Parenthesis makes a cosplay

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

From what I read in the rules for this section yesterday, and vaguely remember now, there aren't really any specifics I need to worry about. I could make a big fancy intro post about how this blog will work, maybe put together some kind of logo, but considering I'm currently limited to posting from mobile, I'm gonna say funk no to all that and go with the bare bones. On a similar note, I'm not going to bother with my black text here, because I have quite a lot to type and that just seems like an unnecessary pain. I should have an easy enough time finding my posts nonetheless.

 

Anyway, the purpose of this blog will be to chronicle the work I do on my cosplay for an upcoming convention. The convention in question is Chibi Chibi Con, a one-day free convention held yearly at Evergreen State College, here in Washington State. My best guess for yearly attendance is a few thousand, so it is pretty small by comparison to Sakura-con in Seattle, or Kumori con (I think that's the name?) in Portland. I am pretty new to cosplay, having only done one full cosplay before (Heiwajima Shizuo at this con a year ago) so it's pretty well-suited to me. I know some people aren't too far, so if you want to drop in, it's being held Saturday, February 10th. I'm going to be pretty busy across the day, but I can definitely say hi and take a photo with any of you that show up.

 

That's enough background information, so I'll start talking about my cosplay itself, and the contest I'm going to be in. The cosplay contest is the first event of the day, and will have about 75 entrees. Might be more, might be less, I don't run this sheet. There will be some number of judges, who will decide first, second, and third places, and maybe a judge's choice award. I'm going to be cosplaying Bakugou Katsuki from Boku no Hero Academia, and going into this, I really only have one thing in mind.

 

 

I decided on the character because his outfit has many details that I can use to show off my abilities as a maker, as well as a personality that will be tons of fun to play up. As shown by the gif above, I've decided that the best mindset to have is that if I put my all into this, and make every piece of the cosplay the way I plan to, I will win first place. My cosplay last year was very popular, and I had my picture taken a few hundred times, but I didn't place in the contest. This year, I'm going to win.

 

I'll leave the actual construction of the cosplay to other posts in this thread, so that I can create some kind of link directory for ease of access. This isn't just to show off, I'm using this thread to chronicle my creative process with this project.

 

Stay tuned for actual content to be added, rather than just a few paragraphs of me rambling.

[Super Chaos Sonic]

Cosplaying as Bakugo, eh?

 

Bro, if you don't have at least a sign that says "King Explosion Murder" or "Lord Explosion Murder", then you've immediately failed!! XD

 

Regardless, I'm excited to see what you bring to the table with this cosplay. Now, are you actually making everything by hand or what will this entail? Only curious, because I'm like amateur cosplayer (like I've yet to make anything for a cosplay, save for a paintjob on a nerf gun for Star-Lord and helping my dad make a small mask and a hoodie for my Scarlet Spider), so I'll be interested to see and possibly take pointers from others to see how they do things.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Bro, if you don't have at least a sign that says "King Explosion Murder" or "Lord Explosion Murder", then you've immediately failed!! XD

I was actually just thinking about that while driving earlier. Honestly, with the bracers, there isn't much I could do with a carried prop, so I probably wouldn't bring it on stage during the contest, but I'll probably throw this together during my spare time, while some glue is drying or something.

Now, are you actually making everything by hand or what will this entail? Only curious, because I'm like amateur cosplayer (like I've yet to make anything for a cosplay, save for a paintjob on a nerf gun for Star-Lord and helping my dad make a small mask and a hoodie for my Scarlet Spider), so I'll be interested to see and possibly take pointers from others to see how they do things.

Yes. I'm making every piece of this ensemble from scratch, save for something to build the boots up off of, and maybe the pants. I'm going to be using a variety of techniques to put it all together, so just keep an eye out to see how I construct the various stages of this.

[Dad]

Hope you don't mind attention.

[Super Chaos Sonic]

I was actually just thinking about that while driving earlier. Honestly, with the bracers, there isn't much I could do with a carried prop, so I probably wouldn't bring it on stage during the contest, but I'll probably throw this together during my spare time, while some glue is drying or something.

