Queen of Blades update

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Blizzcon Kerrigan Debut

So, even though I have decided that I will not put on Kerrigan until later in the day for the first day of Blizzcon, I am still showing these pictures the morning of! These were taken for the photoshoot, and later in the day I will try and post pictures of the updated version of the costume. We fixed the way the dreads lay, the forehead isn’t quite so high, the paint on the face is closer to what Kerrigan has, and the neck and ankles aren’t quite so loose. Enjoy!


If you are at Blizzcon today, please look for me by the fountain around 3:00 or 3:30 at the cosplayer’s photoshoot!
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Queen of Blades Update: October 11 (She is FINISHED!)

Well people, we can finally say that Blizzcon is next week, and finally, Kerrigan is (99.9%) finished! She is wearable in her current state, but we need to do some tweaking to make her more wearable and comfortable for myself so that I don’t die before the end of the day.

This past week, we:

Marked the cap under the cowl on where the dreads would go, and practice fit them.

Had a 12 hour day where we did nothing but cast, seam, and paint dreads all day.

Finally finished the dreads, and these aren’t even all that COULD fit into the cowl, just how many we thought we’d need to make it look nice.

Inserted the dreads into the cowl and cap, one at a time while holding them in, the gently turned them upside down to epoxy them in.

Here is a picture of the cowl with all the dreads inserted; one of the things I need to do to make it more comfortable (and accurate) is style the dreads to have that look that Kerrigan has:

 

Just wanted to point out that this is the statue from Blizzcon, NOT ME lol.

I’m likely doing a huge foam bumpit! We’ll see though.

I painted the wings, and Mario finished painting the body suit, gloves, and feet.

Can I just say, I could not have done this without Mario? He’s amazing, and this costume is not a one person costume. If I didn’t have him to keep me going and to make me feel better about my flaws, I could not have completed this thing. If you guys see him in his doomsayer costume (he’ll be near wherever I am), go up to him and tell him how awesome he is, because this would not have happened without him. I may be the one wearing the costume, but he helped create it. <3

Well people, that’s my last update for Kerrigan! Come back on October 21 for some pictures of the completed design, though I’ll warn you now, that the dreads/cowl won’t necessarily look the same as the one I will wear to Blizzcon, but at least you can see the costume as it was for our photoshoot, and we will try and post more photos that night :) Thanks for sticking with us through our progress posts!

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Queen of Blades update: October 3

Ugh, it’s October already. Blizzcon cannot possibly be this close! We really aren’t ready for it yet.

I like to get things done weeks ahead of time, and unfortunately that’s just not happening this year. Kerrigan will be done by the end of the week (we ran out of dread material, and also the wings are taking longer than anticipated to shape and cover), and we will be doing the photoshoot on Sunday.

This past week, we: painted a whole lot, cast a ton of dreads, and worked on the wings. That’s really all that’s left, but even with working 12+ hours on this thing on our off days, it’s taking a while. We also want to make sure that we’re doing her justice and not ruining details by rushing. I was going to start painting the dreads tonight, but we need to hang them up to dry them, and we didn’t have anything for that. I’ll be building something first thing tomorrow. Oh! We also got in the mail the wonderful plushie hydralisk that Fiendle made for us! He’s wrapped in some of the dreads we’ve made in the picture above.

Since we haven’t been sharing much picture wise with you guys lately, have some not anywhere near finished gloves. These are just the first base coats!

Another picture of the heels, Mario is painting those as I type!

And finally, the dreads. This is just the beginning of them; there will be probably close to 60 when we’re done, with 5 different size dreads.

Oh! I also went to the mall to my local MAC counter looking for help to make my lips look more like Kerrigan’s, and let me tell you, that was the most amazing part of my week so far! The girls there were so nice to me, and the girl who did my makeup was so helpful, explaining everything that she did and they even wanted me to come back with pictures! It makes me want to go there just to hang out and chat!

And! My contacts came in! How awesome looking are these!

Well… that’s it for my last progress post! I’ll maybe post next week to tell how the photo shoot went, but I’ll post a completed picture of the costume on the day of Blizzcon, so that everyone who isn’t able to make it can see it then!

