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The Costume Making Guide: Creating Armor and Props for Cosplay
- Wikipedia Science and chemistry jargon aside, EVA is one of the most important materials out there to all levels of cosplayers. It is a strong, flexible, formable and cheap material. It can be used for nearly everything cosplay from armors to props. Its main use is for metal or composite replication, meaning armor and all kinds of it! If painted properly the foam can look just like metal or composite materials like Iron Man Armor, Mass Effect Armor or even Dragon Age Armor. Picking the right foam for you: There are three main types of EVA foam. There are tile packs, roll mats and craft foam sheets which can range in size, thickness and price. Both the roll and the tiles have two finishes with one side smooth and the other patterned. The two most popular patterns are the "diamond plate" and "Cross Pattern" finish. I much prefer to work with the cross pattern as it has less gaps when gluing together but it tends to be more scarce. Youll notice the differences with the links below. They can be acquired at a number of places such as Home-Depot, Lowes, Harbor Freight, Walmart or similar stores. The price ranges from store to store but tile packs tend to run around the $17 range and the rolls around the $24 range. Great for the cosplayers budget! One key thing to remember is the color does not matter it will be painted and covered up, dont be afraid to buy the multi colored foam. The main source of EVA foam will be tile packs, these packs usually consist of 2' x 2' tiles containing either 4 pieces or 6 pieces to a pack and is.375" thick. These can be found in flooring or automotive sections of stores or ordered online.
Templates & patterns are a must to get the shape of what your creating or recreating. Most of the time its a fairly painless process. Other times it can be a nightmare especially if there are no existing "Pep" files and have to figure out the shape and size by comparing pictures. Pepakura or Paper Craft are the best way to set up your patterns. If you have an idea for a costume more then likely it already has a pep file. A pep file is a 3D model mapped in 2D. Think of it as a 3D model or puzzle, select the pep file you want but before you print remove the "tabs" and any small pieces that are deemed useless due to the thickness of the foam. after that you simply print it out on card stock, cut them out and trace them onto the "show side" of the foam, the side that will be painted and facing towards the camera.QUICK TIPS: If your costume is symmetrical you only need to print and cut out one side of the pep files, by printing out just the left or just the right of the model you can just flip the pieces over and voila! You have the other side of the that piece. Also be sure to label left and right pieces accordingly.... otherwise your gonna have a bad time.The other way which is mainly used for creating original costumes is by taking body measurements and making a template out of poster board. Play with the fitting by wrapping it around your body or tacking to other pieces to replicate the armor and then tracing it out on the foam. This is done way easier with a mannequin or if you have friends but who are we kidding we dress up to make friends... :'(
The Process is simple but takes time and patience to master. Using your heat gun go from one end of the foam to the other. You can visually see whats been heated and what has not, this is because the heat gun seals the outer layer of foam further and softens it. Once you've heated the foam evenly, start to shape it. Simple forms such as curves and angles will retain their shape after one treatment. When you get into more complex shapes such as a pauldrons or armor with flanges or domes you'll need to heat it more then once. This is tricky because you need to heat the area of the second angle with out heating the rest of the piece, Putting to much heat on the entire piece will undo everything you just did. To avoid having your piece lose shape heat it in small increments followed by shaping. Keep the parts you don't want to reheat by covering it with your hand or a scrap piece of foam. Keep in mind certain parts will take quite awhile, the starkiller pauldron displayed here took nearly an hour to shape. I heated the whole piece then waited for it to cool and heated the edges little by little to get the flange in the piece, so don't be discouraged if your piece isn't forming right, set it down and come back after its cool and try it again.Quick Tip: Its a great Idea to heat the foam regardless if it needs to be shaped or not. Once the foam cools it stiffens and seals it self making it tougher and keep its shape as well as being easier to paint. Your secondary tool here is a Soldering Iron. I personally use a 60 Watt $10 one but its always good to use a wood burning kit, the extra end pieces will come in handy later on. This can be used many different ways such as stiffening edges and boring holes in the foam but your main use for it is scoring the foam to make folds. Scoring the foam is great because it will allow you to make folds and hard angles with one piece. It also keeps you from having you to clean up seams. To do this take your ruler and a marker and draw a line where you want the fold to be. Once you draw the line take your soldering iron and using your ruler as a guide gently run the iron across the foam following the line. Run over the line multiple times till you get the angle you want with the fold you want the groove to be 2/3 thickness of the foam. Once you have the angle you want grab your heat gun and heat up the seam and fold it over till it cools. For added strength you can run. the soldering iron tip along the edge of a piece. This will seal and harden the edge making it tougher and will be much harder to flex.Quick Tip: Using the soldering iron technique works well but if you want a welded looking seam like the mark 1 iron man, you'll want to cut the pieces on an angle and glue them together. If your building a prop, its good to build a support into it. With swords you can get a rectangular piece of aluminum in the metal siding and rod section of a home improvement store. This will add the support you want but wont add much weight to it. Also wooden dowels are a good alternatives and can be used in all sorts of props like pistols and rifles.