 

Could always have it hang around your neck like a name sign XD

 

Yes. I'm making every piece of this ensemble from scratch, save for something to build the boots up off of, and maybe the pants. I'm going to be using a variety of techniques to put it all together, so just keep an eye out to see how I construct the various stages of this.

 

Oooooohhhhhh! This sounds pretty awesome! I'm excited to see this process!

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Bracers Part 1 - Outer Shell

 

If a mod or some other eldritch abomination wants to edit the above line to make it look more like a title, go for it, I really don't give a sheet, and I lost a ton of stuff I had already typed out due to my phone deciding to restart, so I really can't be bothered with BBcode beyond the basic sheet right now.

 

This is a poorly rendered image that I found and then cropped. Pretty basic, but it will work for the moment.

 

So, bakugou has one of these on each arm while wearing his hero costume (which is the appearance I plan to portray). They do not yet have a canon name to my knowledge, so I am just going to call them his bracers. It isn't an inaccurate description of what they are, so it should work out pretty well. Anyway, to construct these, there are a few key mechanical issues that I need to solve:

1. They need to be both rigid and durable. I expect them to take on a moderate amount of wear during this convention, and after having a prop break last year I really have no interest in repeating the experience.

2. They need to be lightweight. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point, in that I need to achieve a balance between strength and weight. If you look at the image above, each bracer has a large metal protruding bit, which I am going to be calling the levers from hereon out. I've had people tell me they are pins, but those people have no funking clue how grenades work. These are going to be quite difficult to keep sturdy, since their center of mass is far from the point at which they connect to the main body, and that point is also fairly far from the body's center of mass. Put simply, the laws of physics are actively conspiring to rip the levers off entirely, and I need to construct this well enough that such a thing does not happen.

3. They need to fit comfortably. The convention officially starts at noon and ends at midnight, but I will be there fully in costume at least as early as 11 am. During those minimum of twelve hours, I will be wearing these around, walking a few miles, posing for a few hundred photos, participating in several panels, and at least attempting to eat at least one meal. This means they need to fit snugly on me, so that their fit doesn't need to be constantly adjusted, while also avoiding chaffing and constriction of blood vessels wherever possible.

4. The lever needs to face opposite of my palms at all times. The way the bracers fit on Katsuki, the entire assembly rotates around his arm as he turns his wrist, so that if his palm is pointed down, the lever must be on the top. This is one of those issues you don't think about until it pops into your mind, and then you realize it is probably the most difficult part of the entire outfit. To have the bracers fit correctly in whatever pose I choose to do, it needs a sturdy strapping system so that I can control their orientation by whichever direction my wrist is facing.

 

This post is mostly going to focus on those first two points, as it will go through how I started this project chronologically.

 

I decided on this cosplay at some point around July last year, and spoke about it to a few people (mostly my IRL friend who helps me make most of my stuff, but I also bounced ideas off of Hina). I wracked my brain for ideas of what material could be used to create a rigid framework to suit the issues highlighted above, but each option fell short for one reason or another. Toward the end of summer, personal stuff as well as a new job ended up taking up much of my time, so I had to put the brainstorming for this on the back burner. In any case, various circumstances led to me having much more time after the holidays, so I started work on it, with an idea I had somewhere around late November.

 

This is an empty cheese ball container. For the record, they were delicious. If you have safeway where you are at, buy these.

 

The plastic this is made from is PET, short for polyethylene terephthalate. This stuff is funking awful. It has a low melting point, a tendency to catch on fire (releasing potentially toxic fumes), and confounds scientists the world over by simultaneously being too brittle and too flexible. Oh well, I'm using it anyway.