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Queen of Blades update: September 27

Well… I really hope that this is my last update, and that next week I can happily report that this costume is finished. We’re pushing to get it done by Sunday, but I guess we’ll see.

This week, we have to: finish painting the body suit, paint the gloves, shoes, cast the dreads, cast another cowl (we had issues), paint the cowl, make the spikes for the cowl, make the dread holder for the cowl, paint the dreads, attach the dreads, finish putting modelling paste on the wings, sand the wings, paint the wings, and done.

This last week, we painted a lot of the body suit, finished the basic wing structure, covered it, carved the wings, and halfway covered it in modelling paste. We also sculpted the heels, practiced gluing the cowl on, and tried to mold some dreads- but it was too cold outside, and they didn’t want to rise properly. We also practiced painting the feet, with a spare foot cast we had.

That’s it for this week! We’ll see if next week I announce that it’s finished!

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Queen of Blades update: September 20

So, yes. We were out of town this weekend so not as much got done as we were hoping, and a lot of what got done was the wings, so.. not a lot of pictures, sorry. I’d say we’re around 95% done just because of the amount of stuff we’ve had to do to finally get to this point, today we start mixing paint and painting the pieces of the costume.

Two of the dreads are now molded, the largest and smallest. I think we were planning on molding the medium one yesterday but I had work and I think Mario forgot, or he needed the board, or something. We have only one board we’re using for molding the dreads, so we can only do it one at a time.

The wing structure is almost finished being built. It was really awkward for a while because I had to wear the corset in order for the wings to be worked on, so they weren’t completely still (those things just kind of do their own thing if I even breathe) (which isn’t a bad thing to be honest, it’s like they’re alive and moving) so finally Mario built a stand for the corset to be attached to and finally I can see what the wings actually look like without having to look at a mirror.

So apparently this is the only picture I have to share this week, really sorry about that. Started on sculpting the heels on the shoes, I think they’re coming along really well. I’m using Magic Sculpt on the heels, easy to sculpt with and easy to sand and smooth.

We also cast another cowl, and this one came out a lot better than the other one (the other one just didn’t have thin enough edges, we didn’t close it tight enough, so we put extra mold straps on this one). I’m excited to practice glueing the thing to my face!

Well, that’s it for this week. Sorry that there aren’t more pictures to share. I’ve already said that once we start painting things, you’ll stop seeing pictures, but I might show the base coats. We are hoping to have all of this done in two weeks, so we’ll see!

I hope everyone’s costumes are coming along well! We’re at a month to go til Blizzcon, people!

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Queen of Blades update: September 13

Well.. we’re like three weeks away from wanting to be finished, and I guess we’ll see if we make my deadline!

This week:

I modified the body suit slightly, raising the armpits and sewing the arms to make them tighter.

We also worked more on the wings, which upon sending to two close friends, both replied with “aren’t they a bit large?”.

We molded and cast the largest dread, to understand how much material we’ll need.

We molded the cowl, which unfortunately I didn’t get a finished picture of, but you can kind of see it in a later picture.

It turned out well but we still need to cast at least one more.

Lastly, I glued the foot covers to the shoes. The above picture does not show the finished glued shoe; I obviously cut off all excess foam latex when I glued it on. I need to sculpt the heel soon.

These posts never feel like they’ve got a lot of progress, but we’re working on this costume every day that we’re off of work, and every hour of every day that we can. I am taking a mandatory break this coming up weekend (family in town, pretty much being made to be out of the house for two days) so we’re working hard during the week to be ahead of schedule, and next week we’ll start painting.

Thanks for following our progress, I hope everyone else’s costumes are coming along great!

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Queen of Blades update: September 7

Wow, we have gotten a lot done in the past week. Never as much as I want to get done, but it’s a lot nonetheless.

We cast the gloves, but need to recast one of them again, due to it ripping when we took it off the hand form- my fault, I needed to go slower, but we can easily recast.

We’ve also made a ton of progress on the wings, of which I’m not going to show pictures of yet, sorry. You’ll get to see those closer to the convention, when we get them more refined.

