Kamui Cosplay

Adventures with Vanessa VanCleef

2012-02-08T03:43:00.000-08:00

Vanessa, Vanessa VanCleef in progress and everything works fine so far! Last time I announced my next project and now some weeks later the costume is already done. It's pretty nice but after some years of cosplay I'm able to say that I already know my skills very well and so my time schudele works great. The costume have to be done next week, but so far this should be no problem. Than this despite of I have to spent some time for parties in the next few days (it's my birthday today, ha ha!).

Well, but now some progress:

I'm really glad that I started with my tabard pretty early and was so motivated that I was able to finish this part in only two days. Sewing it was just the HELL! The pattern looks maybe a bit weird, it was exactly was I tried to get. He he, and the funny part is, that the base of it's pattern was the same as the one of my wedding dress!

Creating the design was really the hardest and most exhausting part. I drawed the basic shapes on paper and transfered it to fabric. So, everything you see is sewed on and got a zick zack border. It was really a lot of work and sewing the whole day only zick zack zick zack and zick zack makes you really crazy!

However as you can see, I made it. I guess, the only reason why I was so fast was just because I wanted to left this part behin me. Sewing all parts of the tabard and adding the yellow borders also took a pretty long time, but the final result was really worth it. I'm super satiesfied with it! (And if you're curious how I created it exactly or just want to see more progress steps just visit my facebook page as always!)

I also experimented with the make up, since I'm a bit desperated. Because of Chinese New Year my wig was shipped too late and it's not sure if I will get it in time. I still have an old, similar wig, but that's just my emergency plan. My make up is also still in progress and I have to edit it a bit (I'm half blind on one eye so make up is pretty hard for me). I really need a dark, cool and sexy look, but the wig is more important at the moment. Actually I'm SO desperated that I visited my hairdresser to get Vanessa's hair style. Yeah, I dyed and cut my hair for this costume and... my hairdresser failed.... So, wish me luck that my wig will arrive in time!

At least everything for my leather tooling was delivered in time. It's pretty hard to all tools and materials, especially because they are so many and I had to import almost everything from the US. (You'll find these shops on my Materials & Shops page) However working with leather is just awesome!

It's a wonderful material, it's easy to work with, you're able to create a ton with it and after you got all your tools you just need to pay for leather, dye and finish.

Despite of like always you have to practise a bit. Especially leather is a material which you have to discover at first. Tandy's tutorials are a great help in this point and I learned really a lot from them. My next project, Soridomi, will also start pretty soon and I already plan to use leather for this costume as well. So, look forward for more leather progress!

Well, but leather was not the only new material I used for Vanessa. In the past I was really not satiesfied with the durability and stability of my paper mache props. They often were pretty breakable and especially thin or spiky parts were damaged very fast. Because of this reason I searched for something new and tried pepakura at first. Long text, short story: I failed. Vanessa's daggers were to complicated for my very first try to work with pepakura. I tried something else and since I'm pretty good in carving foam and just have a problem with paper mache I used the same basic steps as always. Creating a shape with the WoW Modelviewer, cutting out of card board, glueing all parts together, carving the final model out of expanding foam. And now comes the change: Using acrylic texture paste instead of painters tape + newspaper + paper mache. And: SUCCUSS! With a layer of resin I made the expanding foam pretty hard before and created the perfect layer for the texture paste. After everything dried I filled all holes and covered the whole foam with it, sanded, added a further layer of paste and sanded it again. It turned out to the texture paste became very solid and hard after it dried, was easy to sand and super lightweight. In addion I added a last layer of resin over the whole prop and will sand it and cover it with gesso to give a good basic for the paint today. So I just can recommend to try this great material. You should be able to find it in your craft or hobby store and it's really an awesome replacement of paper mache!

In addion I also started with the pauldrons yesterday and fond something new out: Don't use expanding foam in cold rooms. It's just super cold in Germany and since I wanted to get rid of the gas of expanding foam I sprayed and let it harden in a cold storage room over night. The result was a very very hard expanding foam with a ton of huge holes and a very bad basic for the carving step. I was still able to work with it, but it was really, REALLY hard and annyoing. Also try to use your foam as soon as early since old cans will give you the same result. Hope this helps you to avoid some annyoing hours!

Well, so far of my progress today! Hope these little advices help you for your own project and wish you good luck and a lot of fun with all of them! I'll keep on working now and prepare my birthday party! YEAH! :)

Project Sexy Murloc: Vanessa VanCleef

2012-01-23T04:03:00.000-08:00

New year, new costume! Since it's winter I was a bit lazy in the last time, but now my holidays started and the next project have to be done next month!

At the moment I'm working at Vanessa VanCleef, which was announced as the new challenge at all World of Warcraft Trading Card events by Cryptozoic Entertainment. Before it was named "Project Sexy Murloc" and so it was pretty funny to trap people, ha ha! Well, but I'm happy that it's not a Murloc at the end. Vanessa's design is just sexy, clean and very special. And: This costume will be comfortable!

I started some days ago with the first progress and so there is still not so much to show. At the moment I'm working at the base of the costume.

You see, I've started with the "body suit". I'm pretty bad in sewing, but it's even for me easy to work with stretchy fabric and so I was able to finish this in only one day. Oh, I love to work with jersey fabric!

In eight years of cosplay I always was able to avoid succesfullly to sew gloves. Well, Vanessa changed it. If you take a deep look to my references you'll notice that the gloves I've made are a bit wrong. Sadly I was not able to make a zick zack border between the red and black part, but I also didn't wanted to paint it on. So... that's my result. Guess it's okay for the very first glove in my life. Thanks to my wonderful facebook followers and this tutorial I was able to sew them almost without any problems. Love you, guys!

Now the next step is to create the tabard. I still have to find the right fabric for this part and hope to find it while my shopping tour today. This week I guess I will also start with the armor parts. I plan to create the boot coveres and the bracers out of leather. Never worked with this material before, but thanks to Tandy's awesome tutorials and videos it should be possible. So, take a look! They show just perfectly how to start and their shop is just awesome!

And then there a still these pauldrons... These super hard and super complicated pauldrons... I still experiment and research... So, wish me luck!

In the last weeks I've also started with my Protoss Wizard, but there is not so much progress so far:

I tried to find a better material than paper mache to cover expanding foam and so I experimented with fiber glass. Fiberglass worked pretty well, but I still need a good material with had the same effect as bondo. But names and brands a always a problem. I'm not able to find a product which is called bondo in Germany. When I you'll try the find the same producs I used in my tutorials you'll have the same problem. So please forgive me, if I not able to tell you excactly what you have to buy for your projects.

And the last point: I made a lot of updates at my site! If you still didn't noticed, you'll find a donate button at the right site if you would like to support my work. I also added a lot of links to my Shops & Materials site and now there is a Press & Media site where you can find some interviews I've made. I also updated my links with partners who supports my work in many ways! Thanks a lot, you're awesome!

Well, and that's all for today! Vanessa have to be done next month, so I will post a lot of progress on my facebook progress page and and here! I'm already super excited to finish this project and hope you guys are also busy and creative! See you and thanks for reading and following! :)

There will be never a break!

2011-11-08T14:51:00.000-08:00

Puh, some weeks past, I'm just relaxing a bit and enjoy my new freetime and collect new energy for new projects. Almost everything for this year is done and it's just awesome to be able to go without any stress and bad feeling to bed. No deadlines, no convention stress, but also no action. Well, almost.

I'm pretty proud of this cosplay year and it's just awesome that I was able to finish so many projects. Alexstrasza was an awesome project and I really learned a lot because of her. In addition she is still on my side at Cryptozoics WoW Trading Card events in Europe.

My Wizard was a pretty spontanous and quick project, but even grew my anticipation to Diablo III which beta I'm playing at the moment.

And despite of my lack of motivation to finish my and my husband's Druid Tier 9 it was just awesome to share my passion for cosplay with him at Blizzcon.

Three of these four costumes were not planned but were finished. On the other hand planned costumes like Beleth from Lineage II or Demon Hunter from Diablo III were not finished, but I hope they'll get the chance in the next year.

In addition, I guess I never travelled so much in one year. Paris, London, Poznan (Poland), Rimini (Italy), Los Angeles, Atlanta and many cities in Germany. Thanks to Cryptozoic and Apotheosis Agency I got the chance to see many awesome places all over the world, had a lot of wonderful time with players and spent a great time with the staff there. And I got the chance earn money with my biggest passion: Cosplay! I guess, only this point is already pretty amazing.

Now my way will lead me to the grand final, the showdown, the World Championship in Rotterdam and give me the chance to meet some of the most talentended players all over the world. And to show them their limits. We'll see how many players will find the courage to challenge the Dragon Queen and even be able to defeat her! Well, I already cannot wait for the very first match!

And what's left when the last job of this year is done? Well, a cute little convention a week later will follow, but it ends for this cosplay season. As always I'm working on some tutorials, some articles for different magazines, but that's all. Is is?

Well, a cosplayers life is never relaxing, never stressless and never boring. At least not mine! I already startet the planning phase for my next projects and I promise, you'll love it! I'm still searching for the right materials, collect tutorials which maybe will help me and the most important point, I try to get some references.

The first project for this winter is Soridormi from World of Warcraft and the reference is... well, how should I say? Just awful!

And the second project is even better!

These are my second and pretty poor references:

Yepp, that's all. These little pixels made me just crazy in the last week. I already found out, that it's a Blizzard crossover, which should mix the awesomes designs of a Protoss from Starcraft II and a Wizard from Diablo III into one super cool Battle.net portrait. As far as I know that's all and nothing more will follow. So it's in my hands to not only bring this character to live, but also design the rest of this character. However I know that this project will be just awesome and I would LOVE to show it at the next Blizzcon!

Well, and there are some more ideas in my mind and I'm sure, that not later than the publish of Diablo III and the delivery of my Collectors Edition and the artbook inside I will find new ideas. And then there is still the new WoW and Starcraft II addon. Oh god, so much to do! I need to start pretty soon!

So you guys see that I need to hurry again, despite of I just finished everything and want to relax a bit. But a cosplayers life is always full of stress, full of adventure and full of pain! No time to cry or sleep!

Awesome Blizzcon was AWESOME!

2011-10-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

The last time you heard from me was just a few hours before I finished Benni's costume, filled my suitcases and entered the airplane on the way to LA, Blizzcon and a week full of pure awesomeness! Benni, my husband, Selina, my cosplay partner, a further friend, Dominik and I were ready!

Well, our trip started at Monday, which was really hard. The flight from Nuremberg to Duesseldorf was fine but the one from Duesseldorf to Los Angeles was just awful. At the evening we arrived with almost no sleep and very exhausted at our friends apartment in Downtown, Los Angeles. Jess and Isa were so nice and let us stay the whole week there and so we get the change to save a lot money and got a perfect location to visit some of the nicest places of LA by walking. At this evening we charged our energy at the pantry.

Thuesday was our Downtown day. Selina and I bought a lot of nice nail polish for the next gemstones and I found a lot of awesome stuff for my old Wizard costume in an accecsoire shop. Oh, why don't we have this stuff in Germany? Little Tokyo was the perfect place for a nice lunch and Downtown was just nice to walk a bit and relax. And then we found our paradise in the Fabric District! A long trip, but a short story: Selina and I found all the fabric we needed for our next costumes and are super jealous of you guys now. In Germany we can just dream about all the stuff we found in just one of these huge amoung of fabric shops!

Wednesday was full of magic, color and happiness. Ha ha, we visited Disneyland and had a really awesome time there. It was just wonderful and especially the World of Color show was one of the hightlights of our trip. If you ever get the chance the see it, then do it! Take a look at this Youtube video and you'll notice that it's more then worth it!

At Thuersday I had to seperate from my friends. While they visited the Universal Studios, Benni and I made our way to the G4 cosplay shooting. After many messages over facebook and cosplay.com the moment came, when I meet so many wonderful people finally in person and it was just wonderful! And so was also the result of the photoshoot!

Well, and then the big day came!

Thanks to Cryptzoic and my very nice roommate, Benni and I got a room in Anaheim at the Sharaton hotel and so we didn't need to wake up as early as my friends in LA Downtown. So 5 am was a good time to start slowly with all the make up stuff and to dress up. Oh, it was pretty weird to help somebody else with his make up, especially because Benni never wore any costumes jet. No wonder that it was pretty new for him and he still had no idea how to "act" as a Nightelf. God, and I was so excited and happy and crazy! To share a costume with my husband was a dream I always had and it was awesome to show him my world. Sadly he was pretty shy and didn't really feel comfortable, which was the reason why he changed clothes in the afternoon and helped me with food and the costume contest instead. Despite of that, it was an awesome time with him as a Nightelf on my side. I guess, Benni was a wonderful Druid, even it was his very first time!

But it still had one good point: After Benni were in normal clothes he was able to take many photos for me and for you guys. So, just enjoy!

This time I tried to work with purple Kryolan Aquacolor and I really love the result. I looked natural and didn't need a lot of time for the application. Big like!

Walking in costume was pretty stressful and sadly I wasn't able to see a lot at Blizzcon. The Opening Ceremony was almost all I saw the first day, but therefore I was able to meet so awesome people like Jo-Jo Chen, founder of Apotheosis Agency, the company I work for.

I also really wanted to try the new expansion, which was playable at Blizzcon, but I just had no time. I also still need to see all the panels and to read all the awesome announcements. To wear a cosplay really is a hard job there!

It was also pretty awesome to meet Christina Estrada, the face of Alexstrazsa in the US and my "Cryptozoic twin" and to talk with her a bit about costume stuff and our shared job.

He he, and I even found the time to sign my name at these huge, colorful wall. Hopefully everybody of you guys made a stop here!

Well, but the most time constuming part was the costume contest at Friday. Everything was just... chaotic. At first I my registration was declined, because my costume was "too similar to my old costume", which happend to many other cosplayers and seemed just to be a mistake from Blizzard. Then I was able to particpate, but landed on the waiting list, which just made me crazy half of the day. Well, but the Blizzard stuff was really, really nice and helpful and did all to help me and all the other cosplayers with the same problem. At the end it seemed, that everybody got their place in the costume contest and we all were super happy when we met us at 4.30 pm near the main stage. Luckely we all had a lot of time to talk and relax a bit and it was a great change to see all these awesome costumes so close. As always I was a bit nervous to get on stage, but just walking over it is much more easier to do a performace, so it was okay. In addion I planned the whole time to enter the stage with Benni on my side, but like I said he changed the costume earlier. Despite of that, it was a wonderful moment and a great contest and I congratulate all three winners. Blizzard made a great choice and every one of them deseved the price! Congratz, congratz, congratz!

