The mask really required a lot of planning and ingenuity to keep it light and secure on my head, while being under the wig so that you couldn’t see the strapping. We went with the inside of a construction helmet (the strappy bits) to keep it held on my head, and balsa wood for the mask and details on the mask. It was actually the most time consuming part of the entire costume. Continue reading
This post will cover the Witch Doctor’s neck rings, leather collar thing (is there a name for that? I dunno.), and necklaces. (Also, the picture above has a different mask than the one I made, I just used it because it has a close up on the necklaces.) Continue reading
After squinting at and studying the female witchdoctor concept art for a few weeks, I finally felt sure of what kind of fabric it was I was looking for. Mario and I made a trip out to our local JoAnns, and proceeded to wander around with our cellphones out and the picture up, holding up the picture to every reddish fabric we could find. We decided that it needed to be a good stretchy fabric that would fray and rip nicely, and it didn’t take us long to find it. We only got two yards because really, the costume doesn’t call for a lot of fabric. We also got leather lacing in the same color (lucky for us that it matched so well!), some beads that looked like they were similar to the one in the picture, and a button/claw thing that looked like a tooth that isn’t in the picture, but would help secure the skirt onto me so that I wouldn’t have to worry about anything falling off, since the leather lacing is kind of hard to tie (and would be bulky under the skirt anyway, and I didn’t trust a simple clasp to hold this heavy skirt up. Continue reading
A friend of ours wanted to rock an “Axe Cop” cosplay to Wondercon 2011 here in San Francisco. Although he is new to cosplay he does have a good eye for costume creation.
The one thing he lacked was a garage and some pink foam to make an axe, after all an Axe Cop with no axe is just a…… cop?
Ok, on to the crafting. If you have read a few of my other tutorials you know I love this stuff (pink foam, of course!). Because we only had a comic book to work off, I free handed one side of the axe blade and used a stencil to reverse it to the other side to ensure an even look.
When we first saw the picture I was going to base my witch doctor off of, I had no idea what the hair was supposed to be like. We didn’t know if it was dreads, just spikes, feathers, what. We finally decided that we would make the wig two toned: Purple on the top, spiked, and then with longer braids going down the back (pink, but covered with ribbon so it didn’t matter) with large beads on them.
I don’t have an awful lot of progress pictures for this wig, so I apologize, but there ya go. Continue reading
When we left off, you were setting aside your cut up pieces of hair to let the caulk/epoxy harden and do its thing. Now, we’re going to make the odangos for the wig.
If you build costumes then at some time or another you have had to stick one thing to another thing. The options for adhesives available to the cosplayer are very diverse, but it’s also important to know the best one for the job.
As cosplayers, a few of the materials we may work with will vary from plastics to cloths, foam, wood, and even metal.
The following list is a short compilation of things that stick stuff to other stuff. Always choose the right adhesive for the job. Reading the directions is very important, and proper safety equipment or well ventilated areas should be used as per directions. Continue reading
Time to assemble the Axe and finish out the last detail items. These include cosmetic items on the axe. The shaft of the axe looks like its made from a spine, and I also need to finish casting the skulls that will place on the flat of the axe. This is a lot of work but most of the steps leading up to it are done.
We start with creating a casting the skulls due to time for the material to set up.
This was a clay sculpt that I knocked out while watching some family guy. I don’t do much sculpting but I though this turned out really well. We had a lot of problems creating a mold for this, but most the problems were outlined in a previous post Do’s and Don’ts. Continue reading
We left off and we only had a very general shape of an ax and only a true wow nerd would be able to call this an “Arcanite Reaper”
After some examination of the current project I realized that I had made the center section much too large. I used the computer print out and laid it on top of the ax at this point and used this to find out where I needed to make some corrections. Continue reading
Arms, Armor and Awesome 