Here well discuss the option of weathering and detailing. Weathering is a term used by costumers to describe the technique of adding the appearance of use or damage. This step is optional but can really pull the look and feel of your costume together. you'll need your rotary tool and Soldering iron for this step. To weather a costume, you'll need to randomly damage your pieces with the rotary tool and soldering iron by creating pits, scratches and dents. It helps to predetermine where are scarring will be by using a marker. Mark up where you want dents, scratches and pits in the rough shape you want them to be. It takes some practice so you'll want lots of examples to look at. Try put scratches and chips on the edges of the armor and dents towards the center, make it look realistic and try to not get carried away.
This step is Prep and painting.Once your seams are filled and your armor is weathered its time to start the painting process. Now... EVA foam does not accept large amount of paint well by it self. It tends to soak up some paint and after its hardened it cracks. The best way to keep your paint from cracking or loosing color is to seal the painted areas with Plasti Dip or Mod Podge. I prefer the spray Plasti Dip but It's expensive because it needs 2-3 layers before its ready for paint. Plasti dip seals the foam as well as creates a rubber coating over the foam allowing it to still be malleable. It dries smooth and in most cases will fill small gaps. DO NOT PAINT THE INSIDE OF YOUR ARMOR its pointless and will chip paint everywhere plus your harness cannot be glued to the paint. Plasti dip can be found at lowes or home depot in the paint section, around $6 a can. The spray can version works just like any other can of spray paint, once the surface of your armor is clean, spray it with 2 or 3 layers over the course of an hour. Let it cure for a day before working with it again. Once your costume has been sealed you can paint it! This part its pretty straight forward just pick your choice of colors and paint 2-3 layers of paint. I find Rustoleum paint works best cause ive just had way to many defective cans of krylon. If your going for a metal effect do a base layer of bright metallic silver followed by a layer of "hammered" silver. the hammered silver gives a slight texture to the paint giving it that worn or beaten look. It also comes in almost any metallic color so its also great for black or gold. There are a couple different ways you can simulate chipping in the paint. You can do this by either creating real chips in the paint or paint on scratch with a silver paint. In creating real chips you start with a metallic base coat. Next you apply toothpaste or mustard (yes the stuff you put in your mouth) on the areas you wish to have chipped paint, such as around edges or in the scratches or dents you made then simply paint over it. It works by letting the mustard or tooth paste become hard after being exposed the air. This allows you to paint over it and easily remove it. Once your choice of chipping sauce selected and you paint cured cured you can use your finger, ruler or a butter knife to scrape it off but don't use anything sharp like a chisel or scraper, it may puncture the foam. Quick Tip: Any tooth paste or mustard will do so buy the cheapest you can. In post-application scratching technique apply a base coat of silver metallic spray let cure then add your next color over it. Once the paint has set for a minute take take a variety of sand paper and scratch off bits of paint. This will simulate the chipping and scratch. After it cures you can go back with a medium grit and smooth out the scratches and add wear areas.After you have completed your painting and chipping process go back and fill your dents, scratches etc with black paint. I just use a bottle of acrylic craft paint you can get at walmart in the art supplies section. This will give it a dirty and heavy use look, you can also use dark grey and browns to simulate ash or dirt.Quick tip: When doing the post weathering paint, experiment with the colors and layer them, you can get some really incredible results. Once that's all done and you've let it cure for 24 hours you'll notice there may be a few gaps in the chipping paints and the weathering paint doesn't stay on great this is solved with a clear coat of spray paint. You'll want to do a satin clear coat if your going for a weathered look and a gloss for a newer look. Even if you don't weather at all you'll still want to do this, it makes the paint look much more realisticThese images where used from a brilliant foam Space Marine build on obscurus crusade forum. you can check out the full build and costume here. _Crusade/index.php?showtopic=1421&st=0 2ff7e9595c
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