And if you're curios: Take a look to all these awesome particpants at the Blizzard Costume Contest!

Well, and now keep scolling down!

As always Blizzard showed their awesome real size figures to us.

This year Tyrael was their newest one and was even more impressive than all the others of them. Oh, and by the way: Here you'll find the construction progress of this awesome piece of art.

The first day was over pretty fast and it was time to relax a bit and get a nice, long sleep. Despite of all the trouble at Friday, Saturday started really quiet and easy going. I had to work at 2 pm at the Cpryotzoic booth but before that I had a lot of time to take some photos, get a breakfast and visit some panels.

The Live Raid was one of the points I just HAD to see. Blood Legion and Vodga gave us an super exciting raid race at Firelands and we had a lot of awesome moments with them. I was a bit disappointed, that Blizzard didn't add any special boss for this raid, but despite of it was still a great raid.

Time was running and I used the last hours to visit some booths and stop at the Art Panel. Since Benni and I like to draw (Benni more, I less) it was pretty interesting to see how Glenn Rane, Rob Sevilla and Co. work.

Sadly I had no time to try the new expansion, which was already playable at Blizzcon, but I'm a patient girl and just keep playing the Diablo III Beta at home. It's always good to have some Blizzard stuff on your screen!

The Art Gallary was also one of my highlights and it's always awesome to see the references I use for my costumes in such a great quality.

... ha ha, especially if you had to work with a picture in a pretty bad resoluion and had no idea what you need to create because you're not able to see it right. At least now I know that the whole belt of my Wizard costume is wrong!

Well, and that's all. You'll find the full gallery here, but as you notice I almost have no photos of cosplayers. I guess, because I'm just used to never take photos of other cosplayers when I'm in costume myself. And so Benni did the same. But the internet, and especially facebook is a great resource to see the awesome results of many, many month's of work.

After 2 pm you were able to find me at the Crpytozoic booth at Blizzcon. It was not my very first WoW TCG job, but despite of that, I was still pretty worried because my language problems before. Well, but I noticed already pretty fast that everything was okay. All visitors at the booth were very patient and listenend well, tried the game very fast and had a lot of fun to play with me some rounds. Even little children and older people noticted that it's a really easy to learn this game and were super proud when they bashed all my allies at the demonstration table. Great job, guys! I really enjoyed every minute with you and it was a pleasure to play with everybody of you!

The people at the booth were also just awesome and again it was just amazing to meet all the friends I know just from facebook in person. So it was just a wonderful second day and I was really honored to get the chance to work with all these wonderful people. My biggest wish now is to come back next year and to see them again.

Well, and then the time come, when I had to leave and say bye bye to everybody. At this point I want to thank everybody for all these awesome moments at Blizzcon. It was a big pleasure to meet you all and you guys made my 1000-Dollar-flight really worth it. Ha ha, it was also just awesome that the half of the Blizzcon staff seemed to know me. A weird looking face and the sentence "I... know you from somewhere...", gave me always a huge reason to smile. So, thanks a lot guys, thanks a lot Blizzard, thanks a lot Cryptozoic! You all made this convention more than awesome!

And I'll do everything to come back next year! BLIZZCON, HELL YES!!!

Sunday. Me and my friends were all still very exhausted because Blizzcon, but our time schedule was hard and stressful. It was time for the Six Flags roller coaster park. But just all of your manly men, who didn't wear any costume, who showed off how they will rock the park and how they are not scared... needed a day off!

So only Selina and I had to show how manly we are and drove to the park alone and had an awesome time together. At least our "ladies" got their break and were fit for the next adventure: A trip to the Blizzard Headquarter.

It's always good to know many people, especially nice and important people. One of those were Jo-Jo Chen and Glenn Rane, who gave us the best holiday final ever!

And Selina, Benni and I saw EVERYTHING! Well, almost. Surely project Hydra doesn't welcome visitors...

But the rest was open for us: The museum, the theatere, the library, the canteen, the gymn, the core of the core, the OFFICES, the holy temple of awesomeness. We saw everything and I made many, many photos, but sadly I can't show them to you guys, I hope you can understand.

He he, but awesome is really not the right word for it. We saw artworks in progress and met the people who bring WoW to live. I got the change to speak with Wei Wang, the creator of the Wizard artwork I used for one of my last costumes and saw something I really, really want to cosplay in future. The security center was also no secret for us and well... did I mention already, that we saw everything? Thank you so much, Glenn and Jo-Jo, this was really an epic tour and propably made our guild members super jealous, ha ha!

Well... like I said: PURE AWESOMENESS!!!

And yes that's all. We left Los Angeles at 6 pm at Monday and had a nice trip back to good old, cold and wet Germany. My suitcases are still full, the flat needs to be cleaned and the boring daily life is waiting for me. Well, maybe not. A cosplayer's life is never boring!

A cosplayer's life is full of creativty, fun and adventures. A cosplayer's life is full of conventions, awesome friends and huge pain but also success moments. A cosplayer's life is just awesome and I enjoy every minute of my life.

New cosplay ideas are in my mind now and projects need to be startet soon, the WoW TCG World Championship is waiting for me in Rotterdam next month, some conventions are still waiting for me and many messages need to be answered. So, even if I'm back in Germany I'm not bored and and already looking forward to every upcoming day. At the moment I'm still pretty exhausted, but I know that the adventure will never end. Because I'm a cosplayer and no exploading expanding foam can stop me now! :)

HOLY SHIT! Blizzcon is waiting for me!

2011-10-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

Woah, three pretty stressful weeks are behind me. Last time I told you, that I'm just working on my husband's costume and today I can tell you that it is pretty much done. It's about 10 pm at the moment and tomorrow morning I will finally fly to Los Angeles and will stay there for a super awesome week. And for BLIZZCON!

I'm pretty excited now. Not only because of my trip and an awesome weekend in Anaheim, but especially because I will share all my passions with my husband the first time. And I really hope, he will love it as much as I do. But enough of words, let's me show you some progress!

Again, everything started with the borken parts, but this time it was much easier to create the whole costume. I just needed to copy the work steps of my own costume and just make it a bit bigger.

However it was pretty difficult to sew the basic parts since I'm not able to work with measures, didn't had a fitting dress form or any patterns. So... I had to sew blind and hoped it will fit when Benni came home and I was able to fit my patterns. Luckly I had a lot of luck and didn't need to change a lot. Even the corset almost fit!

Sadly I had the same problem with the vest and it was pretty hard to create it really fitting, but with a lot of changes and patience it worked out in the end. (These curly parts are just glued by the way.)

Again slowly all parts come together. Benni was so nice to buy me a second and adjustable dressform, so at least I was able to fix it there and it was much easier to work now.

And finally I had to finish the pauldrons. Oh, I hated them. I hated them SO much and all the sanding was just awful. It was still okay to build two for my own costume, but to repeat all this work for a third and even a fouth pauldron just made me crazy. And I'm sure Benni didn't really enjoy this part too. Despite of this, this workstep had a postive point: I was asked many many times to explain or show how my husband paints all my props and armors and this time I recorded it for you.
So... just enjoy! :)

And that's the final result. You see, his pauldrons are just a bit bigger than mine, but I hate this crazy oversized pauldrons ingame and decided to build them smaller than in my reference. At least I'm able to transport them and Benni won't need to wear tons of expanding foam and paper mache on his shoulders.

After many conventions I learned, that you are not able to go in costume without some stuff for costume emergency, a camera and some sweets and because a rucksack would just look stupid, I decied to sew a bag. A super cool bag! And here it is. For the Alliance!

Well... and now it's pretty late, but just some tiny details are missing. As you can see, I'm pretty much done so far and it's time to add the last details, fill the suitcase now and hope that I won't forget anything. And then... let's have an awesome time in Los Angeles!

SEE YOU AT BLIZZCON, GUYS!!!
(Just follow the pink lights at the first day and visit me at the Crpytozoic booth for an awesome WoW TCG demo on the second day!)

Redundancy!

2011-10-02T16:19:00.000-07:00

Puh, Blizzcon is pretty close now and slooowly I need to hurry. At the moment I'm working on my husband's Nightelf Druid Tier 9 version. The progress is pretty much the same it was for my own costume before so I don't show you a lot of stuff. And I work without any sense or order, because I know excatly what I need to do and it would be so weird to show you how I work here and there just a bit. Yeah, it's a pretty boring project and I guess, I will never every copy a costume again. (So please don't ask me, if I want to cosplay Ysera or Sylvannas, ha ha!)

The only difficulty I have this time is the size of the pauldrons. I thought a long time about it, but at the end I decided to reduce the original size. Well, here you see the original and my planned size and I guess you can understand me...

Benni is not a Nightelf and he also doesn't have Nightelf's arms or torso and I guess, it would look just stupid if he would wear these huge monsters. And... there would be no chance to transport them to Blizzcon, ha ha!

Well, and I also hoped to be able to show you the second part of the Nightelf Tier 9 shooting, but sadly it failed a lot yesterday. Everything was wrong that could be wrong and the results were just awful. In addition my Druid Tier 8 staff, Ony, was damaged and I hurt my food, which still hurts a lot. But there are these days sometimes and you're not able to do anything against it. I try to do my best of it and learn to make it better next time!

Meh... but here are some sad results...

Despite of this fail I tried to use the rest of my weekend well and made a new tutorial for you. Really a lot of you guys asked me how to fixate armor parts and it's always hard to explain it. Now I'm able to give you the link to this video and hope this helps you. Youtube was an awesome invention!

Well, and that's all. I'll keep on working now, will post my pictures when there will be progress and until that... stay busy and creative guys! :)

Druid Tier 9 Photoshoot

2011-09-26T01:59:00.000-07:00

Woah! Finally a new photoshoot is done again and it turned our amazing! This time my photographer was Benni's brother, Jakob and he did an really awesome job for this first full time photoshoot!
Sadly I had to edit a lot, because I had problems with my new make up, but I hope you guys don't notice my little Photoshop help. As you also maybe notice, there are no pictures with lights. I had not patience to wait for the sunset and so we left the forest. Hopefully we'll make it this week and I can show you part two. But enough of talking. Enjoy!

And as always you'll find the full gallery on my flickr account KamuiCosplay.
Now back to work. Benni still needs a costume! :)

How to give your Gems some Glow

2011-09-12T13:24:00.000-07:00

I just uploaded a new video tutorial on my channels, guys. After a little survey on facebook, I noticed that many of you want to see, how I create my glowing gems. Especially you also wanted to see, how my husband paints my stuff, but this will follow soon don't worry.

I avoided to talk about insulation, dead shorts or circuit calculation, but I hope it's still okay. However you maybe still need to read my other tutorials to follow my steps better and I just wanted to show you, how easy all this circuit stuff really is. So, I hope you like it! :)

And now I'm preparing my next workshops about armor and prop making on Connichi, start with the costume of my husband and then... we'll see us at Blizzcon! I'm already looking forward to many of you guys there! :)
(And finally get a Diablo III Beta key! Still need one!)

Dragons and Druids

2011-09-08T09:40:00.000-07:00

I'm just sitting in the lobby of a hotel of Atlanta and try to get rid of the time I have left until my flight back to Germany. So, what's better than writing a new blog entry?

You wonder, what the hell did I just do in Atlanta? Well, I visited Dragon*Con this year and enjoyed the first part of my Honeymoon with Benni. Pretty nerdy, isn't it? Hm... but we ourselves were really the less nerdiest thing at all this weekend. We saw Zombie grandmas and perfect Star Treck Scotty grandpas, we saw Steampunk Ghostbusters and Deathpools in Princess Leia bikinis. We visited robot battles, armor and mask making panels and met the nicest, craziest, strangest and coolest guys ever. Yeah, we were anything else but nerdy. To get a short view into what we experienced, take a look to all these awesome galleries on flickr.
Sadly, I'm not pretty good in taking photos in costume and Benni is too busy fixing my costume the whole time, so excuse the lack of photos from my side. But I guess, flickr is a great resource for your search.

Well, and how was Dragoncon?
Hm... it was... different. The conventions I visit in Germany are mostly Anime/Manga related. There is'nt such a huge fantasy/comic/steampunk/zombie/othernerdystuff fanbase. And the audience is pretty young. Dragon*Con was pretty faszinating, because just about everybody was there. No matter, which age, religion, race or sex. Even babies had a fitting costumes to their parents and even dogs had their own hats and wings. Wow, it was just stunning! And the parade was even more awesome! There were really a lot of things, why I like Dragoncon. The costumes, the people and also my super awesome roommates at the Hyatt hotel. I also met a lot of guys, who even recognized me without costume, what never happend to me before.
But there were also some points I didn't like. The crazy air conditioning (one room was cool, the other was super cold, outside it was really hot and if you walk the whole time around... well...) made me sick and I still feel pretty bad. I didn't like the panels, because they mostly only consited of discussion without any pictures or reference materials and I had a lot of problems to understand them. And no free wifi access at the hotels, which make me really crazy!
However I already think about coming back, even if it's super expensive for us. But at first, the next conventions are coming. Connichi in Kassel is pretty close, then Blizzcon, then some little german conventions and my very last job for this year at the World Champtionship in Rotterdam for the WoW TCG. And now... enough of words! Time for pictures!

Druid T9 is... almost done! (No idea who made this picture of me at D*C, but I hope it's okay to use it. I really like it! Sadly I don't have any of my own, because Benni was too busy making some....)

I wanted to try out a new bodypainting, but unfortunately I noticed at the morning that it's just wrong. I had not the right sponge and the color was just awful, and sadly I didn't have my old make up with me. Well, I didn't really care and decided to take a shower and to go out with normal skin color. Funny point is, that more people recognized me as a Nightelf without make up, than with. Many of them always mistook me for a Troll...
Yeah, and some details are still missing. Especially my staff, but at least, I managed to finish the main part. At 5 am. One hour before we had to leave our house and went to the airport.

One of the reasons, that I was so stressed and still had so much to do was, that I deciced to create a further version of my pauldrons. The pair I built before were just... to large, despite of it was the right size of the model ingame. But sometimes it just looks wrong, if you follow your reference in every point, just because you are not 2 m high and have the bodyshape of a super model. The new version was a bit smaller and had a different shape, but I was much more satiesfied at the end.