Mario’s been working on his seaming so we can get all the pieces seamed and painted, and I put on the full suit today! I’m not happy with the arms and armpits, so I’m going to alter them, but overall, it looks pretty awesome. Here are some pictures with it with the gloves (one of the gloves is the ruined one) and the feet (not glued on to the shoe yet!).

We’re also working on the mold for the cowl- it’s taken us a few days because it’s a three piece mold, so it should be finished up today.

We have a lot more work ahead of us, hopefully it will be finished in 25 days! We’ll see, though!

 

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Queen of Blades update: August 28

Okay you guys. It’s really hard to hide my enthusiasm; yesterday was one of the most amazing, fantastic, wonderful days to happen since we’ve started on Kerrigan.

This week, we mostly focused on having the body mold ready to mold with; we filled in some holes, sanded it, and baked it out overnight to get rid of vapors.

Here’s our progress for the week!

We made a really long trip down to San Francisco to pick up some large 20 quart mixers for making the body suit, since it’s so large. Friday, we also worked on learning how to use foam latex, and I have to say, our first try came out beautiful. It’s not seamed yet, so still has some extra pieces hanging down, but you get the idea.

Looks like a Kerrigan foot to me!

Then Saturday, we had six friends over, who helped us pour and brush the foam latex, and also get the molds together very quickly before it set to the point that we couldn’t use it. It went so smoothly, we’re so happy to have such wonderful, helpful friends!

We baked this for nine hours and let it cool for an hour and a half. The detail picked up beautifully, I can’t wait to put it on! We haven’t taken it off the body core yet, because it’s still a bit damp and we want it to dry out first.

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Queen of Blades Update: August 23

This has been a busy week for us. We never get as much done as I want to in a week, but something always happens to take up our time (Mario had duty, so he had to work on a Saturday), and I also tend to give us way too many things to get done in a week… but we’re still right on schedule.

The oven is finished, dimensions are 5 foot wide by 4 foot tall and 4 foot deep. That’s exactly enough to fit the body suit in there.

We also cleaned out the body molds (finally…) and dried them really well. I still need to get a tiny bit of clay out of one of the glove molds, but that shouldn’t take long at all.

Here’s the body core that will go inside the body molds… not exactly my size, it’s a bit larger, but we’ll be seaming and cutting down the body suit once we get it baked, and it will fit me perfectly.

We molded the hands for the gloves, we needed to do this because if we used the stone molds as they are, the gloves would have ripped from us trying to get them off of them, and the fingers would have broken off. We’re recasting in resin and will be making the thumb and last two fingers detachable to keep from ruining the gloves.

Please excuse the messy table, Mario was still working on painting a commission when I took this picture. The dreads are all sculpted, we have not had time to mold them yet, but I hope to soon.

Speaking of dreads, this is what the dreads will be attached to. This is a cowl that will be glued onto my face, and will support the weight of the dreads. I’m pretty proud of those ears; they were giving me issues before but I conquered them :)

We also got a ton of stuff in for baking the foam latex, but haven’t taken a picture of it all yet, so you guys can see it next week.

The plan for this next week is to start baking some molds! We’re drying them out right now in the oven, and Thursday or Friday we will be practicing with foam latex, to get the feel of it, then Saturday we’re having a bunch of people over to help us mold the big one- the body suit! I’m so excited to finally be able to put it on!

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Queen of Blades update: August 16

Sorry guys, but not a lot of progress happened this last week. I went back to work so I don’t have as much time to work on things.

(Here’s a picture of me in the oven so you get an idea of how big it is!)

The oven to bake the foam latex in is almost built, and I’ve been working on the dreads a little bit every day. That’s all there is for this week. By next week, I hope to have the dreads and cowl molded, as well as some basic structure work done on the wings.

These are just the two largest dreads, still need a big of sculpting and texturing, but the basic shape is done.

Oh, and we also got in our big order of foam latex, paint, and adhesives for the costume. It’s our biggest and most expensive order yet, so I was pretty excited to get it in today. The picture above isn’t all of it, just some of the components for the foam latex.

Thanks for reading, I’ll have another update up next week!