Tutorial

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.

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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:

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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 →

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Zagara Costume Break Down

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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.

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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 →

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BlizzCon 2014: SO CLOSE!

So… as of today, we leave for BlizzCon in 14 days! We’ll be driving down on Tuesday, stopping halfway, and getting to our hotel on Wednesday. This year we’ll be spending the con with Mario’s mother and brother, and we’re super excited to share the experience with them- especially since they’ll both be cosplaying!

I’ve been preparing for the con by putting up several video tutorials on our YouTube channel, so I wanted to post them all here for you guys, too!

Since we didn’t update here, Mario has set aside Urzael until next year, and will instead be wearing Roller Derby BRova! Here’s a preview of my Zagara- I decided to go with an original 18th century version.

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And just for you guys- a makeup test!

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We hope to see you all at BlizzCon! Make sure to say hello if you see us!

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Spell Breaker Break Down: The Costume

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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 →

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Auriel from Diablo III Costume Break Down!

Photo by OTL and MLZ studios

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 →

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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

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 →

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A Lesson in Layers

We often say that it’s important to build your costume in layers- to break down your costume into more manageable pieces to sew or build. Here is an example of how we did that for Jayce!

Jayce, from League of Legends

Jayce, from League of Legends

Here’s Jayce, he’s a pretty cool guy, but he’s got a lot going on. He’s got knee armor, gloves, greaves, a coat, some chest…thing? and this collar that stands up in a way collars really shouldn’t. I’d show you my terrible drawings breaking it down, but I’m not sure you’d be able to really make heads or tails of them, so here’s how we broke down the costume into layers, and the order we put them on!

2013-03-01 14.38.05We started out with a long sleeve under armor shirt, the pants (with a belt holding them up, the belt secured in the back), the shoes, and the shoulder armor strapping.

2013-03-01 14.38.11The strapping was inspired by a side gun holster- front and back both clip on to another strap coming from each side of the shoulder, and the shoulder is held on and supported by the strap going around his arm, and down to his belt.

2013-03-01 14.38.52Next, the coat!

2013-03-01 14.39.46Then the chest armor. These pieces are all glued together but were originally three separate pieces. It’s held on by a strap that goes around his neck, like some weird awesome medallion. The straps on the side are purely cosmetic.

2013-03-01 14.43.48Then the greaves and knee armor! These are held on by snap clips and straps that run around the back of his leg. The armor on the shoes are from worbla and glued on there.

2013-03-01 14.45.39After that, the collar. The front part is tucked in behind the chest piece.

2013-03-01 14.50.37Lastly, the finishing touches! Gloves, bracer, and both shoulder armors are strapped on and ready to go.

 

We’ll probably have a nice tutorial up at some point on the mace and costume, but this post was to demonstrate the importance of layers!

 

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Video Tutorials: Fiberglass Sword Blank, and Shaping a Fiberglass Sword Blank

Just in case you guys are new or don’t watch us on Facebook, Mario and I have put up a few new video tutorials on our Youtube channel. We will be posting a few more: how to make a scabbard, and how to finish the sword. I have also posted a few videos on face and body painting! You can see these below, or go to our Youtube page to check out all of our videos!

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Guest Post: Tyrande Process Walkthrough!

(Today’s guest post is by Petrai of Petrai Cosplay! She did an amazing Tyrande cosplay for Blizzcon 2011 that we just loved so much that we asked her to do a guest post for us! You all should definitely go check out her page! As usual, you can click on the photos to see the larger version!)

 

Hey all! I’m happy to be writing a guide for Arms, Armor, and Awesome! Tyrande was definitely a big undertaking but so rewarding. It was a huge learning process as my first cosplay ever and after 6 months, turned out just how I wanted it!

LATEX DETAILING:
So here I’ll basically just focus on the sculpting aspect of the costume, rather than the sewing. This includes all of the silvery dress detailing, as well as armbands and other bits. It was difficult to decide what material I wanted to use, since I knew I needed it to be strong, but also flexible enough to bend with my body, and around my arms with negative space between details. I ended up choosing semi rigid latex, which has basically the consistency of dry hot glue. Clean pulls, no mess, semi rigid and easy to use!

I started off by drawing a to scale blue print of the central detailing on the dress, as well as the bracelets, and then sculpting it in plastalina modeling clay. 

Plastalina clay is the non-hardening clay that they use in Claymation, which is what I needed for the plaster mold. I chose this type of clay so that picking all of the bits out of the mold wouldn’t be overly taxing, plus I could leave my sculpts for days on end and come back to them when I wanted to continue working. The reason I needed a plaster mold vs. a silicone mold is because the final positive would be made of semi-rigid latex, which cannot harden in a silicone mold. I ended up gluing all of the clay parts together with super glue, just to keep it all from rolling around when I moved it or poured plaster. The plaster was very easy, I used normal cardboard boxes as mold boxes and hot glued them to make sure they wouldn’t leak, and poured the liquid plaster over the clay. When my plaster was hard, I removed the mold from the box, let it fully dry for 24/hrs, and poured my latex. The trick with the latex was to make sure it was 100% hard, which took a lot of patience (Days, with multiple pours as it slightly shrinks when it hardens). When it was ready, I pulled it and it was exactly what I wanted! Of course, the first pull was the best, and over time my plaster mold would break down, but I only needed it for essentially 6-8 pulls.This image shows a good progress; from the mold to the painted product. I ended up having to cut off a lot of excess with an exact-o knife, as well as air bubbles. I painted it with metallic acrylic paint, weathered it, and then it was sewed onto the dress (or attached around my arms).

EYEBROWS/WIG:

For the eyebrows, I wanted them to look as naturally night elfish as possible, without looking too glued together. I ended up opting for pheasant feathers which turned out to be pre-dyed the perfect shade of teal. I gently cut the majority of the feather base off, and then on the ends below the wick I cut off the small fibery parts but was careful to keep them clumped together and available for re-use. The hardest part was gluing these cut pieces and a small jewelry wire along the wick, to give them shape and a fuller look. This took a lot of patience, gluey fingers, and frustration, but it ended up coming together in the end. 

For the wig, I had to do seriously no styling beyond sewing in little pearl beads to simulate the dew drops in the reference image. For the leaves I picked real ones, scanned them, printed, decoupaged, cut, and folded them, then sewed them into the wig. Easy!

GEMS:

The gems were sculpted out of extra clay, then I made a silicone mold and casted them out of clear resin (I picked it up from Micheals arts and crafts), and when they were dry I painted the bottoms with varying shades of blue nail polish, and sealed it with the reflective side of tinfoil. Voila!

A full album of photos can be seen on my cosplay page here!

I hope that was helpful! Feel free to message me on my cosplay page if you have any questions, I’d be happy to help. Thanks!