As always Benni did the paint job...

... and as always it was great!

I also created a mask, what I didn't use because I did't manage to get the hoodie done in time.

This was my very first fitting. Again it was a pretty awesome feeling to try a new costume the first time and to see, that most parts worked fine. And.... I really loved how my boobies looked in this costume, ha ha!

Well, at the end I have to say, that I'm ashamed a bit of my Druid T9. It was done in 3 weeks, it was already my 5th Tier set and it was pretty boring to create. And it's a pretty crappy costume. I'm not pround of my work anymore, I don't think that I made something nice. It's just... okay. It's okay for a 3-weeks-project and it was fun to wear it, especially with the lights on. But it's not more. I'm already planning my next projects, but I guess, I go crazy if I create a further Druid costume. Especially, because I have to do EVERYTHING again since Benni gets the same costume from me for Blizzcon. So... I already have some nice ideas for next years, look forward to Diablo and really, REALLY hope that Blizzard will announce something awesome at Blizzcon, but I'm done with my Druid costumes. I hope you guys, can understand me!

And before I leave you again, close my notebook and fly back to my lovely Germany, there is one point I want to say:

Blizzard, I NEED a Diablo III Beta key! Please, please! My Wizard is done, my Demon Hunter will follow soon and after I got the chance to test it at Gamescom, I'll go crazy if I don't get a beta key, soon! There is a huge NEED!!!

Wizard Photoshoot and the next Project

2011-08-15T15:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it really seems like the weather hates me. After an awesome sunny weekend but without any photographers, we got a cloudy and dark one with too many photographs. Well, I really really wanted to show you my costume with another photoshoot, so my cosplay partner Selina, my husband and another friend tried to do our best. Sadly the weather is also the reason, why you almost never see any sky, but I guess despite of this the results are still good.

And this next one again is just a photo manipulation which was made by my husband for me. I love it and I hope I'll get more of them soon! (And if you want to see more here you'll find more photos!)

At the moment I'm still working on my Wizard photos (I love this photo manipulation stuff and want to try it by myself!), but I also continued with my old project: Druid Tier 9. I had to pause it because of Alexstrazsa, my wedding and the Wizard. I also have to admid that I just was tired of creating almost the same costumes again and again. It's not a challenge for me anymore and so I use my holidays well and try to finish it as quickly a possible. Three weeks should be enough!

One of the problems was the huge effort for creating all the barken parts and to add the curvy patterns. My "teflon leather" was again perfect for the barken look and I used painters tape with my dressform to get the right patterns for the costume.

Well, and I'll also become a Christmas tree again! I just love costumes with lights, despite of it makes the costumes sometimes much harder to create. This part was a bit tricky, because it's just one single circuit which cables over the whole costume inside. So, it was somewhat difficult to always find the right cable for the right LED because of the lenght of the cables.

However here you see, that it was really not a big deal. The LEDs were casted inside of the gems and became a part of them. I just added them the moment before the resin became solid. You see, I created the mold of some parts of PVC foil, glued them together and filled the result with resin.

Then I had to create the connection. Here you see a very, very simple one: A LED connected with a switch and a 3V battery. All I did was cutting a hole into my fabric, glued the gem on, created the circuit and fixed everything with hot glue. I also noticed that hot glue is just awesome to cover soldering connections or breakable parts like the tiny legs of the LED. Everything is covered well with this stuff and I'm sure it will survive every convention well!

The bra was also easier than I thought. I used the same technique, I already used for Alexstrasza's bra: I covered the bra I need with painters tape, drawed it's shape on, cut it out and copied the pattern at my fabric. Now I just needed to glue the fabric on and the bra was alsmost done!

And this is the result so far. I'm still not satiesfied with some of the parts and I have to edit or add some stuff, but it's done pretty soon. And yeah, I really cannot wait until this project found it's way to into my closet where all of my other costumes are. Then it's finally time for a new challenge, a real challenge and I guess, I will have a lot of fun!

It's Magic!

2011-08-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

The last week had begun and I was pretty stressed. I had until friday to finish my costume, to create a commission and to write an cosplay tutorial for a german magazine. So, I had to hurry a bit.

The main costume was already done, but as always the missing details and the tiny things are some of the most time consuming work steps. One of these steps were the bracers. If you've already read my older posts, you should be able to see that I used Wonderflex for this part. As always I used the sandwich technique and covered the result with some glue, fabric and bias tape.

Now it was time for the shoes. After a long, exhausting trip trough every shoe store in my city I finally found the perfect shoes for my costume. With some black leather and bias tape I added ankle boots and this part was done too.

The head piece was a bit more complicated. Or at least it should have been, but because of the bad reference picture I was not able to make out what I had to create. In addition I had very little time, so I didn't put so much effort in this detail. He he, the only thing I really like is the gem. I used the same technique I already showed you in my gem tutorial and the result turned out pretty nice.

Now I had to add a wig. I got an awesome one from myCostumes who was also the store I got my Alexstrazsa wig from. And again I was amazed by the quality of this wig. I guess, I cut one pound of hair away and there were still a LOT hair left. Well... take a look. :)

I'm also not sure, if I really create the same hair cut like the artist drawed, but I did my very best to come as close as possible to the reference. Or... at least, I tried.

Yeah, I really had a lot of problems because of the low quality of my reference and the dynamic in the picture, but I hope despite of all my mistakes it looks at least a bit like in the picture. And as always it was a pretty amazing feeling to wear it for the first time.

The only problem was, that I still needed a weapon. I tried to create the staff in these days, but just had no chance because of the lack of time. I also started to build the ice sword but I was not really satiesfied with the result. So, I used Friday for my very last chance to create a weapon. Don't wonder, you won't find this one on my reference. I was just sick of trying and used my own imagination this time. I thought, a fire sword would be also a nice fitting weapon for this costume.

Here you see a cut and sanded piece of balsa wood, which is just an awesome material for swords. It's pretty easy to work with, lightweight but also pretty breakable. To avoid any damages I covered the blade with wonderflex. You see, this stuff is usable for just about everything!

And as always I had to work with Gesso and to sand this, too. It was not a big deal, because I used an orbital sander but I'm pretty sure, this step is pretty anoying if you don't have one. Then I used hot glue to connect it with solid wood and create a grip. The rest consisted of some modeling clay for the blad details, leather and acrylic paint (which was made my husband by the way). It's a pretty easy prop, but Benni gave it such a nice paint job, that I really felt in love in the result. He is a really awesome painter!

And then just a few hours left for the last steps for my commission. I created the base already some days ago and now I was really happy, that I just need to add the details and the paint job.

As always the first job was to draw a pattern. A breast plate is a bit tricky and I didn't want to experiment as much as I already did for my Aion armor. So this time I used the same techquiue I already used for my Alexstrazsa top: I covered it with painters tape, draw the pattern on, cut it out and copied it at the Wonderflex parts. Now I had a perfect copy of my bra and was able to keep on working with it. Now I had to add some additional armor layers and the details.

And this was the final result. I also painted part of it, but didn't make any photographs. I was too ashamed about my paint job... Sadly Benni already worked on my sword at this moment and was not able to help me. Oh, I'm bad at painting. Almost as bad as I am at sewing...

Enough of the sad stories! Despite of the lack of many skills, I was able to finish my costume, my prop, my commission and my cosplay article in time. Yeah, I worked till 3 pm, but I was done. Sadly the weather of the following convention was not the best, but a photoshoot will follow soon. Hopefully I'll manage to get better pictures than this one. So, look forward for a nice upcoming gallery and my next project I'm already working on: Druid Tier 9! Be busy and creative, guys! :)

Three Magical Weeks

2011-07-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

Uh, so much stuff happend in the last week and as always I was super, super busy. And I still am.

The exams of my study started and I had to learn a lot. I decided to create a new costume for the next conventions. I created my own wedding dress for my wedding (which was now two weeks ago and I got more new awesome jobs.

Now my exams are over and I'm able to spend all my time and creativity in my new project: Wizard from Diablo III:


Bildunterschrift hinzufügen

I decided on this cosplay pretty sponanous. There were only a few weeks left for the next convention and I was not in the mood to keep on working on my Druid Tier 9 or my Demon Hunter. And I wanted to create a further costume for Blizzcon and Dragoncon, which should be corfortable and wouln't need a lot of space in my suitcase. And then I discovered this artwork from the awesome Blizzard artist Glowei. It was just perfect and I was sure I would be able to finish this costume in three weeks.

So, two weeks are over now thus far I was pretty succesful.

At first I did a lot of research and especially the fabric choice was a pretty important decision. My final choice was a combination of silk satin and china jaquard:

The pattern of the dress was not easy in addition. The artwort is full of light and dynamic and it's not easy to imagine what kind of pattern I need for the right shape of the dress. Well, I gave my best and hoped, it would look at least a bit similar to the reference.

Sadly my reference picture has a pretty bad resolution, but the artwork itself is full of tiny details. So, it was really hard for me to guess what I had to create. At the end I used my fantasy to bring some parts of this artwork to life. And wonderflex, ha ha. The big metallic parts are made out of it and the rest is made of a ton of beads, chains and cord. I also was not sure, if I like the result, but when all parts slowly came together I was more and more satiesfied with my work.

I'm also not really good in sewing. I'm able to create huge armors, gigantic swors shiny glowing stuff, but I'm scared of the easiest sewing jobs. So the top was pretty hard for me and it was also not really easy to work with china jaquard and silk.That's the reason why I'm really proud of this result, despite of it's really bad sewed and has a lot of flaws.

Here you see one of my "fantasy results". I used a lotus for many parts, because it fits well to this costume and is used often for chinese artworks. I still have no idea what's exactrly in the original artwork, but I guess a lotus flower is a acceptable reaplacement.

And before you ask: Yes, I covered the Wonderflex with about ten layers of Gesso before I painted it. I simply used acrylic metallic colors and fnished it with gloss. Both was applied with a brush.

Maybe you noticed it guys, but my fabric choice has a critical mistake: I don't have any dragons or lines and is just red. In addition the china jackqard has too many, too tiny dragons and lines. I really tried to find a fabric with these paintings, but had no chance. So the only way was to paint the fabric by myself. As you can see I used a dragon template in three diffrerent sizes (I bought the two of them, the biggest one was created by my husband for me). I started the paint today until my colors ran out. Now I have to buy more tomorrow and hope to be able to finish it.

You see, the costume is almost done and I'm really, really satiesfied with the result. Now I just need some further details, the boots and bracers. The artwork shows also three weapons, but I know I have no time to create them. Despite of I'll try to built the staff this week. So wish me luck and look forward for the first final photos. And as always you can follow my progress live on my cosplay progress page on facebook.

And before I'll leave you, here are some photos of my self made wedding dress and of my wedding:

You see, I'm a married woman now. Alexstrasza found her Korialstrasz and I hope to share many wonderful cosplay projects with my husband soon. So be good and don't flirt too much with me next time, ha ha! :)

And now I have to keep on working and hope you are also creative and busy as always! See you soon, guys!

Create your own gem stones!

2011-06-12T03:57:00.000-07:00

Some time has passed since my last post again and many things have happened. I had two further jobs as Alexstrasza at MCMExpo in London and the Triple Play V in Leipzig, kept on working on my old projects and started with new ones and just had a great time again.

And I still have big plans for this year!

Bildunterschrift hinzufügen

Druid Tier 9 with Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest from World of Warcraft

Wizard from Diablo III

Demon Hunter from Diablo III

Ha ha, you see I keep on sticking with Blizard this year and I guess I will bring the Wizard and my Druid Tier 9 to Blizzcon. Hotel, flight, car and tickets are already booked and I cannot wait for an amazing week in California again!

Unfortunately I haven't made a lot of progress in the last time, so I'm not able to show you so much this time. But many of you asked me, how I created the gems of my Alexstrasza costume and that's the main part of this post: How to create your own gems! (And I already have to excuse for my english, but this part was pretty hard to write because of all the new terms for me. And I hope you know at least what I'm talking about!)

At first, you have to know what materials you need: Resin, resin colors or nail polish, modeling clay, mold boxes, silicone, metallic foil, pastic cups, scale, wooden sticks, gloves, sand paper and acrylic spray lack. It's a lot of stuff you have to buy and surely it's not really cheap to buy all this for some little gems. So, better try to share the costs with your friends or just don't forget that you will need this stuff in the future later, too. I bought this stuff last year and I'm sure it will last for many further projects in the next years. (Btw: Click here for the link of the ebay shop for this materials. )

Now let's talk about the first step: Your original form. I used the modeling clay Apoxie Sculpt for this step. It's pretty easy to work with, have a clean surface when it's dried and it's very solid. As you can see, I also created some golden fixing for my gems with this form, too and Wonderflex was just perfect for this part (like many more costume parts, ha ha!).

Now were coming to the mold. Put your orignal forms into the mold box and make sure that there is no space between the ground of the box and your form. You better add some plasticine or something similar between both to get rid of the space. Now cover your original gem with some molding wax or power. Then it's much easier to seperate your gem from the dried out silicone later. You can also put a stick or something else into the modling box, so it will be easier to take the mold out of the box. The next step is just to follow the instructions on your silicone box and cover your gems with the mixture.

Depending on the silicone you have to wait a while until your mold gets solid. Better wait longer then needed and remove your mold carefully from the molding box when it became solid. As you can see I tried to mix some colors with the mold, but I had many failures at this time of experimenting.

The left one is the result of the picture before. You see, that your resin becomes too dark and less transparence if you add too much colors. The two purle ones at the top are tries with less color, but I still wasn't satiesfied with the result and finally decided for the esiest and best way I found after my researches. Here you'll find a tutorial. So, I just made a cast out of resin without any colors (you also just have to follow the steps of your resin instruction) and found the next problem.

Some of my gemstones had a rough surface and wasn't completely transparent. Sandpaper helped me to get a clean surface again, but as you can see in the left picture, the surface wasn't really... gem-like anymore. But some layers of arcrylic spray finish solved this problem, too! You can also use it to make your gems a bit more shiny!

Now I covered the back of my gem with different colors of nail polish. I used 6 different ones and added some highlights like glitter or pretty dark colors. I didn't mix the colors, but always waited until the last layer of nail polish dried and covered everything with a base coler when I was satiesfied with the result.

At the end I just glued a metallic foil to the back and added the golden fixing.

