grinning the entire time. I had some issues with the cape and wig, but throughout making the dress, I was just in love!

This costume basically started with me turning to Mario and saying, “I want to wear a big dress to BlizzCon this year.” I’ve always been in love with the Zerg, and thought about doing Kerrigan (this was way back in January before Countess Kerrigan was a thing) so I talked to my amazing friend Carissa (link is to her Facebook page, check out her work!) about helping me figure out the costume and getting my ideas onto paper.

She blew it out of the water. This is exactly what I had in mind, and I was in love from the beginning! (Warning: Super long post ahead!)

Continue reading →

August 12, 2014 by RampagingCoconut

Spell Breaker Break Down: The Costume

I know, it’s been almost a year, but we’re finally doing a post about how we made Mario’s Spell Breaker costume for BlizzCon 2013! This post will focus on the costume/wig/mask part of the cosplay, and the next post will be on the weapon and shield.

Continue reading →

August 2, 2014 by RampagingCoconut

Product Review: Plaid Leather Studio Acrylic Paint for Leather and Vinyl

While browsing JoAnn Fabrics the other day, Mario and I came across this paint- it was in the aisle where the fabric dyes and fabric paints were, not in the acrylic paint aisle.

This was only half of the display (top shelf) but there were many, many colors and shades to choose from. They were just over $2 each (we did buy this ourselves, this isn’t a sponsored post), but of course JoAnn always has some sort of coupon so there’s no reason not to get it discounted.

We grabbed black since it’s a good staple color, and tested it on four different types of fabric: leather, pleather (it’s stretchy with a soft, cotton covered back), thick vinyl (from the upholstery section), and stretch vinyl, the thin stuff.

The paint went on smoothly and was incredibly easy to work with. It was opaque in one coat on each one except the thinner stretch vinyl, but it would be opaque in two coats. It dries to a satin finish.

It stayed flexible, thin, and as you can see here, did not crack or flake at all when bent.

Even with the pleather, which was stretchy, it had no issues stretching with the fabric.

The thick vinyl is folded in half here, and it’s still flexible and none of it came off or cracked.

I didn’t get a good photo of the stretch vinyl, but it had the same effect: stayed flexible.
We’ve had issues in the past with getting paint to stick to vinyl, so we’re extremely happy to have found this paint. I can see it being especially useful with plug suits or other vinyl costumes that have a lot of details in different colors. If you used a stencil or taped it off to get clean lines, it would look as if it were part of the fabric and not painted on. We’ve never had any issues painting leather, though; the leather we’ve painted has always soaked any paint right in and not had any issues with it cracking, but we also didn’t bend our leather more than you would for a belt.

This is a great paint, so if you have to paint vinyl, definitely check it out!

July 31, 2014 by RampagingCoconut

BlizzCon 2014!

Of course we’re attending BlizzCon this year, and if you haven’t seen or you don’t follow our Facebook page, we’re working on these two costumes for day one:

Urzael from Diablo III, and Zagara (based off of a few different images, since there are several of her) from Starcraft II and Heroes of the Storm!

We’ve both been incredibly busy getting these together for the convention- we’re in the double digits with the countdown, now! Here’s some progress for Urzael!

Mario first carved the rib structure for the cannon out of pink foam, then got it perfect and smooth and cast it in a quick matrix mold.

As you can see, the first few (on the right) don’t look quite perfect, but once he switched to the drill squirrel mixer, every batch came out exactly as it should. He used a two part rigid, self skinning polyurethane foam that he tinted black to help him with his painting later.

This is how the ribs will look on the cannon!

We also got a male mannequin to sculpt on, since it’s very close to Mario’s size, and we’ll be molding and casting the chest and upper arms for Urzael, since it’s impossible to 1. be as muscular as he is and 2. have orange glowing from under your skin! The Hulk hands will potentially be used for the costume, as well!

On day two, I’m going to wear my Lovely Purple Dress from my first year at BlizzCon, 2009, and Mario is still working on his second costume!

Here’s one of the few photos I have of it- at least I know a good quality wig now!

Oh, and this costume is a great example of finding the right undergarments. I was fully covered under this dress, but it was hidden in a way that it didn’t take away from the costume!

Also, Mario did a Prop: Live with Bill of Punished Props, so if you didn’t get a chance to watch it, you can watch it here!

We’re going to try and update more often with tutorials when we have them, so keep an eye out!

February 28, 2014 by RampagingCoconut

Auriel from Diablo III Costume Break Down!

Photo by OTL and MLZ studios

(Note: this isn’t going to be a full blown, step by step tutorial because I don’t have that many photos, but I’m going to try to cover everything I did! Feel free to ask questions in the comments, we’re always happy to help!)

So, Auriel! This costume was made for Blizzcon 2014, and based off of Auriel, Archangel of Hope from Diablo III. Continue reading →

February 12, 2014 by RampagingCoconut

(Way, way late) Blizzcon Recap

I am seriously sorry you guys, I was certain I had posted about Blizzcon and our final costumes here, but apparently not! It was an insanely busy weekend and it passed by too quickly, as most conventions do.

Photo by OTL and MLZ studios

Auriel turned out beautifully, it is easily one of my most favorite costumes in terms of aesthetics. It wasn’t exactly fun to wear (the wings were supported by a harness that made them feel like a super heavy backpack on my shoulders, and I’m not known for my strength) but I loved the reaction from it.

Photo by Davann Srey Photography

Mario’s costume also turned out beautifully, exactly as we imagined it. For more photos, check out our Facebook page!

We’re also in this amazing video by MLZ and OTL studios! We’ve shot videos with them before, and they are always so amazing to work with and know exactly what needs to be done to showcase the costumes.

Over all, the convention was amazing, we met so many people (we also hosted a cosplay dinner the night before the con) and made a lot of friends! Honestly, Blizzcon is less about seeing the convention and more about cosplay for us. We enjoyed walking around the con on the second day out of costume, but we aren’t the type to try to watch too many panels! Though, there was one on cosplay, which was very informative and helpful. You can see that one below, too! (It’s over an hour long, fair warning!)

Thanks for reading, everyone, and I’m working on some in progress and finished commission posts to be up in the next week or so!

October 22, 2013 by RampagingCoconut

Cosplay Update!

We’ve been incredibly busy getting ready for Blizzcon, which we will be leaving for on November 6th.

These are the costumes we’ve been working on, since Fel Reaver has to be scrapped because of size requirements for the con. Below are some progress photos, and if you want to keep up to date with our progress, check out our Facebook page!

We did a test on how much room we’d have left in the car! This is with the two largest items in there!

Sorry that they’re a bit out of order. I probably won’t have time to do another update until after the con, but as I said, we post progress photos on our Facebook almost daily!

July 26, 2013 by RampagingCoconut

Jayce Costume Breakdown!

If you want to know how we made the Jayce from League of Legends costume, then read up!

Photo by Ed Tan

For the coat portion, I used McCall’s M6143 as a base. I used the Uncle Sam coat, and left off the lapels since the coat was under the chest piece. I also lengthened the tails and made them a slightly different shape to fit what we were looking for. Continue reading →

Arms, Armor and Awesome

A cosplay blog.

Cosplay