Yeah, and these are all the gems I made. None of them looks like the other and I love their multi-colored look. I guess they would have looked more natural if I haven't used the glitter nail polish, but I love the glitter, ha ha!

Yeah, and that's the final result. I hope, this little tutorial will help you a little bit with your own projects and I'm very sorry that I didn't explain the mixing of the silicone and the resin very well or missed some other parts. This tutorial was really hard for me to write and I'm sure that the instructions at the back of your material cans is the best tutorial you can find for this step. And I hope you can see, that it's really not hard to create gems by yourself and it's worth to buy all these materials for this step.

At the moment I still have a lot to do because of all my projects and my job as Alexstrasza. The next event will be the Dark Moon Faire in Rimini from 1st till 3rd July and I'm already pretty excited. Ha ha, and my wedding at July 7th is also still waiting for me, so I'm already a bit... stressed. However I keep on posting all my progress on my facebook progress page and if you're insterested just visit me there!

So, thanks again for reading and have fun and good luck with your own projects! Keep being busy and creative, guys!

A Dragon Queen is born!

2011-05-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

Uuuuuuh, a long time past since my last entry and I'm glad to say you, that my Alexstrasza costume is finally done! Today I had a really nice photoshooting my boyfriend and his brother, already had a job with this costume at Dark Moon Fair Koln and I'm just super happy that I'm able to keep on working on my old projects. But at first... I want to show you, how I worked!

In my last entry I showed you my techniques to create the armor out of foam and I told you, that I already had to redo my bra. Some time later I noticed, that I'm also not satisfied with other parts of my costume. I was not really happy with my leg armor because it was pretty hard "to control" such large pieces of foam. Wonderflex was much easier to handle and so I tried it a second time with a different material:

This result ftis just perfect to my legs, is very comfortable and very stable. And I also redid the upper leg armor.

As you can see I used to parts of Wonderflex for this part. And I also managed to apply the golden borders much more cleaner than before, because I worked with hot glue and was able to stretch the foam this time.

And this was the final result. God, the golden parts took so much time and it was very frustrating to be alsmost done for three weeks! All of my armor was complete done, but only the golden parts were missing. And this was the reason, why I was not able to finish it in time for the very first convention of this year: Animuc near Munich.

Everything was done!

My gloves were done...(The claws are made of Wonderflex btw.)

My bracers were done...

My necklace was done...

My tiny, armored panty was done...

And my shoes were done...

Argh, just everything was done! Just... some tiny, little parts were missing and I gave it up at 2 am in the morning and went to bed.

The convention at the upcoming weekend was pretty awesome, despite of I was pretty sad that Alexstrasza wasn't there with me. But now I had enough time for the very last steps.

I redid my pauldrons, improved the fixing of some armor parts and changed some things I didn't liked before.

And then... finally I was done and started with my very first job for Cryptozoic as Alexstrazsa at Dark Moon Fair Koln. God, and it's so awesome that I can show you this picture and tell you, that I was just working!

Woah, this weekend was really awesome! I had so much fun with all the nice players there, the staff team was just awesome and I got some amazing presents. Ha ha, and I lost only two times in these two days agains the players and now I cannot wait to fight against the next heros. The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game is just full of fun and despite of I'm still a beginner I complete fall in love in this game! :)

Okay, but now back to Alexstrasza: I guess many of you couln'd not wait to see the first photos and so I also was not able to wait longer for a photoshooting. It's still too cold in Germany and so I tried it this time at a professional photo studio of the brother of my boyfriend. And before you ask: Yeah, I wanted to use a bodypaint to give me a tan, but it didn't worked like I hope (my face became red and not brown!) and the date for the photoshooting was already fixed. I hope, I will be able to find a better bodypainting color for the next time. But I guess the result is fine even without the right skin color. So, just take a look!

I hope you also liked the result also as much as I do!

At the end I want to thank some awesome guys and companies for all their support:

Thanks to Cryptozoic Entertainment for this awesome commision!

Thanks to Apotheosis Agency and Jo-Jo Chen for all their trust, motivation and kindness!

Thanks to Dazian Fabrics and myCostumes for the material support!

Thanks to Benjamin and JakobSchwarz for this wonderful photoshoot!

And thanks to all of you for your wonderful feedback!

I LOVE YOU!!!

And now I have go back to work. Druid Tier 9 male and female from World of Warcraft is still waiting for me. Be busy too, guys! :)

Oh, and if you want to read the full story of this costume just follow my cosplay progress page on facebook!

Alexstrasza - A Dragon Queen will be born

2011-03-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

My last post was long ago and I guess it's really time to show you something new!
Like always I'm really busy with making costumes. But I haven't made so much progress with my Demon Hunter and my Druid Tier 9, because I had to cancel all my current projects for a special commission: An Alexstrasza costume for all upcoming events of the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game in Europe! And yeah, that's right, I got an awesome new job (and quit my old boring office job) and become a member of the wonderful Apotheosis Agency. It was a long, long dream to quit my old job and find something better, something more creative, but I didn't expect getting my dream job. So, I'm still not able to believe it, but all I can say is: AWESOME!

My very first duty was, to create a costume for my upcoming jobs at the european WoW TCG events of Cryptozoic: This costume is Alexstrasza, the Lifebinder from World of Warcraft.

I got this job about 2 months ago and so it was the time when I still... how should I put it... was in my after-Christmas-sweets-time. So, I was still pretty fat and started to work out a lot on my crosstrainer to be get back into shape again. After 2 months of hard work and diets I was pretty successful and already lost over 12 pounds (4 pounds left) and at that time I started my research and plans for the costume.

There were many problems: What materials should I use for the armor? How can I create the pattern at the armor parts? How should I attach the horns and style the wig? How should I create the golden borders at the armor? And many, many more questions. After about 3 weeks of research and experimenting I chose this material for the armor base: EVA foam
I guess it's the same like EVA foam, "Goldy foam" (cosplay.com) or Lion Board. Or it just works in the same way. It's very flexible, durable and you can form it with heat, so it's just perfect for a comfortable armor. Because of the pattern and my good experience with my last costumes I chose my furniture / teflon leather for the cover. And because of all the time I spent researching I started with something I'm well skilled and have fun: Carving expanding foam!

As you can see, my horns were the very first part to get a shape.

Then I tested my learned methods at the first armor part, the head piece, and was very satiesfied with the result. I just used Wonderflex (order this awesome material at the right side, ha ha! XD) for the base, covered it with teflon leather, soldered the patterns with a soldering gun and added shadows with Copic markers.

Now it was time to start with my gem stone experiments and many different mixtures with colors followed:

I searched a long time for the right way and my final decision was this tutorial. In this picutre the blue one was colored with nail polish. And this was the final result:

I'm pretty happy that I got so much time for this costume (3 months) and so I wanted to create this costume as good as possible and just became obessed with it. So, I kept on experimenting with the EVA foam and the right way to create the armor. I started with the bra and sadly it ended in a fail:

Unfortunately I still have many problems with sewing and I'm also pretty bad in creating patterns. This one was just too big, wouldn't fit and was just... wrong. The next version was much better:

As you can see I used an ordinary bra for the base and covered it with teflon leather. Now came the hard part: The golden borders. Again I researched and tried again until I found a way I was satiesfied with:

The method I used to create the borders was very time consuming and I needed a bit of skill and luck with the material to do it right. I cut long stripes with a triangle shape out of the foam and used fluid glue to cover it with stretchy golden fabric. To create these borders burned most of the time I needed for this costume! And this was the result of my work and my diet:

I'm still working on this costume and so the bra is still not finished, but I kept on working on further armor parts with the same techniques:

That's the current status of my project and as you can see I'm done soon. And I really cannot wait for this day!

I'm not able to focus myself on one goal and just finish one costume part, so I'm always working on different parts at the same time. So I finished my tiara in the same time (all the golden parts you see is just golden painted Wonderflex) and started with my wig.

This time I didn't use a wig with cheap quality (like all my other wigs) from China. No, now I got a wonderful and very durable one (it got a lof of pain later! XD) from the german cosplay shop mycostumes.

And because of all my experiments with it, I was really happy to have chosen this wig. I tortured it with Copic markers (tried to dye it), styled it with hot water, hair dryer and hair straightener and brushed it many, many times. Dispite of this it still looks like new and I was able to find the right technique to style and attach the horns.

So, Benni got a new paint job and did it very well (like always) and it was time to attach them.

The horns were one of my biggest problem and I really tried a lot of methods to fix them: Magnets, bobby pins, hair bands, belts and much more. The final solution was to sew the horns direcly to the wig like in this wonderful progress I found on cosplay.com. So you see guys: Posting progress is something really awesome and you help guys like me with your projects!

After I solved the biggest problem I added the details, styled the wig and was really satiesfied with the result. There are still some tiny things to do, but I guess it looks already nice.

And it's a great feeling to wear them, ha ha! But they are a bit too heavy because of the size of the horns and all the details! I still have to test if I'm able to wear them for a whole day. Hopefully it will work!

Now I only have to show you my cloak (used chiffon and dyed it to make it a bit darker at the bottom) and hope you enjoyed to take a look at my progress. You'll find more at my facebook progress site soon and the finshed costume will be done in the next weeks, too!

And then I had an awesome photoshoot with Andy Kämmer and my Druid Tier 8 costume:

Okay, and I guess now I'm done! More progress will follow soon!

So, follow, like and add me and be busy with your own projects, too! See you next time!

Bring your Character to life!

2011-01-28T09:16:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it can be difficult to get good photos of one's costume. Conventions are always full of people, thus often there is no space for taking pictures without having someone in the background. Or you just have no time, because you have friends who want to hang around with you. So I gave up trying to get nice photos of myself at cons and tried another way: Making private photo shoots. And that's our topic today!

Most of you have probably seen the results of my photo shoots (if not, you can find my galleries on the right side of this page or if you follow this link) and I got a lot of awesome feedback for them. Thank you again for all your kind words and the motivation you give me to keep working!

Maybe you already know these photos and - hopefully - like them. But taking them is really not a big deal. So I want to share my knowledge and experience with you to help you get some nice photos of your beautiful costumes.

When I started with my first photo shoots the first step I did was to buy an SLR camera, I use a Canon 450d. I guess it is this camera on amazon.com (the German model has a different name as you can see) and it was one of the best investments I ever made for my costume photos. Even after many years of use, I still had no idea of what I was doing or which adjustments I needed for certain lighting conditions or backgrounds. However, if you have spare time, you can experiment with your camera to find the right setting sooner or later. (If you're interested: Here is an awesome tutorial for SLR cameras by German photographer Andy-K) I have often heard people say that it is really not necessary to have an expensive camera and I agree, but at least you need one which can save your photos in the CR2 data format. Forget JPG!

The advantage of the CR2 data format is that you can rescue almost every photo that has bad lighting. You can experiment a bit, which gives you some freedom in your work. If you are yet unaware of how to properly use an SLR like I did, then it is definitely worth rescuing botched photos. Here is a little example of my old Druid Tier 6 photo shoot:

You see, the photo does not look very exciting. I just walked around a bit and my boyfriend Benni took some random pics of me. He also had no idea how to use the camera, so I told him just to give his best. It was a very sunny day in summer and unfortunately the camera (with the settings I used) was not able to capture the wonderful green of the forest and the amazing blue of the sky. Everything was too bright and looked just bland and boring. However! Editing the image gave us a big surprise.

By using Camera Raw on Adobe Graphic Suite (there are many other programs with similar functions) I was able to rescue the pictures.

Here you can see that it is possible to adjust the temperature, light, contrast, saturation and much more. (Sorry that I did not use my own screenshot, I only have a German version of this program) You can even turn overly dark pictures into bright images, giving your work a more professional look. Just try it out and you will achieve amazing results!

And with some cropping you can improve it further:

You can even turn a green spring picture to a brown autumn picture (I admit, this was a bit too much experimenting ;)

So, choosing the right camera and editing program are the most important steps towards getting good pictures. For a shoot, however, you will need someone who takes pictures of you. In my case it was Benni, even though he hated taking photos and never worked with an SLR before. It was very difficult for him to meet my demands, because I already knew what I wanted in a picture, what atmosphere and feelings I wanted to convey. That is why he had to take about 300 photos and we spent about two hours for the shoot. As I said before, this happened ages ago and my equipment was not the best. So be sure to take enough memory cards, camera batteries and additional lenses with you. Our latest photo shoot with improved equipment took about 3 hours and we made over 2000 photos with two different photographers!

At the beginning of the shoot I simply made some adjustments while trying to imagine how I wanted the scene to look.

As you can see, I wore a Druid Night Elf costume from World of Warcraft. Because my English is subpar, I will simply quote what WowWiki has to say about the druid:

"Druids are keepers of the world who walk the path of nature, following the wisdom of the Ancients and Cenarius, healing and nurturing the world. To a druid, nature is a delicate balance of actions, in which even the smallest imbalance can create storming turmoil from peaceful skies."

Given this character description, it was just natural (pun intended) to choose a forest as the location for the shoot. The background is very important for a good photo, because it increases the atmosphere a lot. Remember what character you want to portray. If you are a strong warrior with a sword, an old castle is the perfect setting. Magical girls look amazing in front of a bright and colorful background, whereas a cowboy needs an old, deserted western town. Do some research on your character and look for a place which will fit him or her.

In one of my latest photo shoots I also had the role of a mighty, immortal warrior, a female Asmodian gladiator from the online game Aion - Tower of Eternity. It was hard to find a fitting background, because the world of my character is full of fantasy elements and unlike the real world. I tried to find a location which looks like an old battlefield, but could not find one, so I used a ruined old castle near Nuremberg.

Here is an example which most of you probably know:

I was very happy with the location, but as you can see the the final photo was too bright and again, looked very boring.

During the shoot I had the idea to experiment (or better: force Benni to experiment) with the special effects tools in my graphics software. So I used many different poses and just tried to look like a real strong and proud Asmodian.

This is the result after the editing with Camera Raw. Now it was Benni's turn again.

You can see that he merely improved the light and the contrast and added some layers of color later. I still wanted my "real Asmodian" location, so I searched for fitting artwork from the game and Benni put it in the background. Some special effects (and "sexy hip shop") followed and it was done! You see, it is fairly easy and I am sure you can do it, too!

Another very important point is to feel comfortable during the shoot and to be just yourself (even if you are playing someone else). Try to smile realistically and think of something nice that makes you happy. Your eyes will betray you if you just fake the emotion, so it is a good idea to exercise in front of a mirror before the shoot. Do not make poses you do not like or think they look weird. Act naturally and keep in mind that every photo can be deleted if you do not like it. Trust your photographer but do review the pictures he took. I always check the pictures Benni takes and how the results look. Getting the original, unedited pictures from the photographer is great, but do not take this for granted. If the photographer is your friend, then it is much easier getting original files. This is also the reason why I edit and upload all my photos (except when using special effects as above) by myself.

As you see, you do not need a lot of expertise to get some nice photos of yourself. And if you can find a good location and have a friend to help you it will definitely lead to awesome pictures!

Now I will continue working on my costumes (the next progress post will come soon, but if you are interested, just follow my facebook progress page). Until then... thank you for reading and stay busy and creative!

The Thermoplastic Theorie

2010-12-07T12:42:00.000-08:00

Today I want to show you something new. Last time I experimented a bit and became acquainted with some nice, new thermoplastic materials: Fossshape, Kobracast and Polystyrol. You also saw my Wonderflex and Friendly Plastic projects, and I guess it's a good time to compare all materials with each other. So... let's start!

Here you see all of them. I used a hot air blower for my work and despite all of them being thermoplatic they have different attributes and are suitable for different functions.

The first material I want to show you is Wonderflex.

Wonderflex:
If you know my costumes you also know Wonderflex and maybe you already worked with it. As you can see it has two different surfaces. I prepare the left for a part you can see later, because you need less work (I use Gesso for this step) to get it smooth. Now you can order a smoother Wonderflex from Dazian and mycostumes and it needs a bit less work then the old version. This material is also a bit elastic, but you need a lot of force to extend it, so it's only possible with smaller parts. You can reheat it as often you want and you need no glue to connect different Wonderflex parts with each other. So, it's a really nice material for huge armor and also for smaller parts. Here are some facts:
Thickness: ca. 1mm
Elasticity: 30%
Need of heat: ca. 10 seconds
Time to work with: 1 or 2 minutes
You'll find a lot of tutorials and progress pictures at my tutorial page or in my last projects of my blog. This is an expample what you can do with Wonderflex:

The next material I want to introduce is Friendy Plastic.

You can buy it in form of pallets, sheets or strips. It's very hard and white when it's cold and you can activate it with heat. I use the pallet form, put a bit of it into a metallic ladle and heat it with my hot air blower at the backside. When it's transparent it's hot enough and you can work with it. It's better to use gloves, because it's very hot and gluey. So put some water on your fingers and then sculpture every shape you need. But take care: If you need a big or thick form, it's difficult to reheat it and work a second time with it. It becomes transparent at the outside at first and then the heat moves into the rest of the shape. Unfortunately the other layer will deform and collapse and the inner part is still hard. So, be sure what you do and know that you'll mostly have no second chance without to redo it completely a second time!
Friendly Plastic is a really great material if you also work with Wonderflex. You can combine it, add plastic details, correct bad, bumpy parts of your armor or sculpt little parts.
Shop: You can order it from mycostumes, cosplaysupplies, eBay and many other shops

Thickness: -
Elasticity: Like a chewing gum!
Need of heat: ca. 20 seconds for pallets
Time to work with: 1 or 2 minutes

Now we're coming to Kobracast.

Maybe you know it from medical bandages, but it's a very special material which will be used for threedimensional work for movies, theaters etc.. It's quite similar to Wonderflex, but also completely different. At first, it's better to heat it with hot water and to use gloves. It sticks a lot on your fingers, despite not as much as Wonderflex on other Kobracast parts. The main difference is that is very lighweight and it's very elastic. So, if you've always worked with Wonderflex, you'll get a complete new application with Kobracast. It's a perfect material to create masks and organic forms and you can also use it for armor. But just as with wonderflex you have to use a coat at the parts which will be seen later. Kobracast is also very new for me, so I cannot show you so much. But you find some really nice samples here.
Shop: You can order it from mycostumes or from www.cast4art.de/
Thickness: ca. 1mm
Elasticity: ca 80%
Need of heat: ca. 3 seconds
Time to work with: 30 seconds

This way my first time I worked with:

Now it's Polystyrols turn:

You can find Polystyrol in home depots or hobby stores (... at least in Germany) in different thickness and colors. The sheets are very hard and solid and they aren't elastic, don't glue at each other or are very well to form. But if you need a clean, smooth surface or just a solid and stable base, this material would be the right choice. It's works also very well for easy armor or weapon parts or if you just have to build something... square or technical. However it's a bit difficult to work with. You need a hot of heat for a very short time period to work with and you have to take care that you don't use too much heat.
Thickness: ca. 0.3 - 5 mm
Elasticity: -
Need of heat: ca. 15 seconds
Time to work with: 5 seconds

And the last one is Fossshape.

Unfortunately I'm still not able to tell you so much about this material, because you need a steamer to work with it and I still have to buy one. It's a bit like a fleece made out of thermoplastic thread. I already saw a lot of very awesome things made out of Fossshape, so I wanted to inspire you a bit, even it's not my own work. So, please take a look:

by Salvatore Salamone

by taeliac

You can order Fossshape from DazianFabrics. And I hope'll be able to show you my own results soon! :)

So, I hope you liked my little material introduction a bit and find some inspiration and help for your own project!

So, and as you saw in the pictures above I'm working on a new armor part, my left Demon Hunter pauldron. Here is a little making of for you:

After my little presentation you see that I used a lof of the thermoplatic materials above: Kobracast for the basic form, Friendly Plastic for the teeth, Polystyrol for the white smooth sheets and Wonderflex for the details. Now I create a clean, nice surface with some help to paper mache and try to sculpture a real looking texture for my horns. You can find more informations on my facebook progress page if you're interested. And because there are soooo many guys who are asking me about my paper mache technique I also made a new video tutorial. Don't forget to acitvate the subtitles! :)

And now... I hope I could help and inspire you a bit!
Be busy and keep creative. Bye bye and see you guys later! :)

Expanding foam love!

2010-12-01T03:36:00.000-08:00

As always I'm still busy, but I'm not able to keep on working on only one project. I love to carve expanding foam, to form armor with wonderflex or to sew a new robe and I wish, I would have a clone, he he! So, one day I create an armor piece for my Demon Hunter, another day I build a weapon for my Druid costume and the other day I just want to carve something. But there is still a lot of time for my next project, so I enjoy to work without stress and a coming deathline.

At first I started with the plan of a weapon, I'm building for my boyfriends Druid T9 costume. I wanted to build a 1-hand mace, but wasn't sure, which one I should choose. Therefore I asked my friends and followers on facebook and the most of them wanted to see number 4 in real life. My boyfriend liked this one the most, too, so I begun with my new project: Snappy! (I still don't know it's real name... XD)

This time I wanted to work with a blueprint, because of Snappy's very detailed design. So Benny (my boyfriend) made a nice blueprint in Adobe Illustrator for me.

I copied the outlines on a pink insulation foam sheet and added a wooden staff inside. Maybe it would work also without the staff, but I'm always afraid that my props can break. It's better to be safe than sorry!

Then I clayed a further sheet on both sides. Snappy needed a bit of thickness and I had to cover the wood inside. Maybe you wondering now, why I didn't used expanding foam this time. I guess, I just wanted to try something new and I need something more durable than expanding foam. Snappy's model have some small and fine details like the buttom or the mouth and expanding foam would be break very easiely at this tiny parts.

But at the end, I was sick of carving pink insulation foam! It's harder and so it's much more difficult to work with it. So, I'll try to finish it's final form with expanding foam. Ha ha, sometimes I really don't know what I do, how I start and how I finish a project. But I love to experiment!

And then I had no longer any desire for Snappy... I needed something different, again!

So I keept on working on my Druid T9 pauldrons for me and Benny. The first one was already done and so I saw my mistake. The ones for me were too huge! The pauldrons in my reference are also very large, but these things looked like gigantic monsters on my shoulders! So I carved a bit, I cutted some cardboard and some foam away and was finally satiesfied. Then I added some card board pieces, because I need to find the right shape inside of expanding foam later.

And then I sprayed again!

And carved!

Ha ha, many of you guys told me, that they would love to see how I work, especially how I carve my expanding foam. You wished, you got it! I filmed my complete carving progress and my computer rendered the video 3!!! days until I could upload it on youtube. So, if you're interested, just enjoy! :)

Now I have to prepare the next tutorial, FAQ or... eh... I don't really know, what this will be. I just want to show you some new and very nice themorplastic material I discovered in the last time: Fossshape, Kobracast and Polysterol! Argh, and I also wanted to film a paper mache tutorial! I need more time! Hopefully I can show it to you soon!

So, stay busy and creative guys, and see you next time! :)

Busy, busy!

2010-11-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

Maybe I should learn to take a break someday. At the moment I'm really, really exhausted. My studies and my work require a lot of time and I can't wait for the two weeks of Christmas holidays. I have a lot to do, but despite this I put almost every free minute into my costumes. My next costume needs to be done by March and I still don't know which one it should be. Unfortunately I have no Wonderflex anymore to keep on working on my Demon Hunter armor. So it was Druid T9 again:

My robe is still a huge unfinished puzzle and it annoys me a bit that I'm so slow in the sewing process. I can build almost every basis for a prop/armor/weapon in a few hours, but I need days for simple fabric parts. And I have to create this costume twice, for me and my boyfriend. I guess it will be a long hard way until both costumes are done.

Meh... I also need six of these leather parts and this one alone needed 3 evenings of work. As you can see I used my old furniture leather again. I found it in many colors and thicknesses at my fabric shop, and I love its nice wild leather look, so it's just perfect for my druid costumes. This time I had to create a bark look and used a soldering gun and Copics for this step. Hopefully the leather won't lose the Copic color in the sun again (I had to repaint my Druid T8 several times!). It was really a lot of work for me to solder and for my boyfriend to paint. It sucks a bit that this piece is only a part of the costume's backside. Nobody will notice all this work, but I can't leave the hotel with a costume I'm not satisfied with.

I also made another video for you:

Maybe I didn't explain enough things this time, but it was more important for me to show how I work. Many of you asked for it and I hope that you can see now that it's really, really easy to work with expanding foam! :)
I guess I should film my carving process next time, as well. It's really fun to see how a piece of expanding foam transforms into an organic shape.

Now I'm really looking forward to the last convention for this year, where I will give another workshop about prop making there. I'm also looking forward to many nice hours behind my sewing machine. So, I hope you'll stay busy as well!
See you guys later! :)

Updates and a new project!

2010-11-10T00:52:00.000-08:00

Hello guys! You'll notice I changed and updated a lot here. Over this post you'll find some pages I added and I wished a long time. And I hope you also like the new features on the right side and my new design. You should especially take a look to the Tutorials page, where you'll find my collected tutorials and really nice sites which maybe help or inspire you for your own project. I still have to change, add and update some things, so be sure to check back my site regulary if you're interested! :)

In the last days I tried my best to fullfill your desires: At first I created my first video tutorial:

Please be not too shocked. You see, I have no blue skin and no spiky, long ears and yeah, it's really so easy to work with wonderflex how it looks. So try it by yourself! You can buy Wonderflex in Europe from www.mycostumes.de and in the US from Dazian Fabrics.

And maybe some of you knows, that I already hold some workshops on german conventions. Now I want also to try this abroad and offered a convention in France, in England and in the US my service. I really would enjoy to meet you guys there and tell you a bit how I work, give you adviced and tips and answer your questions. It's always so awesome to get a further chance to help someone, so I hope I will get a positive response, despite of I'm a bit scared of talking in english in front of audience. But there is always a first time and I also managed this in german often enough before!

There were also some of you, who met me on MCM and I really enjoyed our talk, dispite of it was maybe a short one. It was awesome to met so many new and old friends and I hope to manage it to come next time back! MCM was also really nice and it was amazing how much effort and love the guys from Totally Cosplay and EuroCosplay put in their project. They did so much for us and everyone of them was just awesome. At the end we really made the first place at the maquerade contest! I still cannot believe it, especially because we get to go on stage in the last second before we undressed our costumes. It was just amazing! Thank you so much, MCMLondon!

And then I started with my new project....

At the moment I saw the Demon Hunter presentation via livestream at Blizzcon I felt in love! I really love the design of the armor and the character, despite of I'm sure that I will be not the only Demon Hunter next year. Because of this reason and the fact, that I really would enjoy to build a new huge armor I choosed the heavy armor version of the Demon Hunter. Maybe I just want to create something special and find a new challenge, but at first I'm sure that I will have a lot of fun with the construction!

Here you see my first results:

(Right upper and lover bracer)

(Right claw)

(Left lower bracer and shield... or what this should be on the refrence...)

It's really more difficult to work with a single picture as a reference if you are huge spoiled by the WoW modeleviewer. Sometimes I build something I don't really know what this should be and can only guess. And for the back side I need some imagination. It's difficult, but I also love to work with wonderflex again. It's so easy and nice to work with, that I cannot wait for the further progress.

And now I'm looking forward for no convention stress anymore, Cataclysm's release, christmas sweets and some nice, creative months. Take care and see you again!

German Cosplay Championship and more

2010-10-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

Woah, the last weeks were really exhausting! Two months ago I got notice that we really made it to the finals of the German Cosplay Championship. But the only costumes we could use were our Asmodian plate set from Aion (our Druid Tier 8 costumes just weren't "perfect" and were full of mistakes). If you saw our first performance on youtube (video), then you know that we had to improve something. Especially my armor was very huge, heavy and so I could hardly move while wearing it. And it was very, very painfull and a huge part of the fixing was just wrong. I had to improve a lot.

A main problem was that I just glued the fixing, a lot of velcro tape, at my wonderflex armor. So I lost my armor a lot when I walked or just moved.

Now I reworked the whole fixing which was just glued. You see, I used D ring buckles, which were mounted inside of wonderflex. Here you can see it better:

I guess, if you have a really huge and heavy armor the fixing is one of the most important points to make your costume comfortable... or just wearable. It sucks, if you lost some of your costume parts, to don't be sloppy like me (but I also had only one night for the first version of my fixing). And better work redundant!

This was the first version of my pauldron fixing:

I used only one D ring buckle and a bit of velco tape.

Now I added larger velcro tapes (the larger the surface of your vecro tape is, the better is your fixing!), redundant D ring buckles and fixed buckles and tape with wonderflex on my armor. The most parts were also fixed with super magnets. They weren't strong enough for the fixing itself, but they helped to held a special position on my body so my armor couln't slip away.

And don't be scared to be brutal to your armor. I had a lot of problems to walk, because I always stumpled over my wings, which just hanged around. Then I mounted them on a small wooden board and I could run, jump and walk!

And why so much effort which nobody would see???

Because of this!

Photo by Cornelia Papiorek

I wanted to show, that we were able to do more than just to stand around and talk about weird stuff. I wanted a great, dramatic and epic performance and so we had to learn to move in our costumes. He he, and I guess we made it! Despite of us haven't won something at this contest, it was just a great weekend and we are really proud of our achievment and I hope to repeat it someday.

Now I should repair my old perfomance sword, which was only built to get broken and finish my real weapon for this costume.

And by the way... maybe you can also need this technique for one of your costumes: (Sorry for the bad quality of the photos!)

I saw these eyes of the team of brazialian World Cosplay Summit team this year and just HAD to build them, too. The guy with the glowing eyes had some LEDs inside of his mask, I guess. But I hadn't no mask and so I used just a bit of silicone.

Here you see my curcuit. I glued the silcone part at the sides of my face, painted them and hid the battery inside of my wig. It was very easy to build, but I love the final effect!

And now... I'm relaxing a bit. The cosplay year is almost over for me (LondonExpo will be my last convention this year and I will wear my old Tier 8 costume), and I enjoy my new free time. He he, but I have to admit that I got a fabric order today and cannot wait to start with my new projects. But it's just awesome to play a bit World of Warcraft, watch a bit TV and fell asleep with our sorrows death lines and expanding foam exploadings. So, I hope you'll also enjoy the patience in the next few month's and wish you a great time! :)

About my love to expanding foam

2010-10-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

In the last time there were a lot of people who asked me how I create my expanding form figures and and it is just amazing that these people came from all over the world! It's great to hear that you guys like my technique so much and want to try it by yourself. So I want to make it easy for you and try to explain something about my work with this awesome material.

At first: I use expanding foam from cans and I always choose the cheapest ones. My home depot is "Obi", but expanding foam is a base material for home building so you'll find it in every other home depot.

Better buy too much than too less cans. I mostly buy something between 5 and 10 cans and hope that it will be enough for the next days, he he. Shake it well before you start to work with and cover your ground with a sheeting or something else. You will be not happy when you get this stuff on your clothes, your carpet or your floor.
Then, you have to know that it can be difficult to find the right form in the carving progress. It's easier if you have a help. I draw my form on card board, cut it out and then I cover it with expanding foam.

You have to wait some hours until the foam gets dry and you are able to carve it. If you spray a bit water at the foam then this process will be accelerate.
When it's finally dry you can go to work. For carving I use normal cutter like this:

It's better to buy cheap ones and a lot of them. Sometimes I need about 10 or 20 cutter for a project, because I cut in foam when is still not dry inside and the cutter gets dirty and sticky. I clean them after half an hour or change them because they are not sharp anymore after too much carving.

When you start with carving try to carve a clean surface at first. Try to find your final form and search for the grey board inside. I cut some time as deap as I can inside of the foam and then I cut everything I not need away. It's better to split a complicated form in more work steps. As you can see I also carved at first only the head of my staff.

Then I added further foam to carve the horns and the spikes on it's back. Here my fault was, that I was just too lazy to add some card board inside of the new foam. So it was a bit hard to find the right way to carve it. Later I noticed, that I also need card board for stabilisation. The foam itself is very breakable and for smaller parts a finishing layer of newspaper and paper mache wouldn't be enough to save it from damage.

Here you see the finished carved foam. I guess I needed about 10 cans for this result. Mostly only 30 % of your sprayed foam is for your prop itself. The rest is dirt. A lot of dirt!

He he, I don't like trash bags so much. :)

Here is a other example for the right use of card board inside:

You'll find card board inside of the eagle head and the spikes. By carving such little details it's almost impossible to disclaim for help.

If you're done with the carving step we have to speak about the 3 final layers to save the foam inside: Masking (or painters) tape, pieces of newspaper and paper mache.

Here you see all 3 layers. But why do you need them?
Masking tape (or crepe tape or painters tape... oh, I hope I finally found the right english meaning!) covers the holes in the expanding foam and gives you a surface to work with. Layers of news paper parts give it a strong, solid and protecting coat. And paper mache makes your surface smooth or give you the chance to carve details or to model something. But try to find your final form while the carving process of the exanding foam. The better your base is, the less you need to model with paper mache and the less is the weight of your prop!

Don't save time for the news paper layer and be sure that it's the most important one!

And be sure, that the paper mache layer will need also a lot of time. I use a hot air gun to accelerate the dry process, but you have to take care if you use it, too. Too much heat and you'll get ulgy air holes inside of your paper mache. So blow-dry a bit until the paper mache gets white (it's grey when it's still wet), then wait until the water inside make it's grey again and keep on drying again. When your prop is finally covered complete with paper mache you can sand it and search for mistakes you have to correct. I use for sanding sand paper and a Delta sander. Then sand and sand and sand and add some details if you want to:

And after some time and patience you can finally paint your prop! Have fun! :)

I hope you understood everthing and if you still have questions feel free to ask!

Future projects

2010-09-26T02:51:00.000-07:00

This cosplay year is almost over and now I'm thinking about my next projects. But at first I have to finish some things:

In the last days I began with my second sword for my Aion plate set. This one have to be finisehd soon, because it's for my performance at the Germany Cosplay Championship in some weeks.

As you can see there were less steps to build it: I clayed two parts of pink (in Germany it's purple ^^) insulation foam on a balsa wood staff, carved the insulation foam (I always carve with a cutter from the home depot by the way), modeled a bit with expanding foam and covered it with crepe tape and newspaper. The result is a very lightweight sword built out of very cheap materials. I still have to cover it with paper mache and add some lights, but it's done very quick.

I also had to redo my Asmodian wig:

Now I just have to cut some hair and add little details. But I'm happy, that I managed it to style it a second time.

This year I finished my 4th Druid costume (I already did T1, T3, T6 and T8) and after so much of this similar project it would be boring, to create a further one. Especially, because I don't learn anything new and it's not exciting anymore. So, I really wanted to stop with these costumes, but one month ago I decided to visit Dragoncon next year. And I guess, the most of you know me as a Nightelf, so I just HAVE to meet you in a further Druid Tier set. My last one. Really! Believe me!

So, I waited for the new Druid Tier 11 sets and they turned out... as shit.

I already hated the design of the Tier 10 set, but this set is really not better. I'm really disappointed and hope, the next sets will be better again. The sets of the good old WoW times were so much nicer...

So, now there are not many sets I still can build. The most are already done, too ulgy or too easy. My only alternative is Druid Tier 9:

Despite of this boring and weird pauldron design I really like this set. It has a nice cut and colors, it glows and has a cool head piece. So... I couldn't wait and started with the first steps:

Here you see just a styrofoam ball, a bit grey board and at the end a lot of expanding foam. The first steps seems always quite simple, but it takes time to find the right form for the ball and the grey board and to cut and to clay it right. This step sets the form and size for the pauldron, so it is... very important.

And as you noticed, there are 4 pauldrons. I will build a second T9 for my boyfriend, so I have to build 4 of them. This means, I need a lot of expanding foam!

... and that I have to make a lof of dirt. Oh, I love to make dirt! :D

The final result is this one. I need two carving steps for it: One step for the base form and one step for the spikes, the borders and the eagle head. Do you see this grey stuff inside of the head and the spikes? It's grey board and always helps me to find the right shape inside of the expanding foam.

Now... only 3 of these things left... o.O

A further project for next year will be Beleth from Lineage II

He he, this project will be interresting...

And if you cannot wait for futher progress: Follow me on my progress site!

Kamui Cosplay |

Ah, by the way...
I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want to go Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want to go Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon. I want go to Blizzcon.....

See ya soon!

Some questions?

2010-09-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

In the last time I got some questions about the materials I use. It's hard for me, to find the right meaning or the right words for a specific material, because I just don't know if it's the right one or not. So, I want to show you some pictures!

Paper mache and modeling clay:

You see, paper mache is this stuff, which needs a bit water to become a sticky compound. The modeling clay I use is from the brand Efaplast and is very lightweight and easy to work with. But it also dries very fast and is very breakable.

Expanding foam:

I guess, you don't have my brand in your country. I use expanding foam from Lugato, because it's just the cheapest I could find. I heard in the US it calls great stuff. And as you can see, it's in a pressurized can.

Crepe tape:

It's just the stuff you use, if you want to paint your room. The brand doesn't matter.

I odered my Wonderflex on www.cosplaysupplies.com and if you live in Germany, you can try it on www.mycostumes.de.

For my makeup I use Kryolan Supracolor. Also if it's not perfect, I'm very satiesfied with the finish results.

And since my Aion plate set I use a body suit for the blue skin color. It's much more comfortable and easier to wear than real make up.

Now I'm working on a new sword for a cosplay skit: (Flarestorm's Sword from Aion)

This time I used balsa wood and insulation foam for the base. I'll need this weapon for a fight cosplay skit, so it's just perfect because it's very lightweight. And I'm very free and my work again. Sure, I often wish to be able to use wood or materials like Sintra or just something new. But I don't have the money to import something special from the US or have the space for new tools. It's a bit depressing, but I hope this will change soon.

As you can see, I used expanding foam to cover the wooden staff and to model this dragon head on the sword. Now I still have to find a better material than paper mache to cover it. It need something that is lighter but firmer.

And last weekend I finally wore my Aion cloth set costume:

It was very comfortable and so diffrent then a Warcraft costume. He he, and I felt so girlish. Yeah, I really like it and to hope to get a photoshoot soon, but the weather in Germany is just so bad!

And I got some very nice new Tier 8 picutres from Squirrel of Doom. Thank you for your awesome work!

By the way: I have an facebook account now:

Svetlana Quindt | Erstelle dein Profilbanner

So, follow me!

Thank you for reading!

Bring some light in your life!

2010-09-02T23:46:00.000-07:00

Today I want to show you a further tutorial: How to add lights to your costume! (And I have to warn you: This time it was really hard for me to translate this tutorial from german!)

I guess, I'm not the only one who believe that lights in costumes and props are awesome. And I guess that a lot of you are afraid of the seeming difficutly or the missing of know how. After trying it by myself I want to show, how easy it is!

The basics: There are a parallel and a serial connection. If you need up to 3 LEDs it would be better to use a serial cconnection, so you can use your power in the best way. If you need more then 3 LEDs you should use the parallel connection. With this you can use more LEDs but you also need more energy.

Take a look the the circuits:

Serial connection: (Sorry for the german words, the pictures are out of my german blog. "Schaltkreiselement" means circuit element)

Parallel connection:

What is important?
The problem is, that LEDs are built just for a special amount of voltage. Too much damange them. If you take a LED which tolerate only 3.5 V and you use a 9 V battery, then you have to kill the 5.5 V which are too much for the LED. So you have to use a fitting resistor, which absorbs the rest of the voltage. And sure you need a different resistor, if you use for example 2 LEDs, because they need more voltage. It's always depends of the amount of the LEDs, their forward voltage and the battery you use. But I don't want to paint you with theorie. I hated thist already in school. We make it very easy:
Resistor calculator
Download this programm and be happy! I always use this to calculate my resistors and it works great! And if you don't like it, google for another. There are a lot of them!

Now, what should you do, if you need more then 3 LEDs? 5 of them would need 17.5 V but a battery have only 9 V. The solution is a parallel connection. Look at my example:

You see, there are two parallel connections and every of them get 9 V, so you can use more LEDs. But like I said, if you use more LEDs, then you need more energy and your battery will be empty faster.

Now we're starting with the practice!

What do you need?
- LEDs
- Resistors
- Switches
- Batteries
- Battery boxes
- Wire
- Solder
- Soldering iron
- Shrinking hose
- Hot air blower
- And tools like cutter, pincers or knife
- Maybe a pinboard too, because to can test your circuits before soldering it

Here is a little picture:

By the way: All of this stuff is very cheap and it's really worth to spent this money for the finish result. Only the tools like a soldering gun can be a bit expensive. But maybe your parents or your friends can help you out!

Now, thing about how many lights and how much money you will need. Enter the date about your LEDs in the resistor calculator and prepare your workspace. Then we can start!

At the beginning you have to isolate the copper wire inside of your wire. I used a carpet cutter and cut a bit in the first 2 centimeter of the wire. Be very careful and don't damage the copper wire. Then draw the rubber off the wire and drill the copper a bit.

Now put a bit of the shrinking hose about both of your isolated wire ends. It's very important, that the isolated wires don't touch each other later so use enough hose to protect them. You'll see, that the LED have a long and a short "leg". The short one needs a negative pole (black wire) and the long one a positive (red wire). (The color of the wire doens't matter, but then it's easy for you to find the right pole.)

Now take your isolated wire, drill it at the leg (take care for the right pole!) and solder it with some brazing solder together.

Then you have to put the shrinking hose about the soldered part and heat it with your hot air blower.

When all of your LEDs are connected you have to test the lenght of your wires. Put your connection on your prop or costume, maybe reduce them and then keep on working.

If you have to connect some wires you can try it like in this picture. Drill their ends togeher, use some brazing solder, shrinking hose and your soldering gun. If you use a parallel connection you have to connects same poles with each other and if you use a serial connection you have to connect different poles together. Just look at my examples.

At the end you have to insert your resistor. It doesn't matter if you put it at the end or at the beginning of your connection. The poles are also not important. You only have to isolate it well (I covered the whole resistor and it's contacts with shrinking hose.)
Then only the switch and the battery box is missing.

I used a cheap 3 pole toggle switch. Here you need one of the left or the right legs one middle one. Connect them well and use enough shrinking hose. When you connect your battery box you also have to take care for the poles, but here you can just look at the right colors. By the way, this long, black thing is my resistor. And then... when everythink is correctly and well soldered...

...It glows!
You see, it's really not so difficult and with a bit of patience there will be no problems. Also you don't need to be a ingeneer. And if you have questions, feel free to ask!

I hope, you like my tutorial and I could help or inspire you a bit!

I'm a princess!

2010-08-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks I worked on a further costume: My Elyos cloth set from Aion - Tower of Eternity.

After finishing all of these costumes, which I tried to make them as original and accurate as possible I just searched for some fun. So, I just sat at my sewing machine, looked a lot of different movies on TV or heared some crazy music, and enjoyed the progress of making a costume. I didn't care much about the reference or tried to make it perfect. My only goal was having fun and getting a nice dress at the end. So, here is the progress!

Like all of my costumes, this also started with sewing some quares of fabric together. I'm really bad at this job, and have no idea of fabrics, patterns or techniques, but I always try to do my best and never give up. And as everytime I didn't use any patterns, so I'm really proud of finding the right way for this costume.

Here you see my top in a complicated form. In the middle is the back part and left and right you'll find a bra cup.

This is one of my sleeves and I guess, you can see, how much fun I had by creating this costume, he he!

And this is my head piece. I couldn't find good references for the ingame models so I designed one by myself. But I guess, it fits really well!

And now... it's done!
I love how shiny and glittering it turned out to be at the end and I really had a lof of fun sewing this, dispite of me not being a big fan of sewing. But it was awesome to be really free, also if it's not really similar to the reference. I don't really care about this and I'm looking forward to the next con in two weeks, when I'm able to wear this and for the final photoshooting. And then, I hope to finish my staff I began to build but didn't manage to finish in time.

Druid Tier 8: First Photoshoot

2010-08-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

After finishing my Druid Tier 8 costume I was so looking forward to a nice private photoshooting with my boyfriend. The weather was not the best, but I wanted to use the last week in Germany (I will make a trip for almost 4 weeks to California) for taking some photos:

Unfortunately the sun hid itself behind some clouds, so the contrast was not the best. But we will repeat this shooting soon enough.

You see, I finally added my moon, too. It was a very easy contruction of a serial connection with a battery and a switch, but the result was just stunning. I'm so happy that I built this last part, too!

For the next shooting I really have to build some glowing spheres, like the ones I already used for my shoulders. Surely they will give much better lighting effects than these tea candles.

He he! And our 'light painter' has to exercise a bit more!

But for the next costumes I definetely have to add light effects, too. The result is just stunning!

And now, after seeing the final photos, I SO want to visit Blizzcon again! It's so frustrating, that I'm not able to be there, just because of it's date in October. I will be in California this month, but in October my studies start again and I have no money just to fly for a weekend to LA again!

Druid Tier 8 finally done!

2010-08-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

It was a very long hard way and last weekend I finally finished my Druid Tier 8 costume. So here are some progress pictures:

I coverd my pauldron with a last finishing paper machè layer, added some lines into this with my dremel and installed a light effect.

It was a very simple circuit, but I love how it turns out at the end!

Then my boyfrieds started with his paint job and gave it an amazing look. I just love his work!

And this was the finish result.

Later my staff got a new look. I was not really satiesfied with her old paint and her round spikes, so she get new ones.

She also got finally her buttom, which I also made of expanding foam and paper maché like her head.

So she grew a bit!

My boyfriend gave her a new paint, too. Now she looks a bit more wild an natural.

As you can see she also got some light effects and so this was the finished result!

I also had to finish my robe and this had a LOT of details! Sometimes I really thought, that the designers of Blizzard was just crazy and just wanted to annoy cosplayers!

And so after some months of work, about 700 euros and a lot of pain and desperation every part comes together... and...

... GLOWED!!!

As you can see I was not alone. This year I had two cosplay partners: My roomie and a good friend and we were a worgen druid (mostly in human form) in purple Tier8 version, a troll druid (Cataclysm!) in red Tier8 version and a night elf druid in green Tier8 version. I just loved my group and I'm also looking forward for next year!

And now I have to finish my next costume. He he, I'm never able to make a break!

Druid Tier 8 in progress

2010-06-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

In the last months I was very depressed and it's still didn't become better. I love cosplay so much, that preferable I want to build something new every day. But unfortunately I have so much to do because of my studies and my part time job, that I almost have no time for my costumes. So two of my projects will be not finished in time and I have to wait for a later convention to wear them. At this time I'm working on my Druid Tier 8 costume and I'm glad to show you at least some progress:

This were my first steps for my skirt. I used some furniture leather for the most parts. It has a great wild look and it's great to work with: I soildered and painted it with Copic markers to add all of these details of my referece.

You see, these combination is really awesome and this material is just perfect for the texture looking of Blizzard's design.

So, this is the current status of my costume and I hope to find some time to keep on working soon. I have still one month and I'm sure, I will manage this, but I hate to do something else I want to!

I'm also working ony a new staff for these project, despite of I already have a fitting weapon (Intensity). So, here you see little making of "Ony" (I don't like it's real name!):

This time I used only expanding foam and greyboard for it's base form and it was a lot of fun to carve it. After this I covered everthing with crepe tape, newspaper and paper maché and polished a long time to got a smooth surface. You see, I was to lazy to use a base of greyboard or something else for the horse, so I put a lot of paper maché on the part between head and horn. But this thing is really solid now and I cannot wait to see it done!

This is the reference I have and I have to say, that I chosed it because of it's horns. All of my Druid Tier sets had horns, so T8 need some, too! I didn't manage her form perfect, but despite of this I'm satiesfied with my work. It's not so important for me, to make a costume like it's reference. I just want some fun in building of it, so I don't care about this. You see I also chanced the colors a bit, so it will fit to my robe better.

And as you can see my staff is still in progress. I have to finish it's paint and to build it's button. One month left, so I cannot wait to show you the finished costume soon!

Aion Costume Photoshoot

2010-04-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I had a long time to wait to see my Aion Asmodian costume done and so I was very excited to take a photoshoot with it. After some thinking about the right location for it we finally found an awesome looking castle ruin near Nuremberg. So, I prepared and repaired my cosplay and hoped for a good weather. And I have to say, it was amazing! The weather was perfect, the location was really awesome and our both photographers did a great job!

So... just take a look:

You will find the rest of the pictures on my cosplay.com gallery.

He he, and if you are interrested, here is our cosplay skit in this costume. I wish you a lot of fun!

Btw: We didn't need to act a lot!

And now... I will keep on working on my Druid Tier 8 set, my Elyos cloth set and my Bayonetta costume, he he! Oh... and there are some weapons still waiting! So... will not be bored!

FINISHED!!!

2010-04-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

My god... the last 4 weeks were a living hell for me! I had SO much to do, because deadline was April 9th! But... what should I say? I finally managed it. At 2:30 at night on April 10th...

And here we're going on:

It was a hard way to build the final version and I need 3 tries to manage this. My last solution was to take the pattern of my cosplay partner (she also did an Aion armor set) and copy this. Just the boob part was my solution, because I didn't manage to build it out of 2 wonderflex stripes so I tried it with 4. The problem with this was that I got some ugly wonderflex borders which I covered with some pieces of friendly plastic. Then I covered the boob part with a bit of gesso and pressed the wonderflex/friendly plastic part on a solid ground to get a smooth surface. After this step I added the stripes for the back and covered everything with a lot of gesso. Finished!

Now I built my collar out of 3 seperate patterns and the last parts, my side armor, followed.

I have to say that I was very afraid of sewing my bodysuit but I was surprised how easy it is to work with lycra. I needed one weekend for this suit, but I am really proud on my work.

I also planned to fix my armor with a belt system on my body, but in the end I threw this away...

And here is a picture of my claws. I build them a second time and used leather now. It was much better than the solid wonderflex solution.

And I finished my hip armor. A lot of fixing test followed.

One of the hardest painting parts was my breastplate. I'm SO happy, that my boyfriend helped me out so much. So it got an awesome look despite of all of this radioctive pink...

He he, I have to say, that my collar is one of my favourite parts of my costume. I love the little tiny wings!

And then... after 6 months of hard work... I was done! The complete painting job was done! You don't believe how glad and relieved i was about this!

Now I just had to manage to fix my armor on my body. This was the most difficult step on this costume and I tried SO many methods until I found the right one!

Someday I also had to make my wig. It was my very first try to style a wig and I was SO afraid of this, but in the end I was really satisfied with the result.

Then followed the last week. The worst of the last cosplay year. I have never been so stressed in these days and it was just aweful to think about the coming deadline. My hole day consisted of visiting my university and finish my costume. And everytime when I thought that it's almost done I found some new details I had to add. Normally I'm always finished some months or weeks before the first debut, but this time I had a very long last night. And finally... at 2:30 at night on April 10th it was finally done and I put it on the very first time! It was an amazing feeling and I was SO happy about first look in my mirrow. Yeah... I will never forget this moment!

One month left!

2010-03-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

I was very busy in the last few weeks and I'm very glad, that I managed to finish a lot of armor parts:

My upper bracers:

My left pauldron:

My ankle and knee armor:

Now I'm working on my wing and my hips armor:

Unfortutely they became really heavy because of the Gesso I put on the wonderflex to get a smooth surface.

So, painting is going on...

Actual projects and a lot of expanding foam!

2010-01-31T01:45:00.000-08:00

I'm still working on my three costumes: Aion, World of Warcraft and Bayonetta. The Armor of Aion is almost done and there are only a few armor parts missing. I'm very bad in sewing, so I dodge the parts which require seewing skills. So, here are some pictures and step by step making of's:

This was my ankle armor. Someone asked me for some more pictures, so I hope here you see better, how I built it.

For this knee armor I used almost the same technique, but just with a bit more single parts. One armor part consist of 54 parts! Oh, this was a long, hard job!

After covering the armor with some layers of Gesso, I started to paint it. The left picture shows my job. The right one shows the result after my boyfriend helped me. I'm very happy to have him, because he sets some nice highlights for me and redoes my work a bit. In the last years the did the entire painting job, but this year it's just too much for one person. So I do the basic painting and he sets the details. It's great to have such a good assistant!

Now, we both are almost done with our university exams, so we can start to paint together.

This was my basic painting job. I'm happy to be able to manage the colour gradient. Then I just have to add some simple details like the patterns on the bladed and my boyfriend have to do the rest!

Here I also had to stop, because the sample is full of details. I cannot wait to see the finished work and I'm sure that he will do a great job!

Yeah, and every part here needs a paint... This will be long, hard work... (And there are some parts missing...)

Uhm... and I still have to finish this sword. But I have only 3 months left for this project. I'm very afraid that I will fail to get it finished in time, so I have to hurry a lot!

Here is a little making of. You see here a lot of expanding foam. I LOVE expanding foam and it's awesome, how much you can create with it. I used just a bit of greyboard for the base and covered everything with this stuff. The last steps just consisted of a lot of carving. This step makes a lot of fun, but much more dirt, he he!

But this was the dirt of the following project:

I've got a commision to do two gigantic hands for a commercial.

He he, this was a lot of fun and it was an awesome experience to carve something of such a great size!

I also carved a lot for my World of Warcraft project:

I just have to finish the paper machè layer, polish it and can paint it afterwards. You see, expanding foam gives the chance to create every form you need!

I also started with my shoulder armor and my robe for this costume:

In the first steps I just cut a styrofoam ball and put some grey board parts with hot glue on it. Some soft foam stripes helped my to build the right form.

Then I used the same technique that I formed Journey's End antlers for the twines. I covered the top with a bit of expanding foam, carved the twines and the base out. For a solid base I added a layer of crepe tape, newspaper and papermaché. Now I just have to finish the twines and add some details.

And my robe? It's just standing in my cosplay room. I'm happy, that I managed the hardest part of this costume for me: The seewing. And now it have to wait, until I cannot run away anymoreuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuj, he he!

The wonderful world of Wonderflex

2009-12-29T08:01:00.000-08:00

This year I wanted to start with something complete new. I'm always searching for new materials, techniques and challenges. So the new MMO from NCsoft, Aion - Tower of Eternity, had some very good exsamples. There were a lof of commercials I saw on TV or the Internet and the details of the armor sets shown below were just awesome. I googled a bit and found a webside with all of the armor sets from the game. And I have to admid that I looked for the hardest and most complicated set in the game. I decided for this one:

I have never built an armor like this before, so I was eager to learn something new. And I already knew how I wwould realise it: Wonderflex.

I heard a lot about this material and read many reviews and tutorials. I already had the money and got my roommate into it, too. Two orders with shocking taxes and shipping costs followed.

Please look at the shipping costs and cry for us! But that was nothing compared to the customs...

So you see, it's very very expensive for me, to order it to Germany. But this awesome material inspired me SO much that I ordered it a second time. Now I had 7 jumbo sized Wonderflex boards. This should be enough. Or at least I hope so...

Here is a pic of this stuff and a further thermoplastic material called 'Friendly Plastic'.

My first experiments with this stuff ended in a completely finished bracer piece. I could not stop to work with it, he he. The day ended at 3 o'clock in the night. Wonderflex stunned me completely!

And here is a little making of my first work:

At first I cut the form I needed for the bracer out of craft foam. Always make copies of these, because it's very hard to find the right form a second time if you make a mistake!
The second step was to cut fitting parts out of wonderflex for the craft foam. Be sure that the wonderflex part is somewhat bigger than your craft foam part. Now you have to heat the wonderflex. For base parts like the bracer itself I took a 3 mm thick craft foam, for detail parts only 1.5 mm. Wonderflex becomes very soft and flexible when it's warm enough, almost like fabric. Then you can put it on and around the craft foam and form it like you want. For the base part I used only one wonderflex part for covering, for details I made a sandwich of 2 parts wonderflex and one part craft foam. Watch out that you use the right side of the wonderflex. It has one surface with a fabric structure and one rough side. I use the rough one, because if you cover it with Gesso it gets a flat and soft surface.

The second bracer followed:

And also 2 pauldrons:

First one...

... and for the second one I made a tutorial for you:

Like always I used half a styrofoam ball as the base and cut the form out with a cutter. Then I covered it with 3 thicks strips of wonderflex. Unfortunately you cannot form Wonderflex on curves like on this ball perfectly. So you see, I got some ugly foldings there. Not so nice, is it?
But we have a solution for this problem: Friendly Plastic

Friendy Plastik is the granule I ordered with my Wonderflex. It's also a material which you can form after you heated it. A hairdryer or hot water are enough for this and you can model it, when it becomes transparent. (You see it in the first picture. Some of the granules are already transparent.)
Then you take some pieces and press it on your wonderflex. Spread it well on the foldings and borders. Unfortunatly the plastic will already be cooled when you are finished. But you just have to heat it a second time to continue working. When your Friendly Plastic parts are transparent again you have to search a hard, flat surface like a desk. Keep in mind that this surface is clean and don't have any PVC on it. Wonderflex and Friendly Plastik loves to glue itself to everything it finds. Now you have to press the part of the Wonderflex and the granule as hard as you can on the desk. Press, roll, heat and repeat it. Over and over, until you get a smooth and flat surface and all of the irregularities are covered with Friendly Plastic. Now you can add some patterns and details with wonderflex if you want. Just cut your form out and heat both parts, to put it together.

Now comes the dodgy part:

I already told you how to build your puzzle parts.
For 3 dimensional details you can use Friendy Plastic. Loops, flowers, points, etc. Just try it and play a bit with it. Heat it a bit, form it and put it on your wonderflex. You don't need any glue for this, because Wonderflex and Friendly Plastic become very sticky, when they are warm enough. So be careful with your clothes, carptes, PVC or other Wonderflex/Friendly Plastic parts. So you only have one chance to put the parts right togehter. Otherwise breaking it will end with flaws and holes. But just in case you can fix this too, if you have no other option. So with a bit of luck and skills your armor parts are finished. And tadaaaaa, finished!

Now we get to my feet armor stuff:

As usual: Styling, trimming, blow-dry.
It could be difficult to find the right form, because you often have to think in 3D but to paint it on a 2D paper. So try a bit, until you are satisfied with your pattern.

Small parts, which don't have to be as thick as a normal armor part can be cut out of just two pieces of wonderflex. For this you can heat long pieces and put them together. Now you have a double layer wonderflex. Press it well and watch out for air holes inside it. As long as it's warm it's very easy to cut your form out. But with the missing craft foam inside there is no more steadiness. So be very careful!
Now you have a very flexible wonderflex part and can make curves like in the middle picture. But the cutting and forming make also some poor borders. I covered it with some stripes of wonderflex and built a nice armor look with it.

In additon, I have to tell you that this feet armor consists of 20 seperate parts. So you see, it's a huge puzzle you have put together if you want to build such an armor and you need a lof of time and patience for it.
But it's worth it!

Now I have to get busy again and I wish you a happy new year! ^^

New projects

2009-12-29T04:34:00.000-08:00

Now we make a jump to the present, guys!
I told you everthing about my last cosplay and hope I helped or inspired you a bit. But now it's time for my new projects:

Nightelf Druid Tier 8 from World of Warcraft

with a still unnamed staff (Arena Season 8)

Asmodian Plate Set from Aion - Tower of Eternity

with a sword that has too many names: (I call it Dragon King's Greatsword)

and - I hope so MUCH that I will manage it - Bayonetta from the same named game from Platinum Games.

So all of the following blogs are about my actual work. Feel free to ask, if you have questions and I will do my best to help you!

Intensity making of

2009-12-27T05:17:00.000-08:00

This summer I got an awesome email from Blizzard Entertainment:
Hallo Svetlana!
Congratulation! Your costume was choosed as winner of the costume contest "Win a Trip to Blizzcon"! The first prize is a flight to the USA to Blizzcon.

Yeah.. I was a bit stunned... Just a bit, he he. I remember that I went crazy the hole day! I screamed, and jumpend and it was just amazing. I never, NEVER expect the first prize and could not believe that I would really fly to Blizzcon. Only for 4 days, but these had to be awesome!
But now I had a problem: Journey's End and all of my other staffs were too big for my case suit. So I decided to build a new one.

I searched a bit in the World of Warcraft modelviewer and chosed Itensity.

I searched for a good looking staff which was as flat as possible and matched to my Druid Tier 6. It was also not a staff, which I really really wanted or I loved it's design, but I only needed a staff which would fit in my suit case.

Cause of this it composed of 4 parts, which I could screw together. I planed the building of the model only a few days. Then my boyfriend would paint it.
In the first picture you only see my materials: Some greyboard, wooden staff parts, foam, expanding foam, modeling clay, crepe tape and newspaper. The second one shows the technique I used for the core itself. I just cut the right form out of grey board and built a sandwich of 2 grey board parts and some foam for filling it. After this I put one wooden staff inside and clayed everthing with hot glue together. Now I closed the border with crepe tape and covered the hole head with newspaper and paper maché. For those round things I used modeling clay.

For the button I used the same technique. I just put a plexiglass pipe inside for the pending ball in the middle.
For forming the middle parts I used expanding foam and carved them to the right form.Yeah, it was really simple to build this staff and I was very satisfied with the base model.
My boyfriend got the finished parts and made the paint for me. And I think, he did a great job!

And after 3 weeks of work for me and my boyfriend staff Nr. 4 was done!

So Blizzcon, I'm coming!

To discribe, how awesome this weekend in Anaheim was is beyond my english skills! But know that it was just amazing and some of the best days in my life. AND: I will come back! You will also find me at next Blizzcon, he he!

Finally done!

2009-12-13T23:18:00.000-08:00

So, after some months of work my costume was finally finished and I was able to show it on a convention in Germany: The Animagic.

I spend three great days there and it was funny that so many people also wanted to make a World of Warcraft cosplay. At least that's what they said to me there. I'm very curious how many Alliance and Horde members I will see next year. It's always great to hear that you inspired someone for his next costume!
The days there were also very hard. On friday and saturday, when I wore my cosplay, I had to stand up at 6 am to paint and dress myself. For the make-up I used a lot of Kryolan Supracolor.

It took about three hours until I was ready, because I had to paint almost all of my body. And removing it afterwards was just horrible! I used a creme based grease paint, so I couldn't remove it just with some soap and water. I had to use a sponge for scrubbing it away! And this hurts!
Then I learned of this fluid on the top of the picture. It is a special oil and I just put a bit on a sponge and use it before I go under the shower. If you cover all painted parts of your body with the oil, you can wash everyhing away with some water. But the remaining parts you still have to scrub.

So, here are some pictures of me and my cosplay partner:

My cosplay partner Elenja and I have a cosplay skit, too. You can watch it here:

Journey's End making of

2009-12-10T01:39:00.000-08:00

Next part of my Druid Tier 6 cosplay: Journey's End and Intensity

Journey's End was a hard, long project and I worked some months on it. I did not use the right technique for the building, because I just daven't had enough expirience with such props. Today I work very differently, but this is a story for another post.

I was glad, that my sister gave me the Broll Bearmantle Figure of the World of Warcraft figure series for my birthday. So I got the perfect sample for my work

My first step was to find the right form for it's head. I painted the silouette on greyboard, cutted it out and copied this to a second greyboard. With these two parts I made a sandwich of greyboard and soft foam for filling. The foam also helped me to model the elevation of the snout, the jaws and the neck. I used crepe tape to model with this foam and covered it with newspaper after this.

The base was done. Next step was to cover it with paper machè, which gave it a solid base.

There was still a lot to do and you see that I had to work on the ears, the crest and the antler. And at this time I really had no idea how I should build the last one...

Some days later it looked a bit more like a horse head. You see, the ears are just pieces of greyboard. The crest was made of foam, which I covered with crepe tape, newspaper and paper maché again. Now I tried to build the antler. And that was really hard...

Here you can see my second try to make an antler for my staff. My first attempt was too complicatetd and too crappy. Yesterday I finally got the right idea: I bought some pvc pipes, 3 cans of foam and a buzz saw blade for my dremel and tried it a second time. I cut the pipe in short parts and glued it together with hot glue to a form and covered it with a lot of foam. Then I carved a little bit and yes, I got it! Yeah, I was really happy to have managed it. And this was my very first carving expirience with expanding foam. You will see, I'm very excited about this stuff!

I covered it with a lot of newspaper to save the foam inside, because I was so afraid that it would break. This made it very solid and durable and the finishing layer of paper machè helped not only at the modeling part.

With a lot of sanding and after many hours I got a flat and smooth looking surface of the horse head. Now I used a barken look for it. So I took my dremel and made a lot of long, deep lines into the paper machè with it. The surface looked totally scratched and chaotic, but it really hit the spot. After that I asked my boyfriend to paint it. He is very talented and gave my work a beautiful artistic look.

And what should I say? He did an awesome job!

You see, the paint is almost done. I also put the antler into the head. For this I made some holes in the front of the head, filles these with some expanding foam and sticked the blank PvP pipes of the antlers into the holes. Some hot glue and paper machè helped to fix it firm enough.
So, the head part was finished and I had to work at the hoov.

This is a picture of some steps later, but I wanted to share the work of the hoov and the head.

Building the hoov was not very complicated. I formed a cone with greyboard, put my staff into it and filled it with expanding foam. I cutted the buttom to the right angle, covered it with a greyboard pard and modeled and fixed everything with paper machè. Milling of a wooden texture (for looking like bark) and runes followed. Then my boyfriend used acrylic (brown, bronze and blue) color for painting. At last I covered it with a silk gloss paint.

Now some words about the transport of my staff:

You maybe are curios how I transported it or put it into a car. The answer is, that it consists of three single parts. The head, the hoov and the middle section. I bought a wooden staff in the home office, let them cut it appart and visited a craftsman for drilling them. To put them togehter again, I spinned the botls in the picture into the wood and... finished!
Now I can split them and put them togehter whenever I want.

Yeah... my staff was done and it was a great feeling after 4 months of work!
So here are some pictures:

Druid Tier 6 pauldron and headpiece making of

2009-12-08T23:18:00.000-08:00

Next part of my Druid Tier 6 story from World of Warcraft:

Most of my work with fabrics was done, so I started with my weapons and my props.
The sample had 2 very complicated pauldrons and one helmet.

At first I tried to model both forms with expanding foam. I used rabbit wire as a base and covered it. My plan was to carve it now, but unfortunately my skills were at the time not good enough for such a hard sample. The pauldrons were too big, too long and just looked wrong...

I was frustrated and discarded both pauldrons. It was time for a other technique so I tried the one I learned 2 years ago, while making my Druid Tier 1 project.

At first I took a polystyrene half hollow and clayed some board on it. I carved the bird skull out of expanding foam and covered everything with crepe tape, newspaper and paper maché. The wings are made of board and foam (as core) and covered them with newspaper. My boyfriend had to do the paint job and I clayed everything together and added details with fur and feathers. Yeah... and what I have to say? This time I was very satisfied!

Okay... but the though that I still had to build a second one, was just horrible...
Someday both parts were done and I started with the building of the headpiece. I made the first steps at the same time I build the first version of my pauldrons, and fortunately I was satiesfied with the first version.

Here I took some rabbit wire, cut out the right form and clayed (with hot clay) the cut lines together. I covered this base completely with expanding foam, waited a while and carved the right model with a carpet cutter. After this I covered everything with crepe tape, news paper and paper maché. Paper maché gave it the last details and i got a really flat surface after I sanded it with some sandpaper. I added some details with wooden half spheres within the paper machè like this round things on the topside. The pattern on this ear muffs were just some greyboard parts I glued on the head piece. The next step were acrylic paint and acrylic finish. I took some feathers, painted their ends with acrylic paint, clayed them (with hot clay) and... Finished!

Puh... I wrote enough for today. In the next part I will tell you something about my staff Journey's End.

Druid Tier 6 robe making of

2009-12-07T23:57:00.000-08:00

It was a long hard way and a half year of work after I was able zu finish this project. So here is my story:

In summer 2008 I was still stunned of World of Warcraft Tier sets of the Druid. After I finished Druid Tier 1 and Tier 3 I searched of a new challenge, a new project which will give me new expieriences, new techniques and materials. I searched the roots of the Druid Tier 1 looked and found the Druid Tier 6 set in my modelviewer.

There was a lot of luck that I found the right patterns for this: Teflon leather (I think it's called swedenleather, too.) It's normally used for upholstered furnitures and it's buckskin look was just perfect for the wild, natural Druid Tier 6 set. It was sold for a very low price in my drapery and had a great attribute: My boyfriend was able to give it great details by soldering the fabric. Just take a look:

(Here you see the finished front part of my skirt.)

I was very easy to sold the fabric. You just need a steady hand and a bit of fantasy.

Feathers and a fake fur worked also gread for a natural look So, here are some progress photos:

Oh, I look so silly here!

Sometimes the easiest way is best way... I tried a lot, to start with this, searched for bra patterns, cut a lot of rubbish out of my look-a-like leather and still didn't get it the right way...
But finally I just took an old bra an some glue and began trying... This method was really the best and so I almost finished my work on this part.

In the last months of my project I tried to loose some weight and I hope you see, that I was sucessful. I lost about 14 pounds for this night elf cosplay and was very satisfied with the result.

I glued a lot of the costume with hot glue because it was just easier than sewing it. There are a lot of single parts on it, like the skirt, the soldered front skirt part, the covering skirt layer with fake fur and featers, the bra, gloves and the bracers. All of this I put together with some Velcro tape, which was glued on every part.

Druid Tier 8 pauldron making of

2009-12-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

Soooooo, here are some progress pics of one of my actual projects: Druid Tier 8 from World of Warcraft.

Here you see a preview of the sample for my pauldrons from the World of Warcraft modelviewer. The first steps were really easy: I took half of a styrofaom ball, cutted some pieces out and glued a bit of greyboard on it. In the last picture you see some stripes of foam. I used it to model or fill some parts on this prop.

The followings steps were very easy, too:
I cut some pvp pipes in short pieces and covered a aluminium wire with it. Hot glue helped to put and fix them togehter. After this I used a bit of expanding foam to model the form of the pauldron. You only need a knife or carpet cutter for carving it. It's very easy to deal with it and I love the carving parts the most!
Then I stick the aluminium wires into the expanding foam, covered it with this stuff too and carved the twines I needed for my prop. In the last step I covered everyhing with crepe tape, newspaper and paper machè. These tree layers give the expanding foam a solid surface and you can paint it after a finishing polish.

Hello guyz!

2009-12-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

This is my first blog entry, so I wanted to introduce myself at first:

My name is Svetlana, I'm 23 year old and live in Germany (so, excuse my grammer faults). I discovered the cosplay szene in 2003, but only in 2006 I found a real desire in it. So my Druid Tier 1 from World of Warcraft costume was the first challenge. I learned a lot from this project and started with further World of Warcraft Tier sets. Druid Tier 3, Tier 6 and Tier 8 followed. The last one is my actual work.
So I'm very excited for weapon and prop making. I'm always searching for new techniques and new materials and try to improve my skills with every new project.
On my blog I will show you my progress, explain my techniques and show you some tutorials I made. If you have questions or problems with your work, feel free to ask me and I hope I will be able to help you!