 

Now, a material that I am fond of is papier mache. Well, not quite the same thing, but it runs on a similar concept. By mixing white school glue with warm water at a 2-1 ratio, you create a solution that is easy to soak shreds of paper in. This dries much faster than the standard flour or plaster-based mixtures, and yields slightly different properties at the end of the day that cause me to prefer it over the more traditional means. I elected not to use newspaper, as the just has an overall lack of consistency that I didn't want to deal with. Instead, I made use of a sort of tissue paper, like one would crumple up to fill in empty spaces while shipping fragile items.

 

 

I cut the paper into uniform strips, rather than tearing it, because I wanted this to be as uniform as possible, so as to avoid unexpected weak points. The lines you can see are because each strip was marked with a line from a pink sharpie. This allowed me to visually identify the separate strips without straining my eyes, as well as tell the direction in which each layer was tilted, so that I could alternate. An unintended perk is that it makes the pattern I laid the strips of paper much more apparent in photographs. At the point this photo was taken, I had put down 4 layers with the aforementioned glue solution. After the photo, I added an additional 3 layers, replacing the school glue with wood glue (with the same ratio to water). This resulted in a mache that was vastly stronger, and suited my needs far better than the white glue. The primary reason I had used white glue for the inner layers was a matter of cost, as white school glue is around $10 for an entire gallon, whereas wood glue is far more expensive. On that note, you can buy an entire gallon of school glue. Don't you think that's neat? I sure did.

 

These components still have plenty of reinforcement ahead of them, but I took a break from the mache to make some cuts, before it would be too difficult. As I am sure you've noticed, Bakugou's bracers are not just cylinders, instead having a cut out portion where his hands sit. To do this, I used my rotary tool (dremel) with several cut-off wheels. As I recall, I was floating somewhere around 18k revolutions per minute, but I tuned it higher and lower as the need arose. I had to be vigilant while I was making the cuts, as the high friction heated up the blades and material alike, resulting in several broken cutoff wheels and some slightly charred edges. I am glad to report that no open fires were started while making these cuts.

 

 

You can see the result of these cuts right here. Just a few lines cut out really help the pieces to take shape. My edges are a little bit rough, but that's totally fine. These parts of the bracers are going to be covered up by several layers of other materials, not to mention further reinforcement. It is really important while working on intensive projects like this that you don't sweat it over the little details. Cuts early on can be rough, mistakes can be fixed, and even if a piece is ruined, it is never too late to start over from the beginning. The second attempt at a piece will always be better than the first, and every mistake is a learning experience.

 

After all the work highlighted in this post, it went from a pair of cheese-puff containers to two shells, that have been partially reinforced and are ready to be built off of to incorporate the framework necessary for these bracers to turn out just how I want them. The changes don't look like much, and the work done on them was pretty simplistic overall, but it's the simple stuff like this that helps hold all the fancy work together.

 

I'm not really certain how to end this, so I'll just say that the next full post will be going into the construction of the strapping by which I wear the bracers, and more details on exactly how I will fit them to my hands. I've put out some progress photos that go well past what's in this post, but I think it will be worth the wait for a little bit of context on all the changes made.

 

Until next time, thanks for reading. I'm really looking forward to how this cosplay is going to turn out, and everyone else's interest in it really does mean a lot.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Hope you don't mind attention.

This section sees so little activity, I'm not sure what difference it would make. In any case, it's greatly appreciated.

Could always have it hang around your neck like a name sign XD

I could, but I plan to move quite a lot during the catwalk portion of the contest, and don't want it swinging around.

 

I'll probably still make it, just because it would be a nice prop for photos, but I won't be bringing it on stage.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Here I am again, nearly two weeks later! Various things have kept me occupied and prevented me from giving updates here, but this one is definitely going to be long enough to make up for it.

 

Bracers Part 2 - Internal Structure

 

So, as I said in the previous post here, I need to have a system of strapping so that they are both mechanically sound, and stay rigid to the direction of my wrist.

 

 

This is one of my favorite materials to work with. It is clear acrylic, purchased from any home improvement store as windows. Using a band saw, I cut it to whatever shaped I need. Additionally, through use of a heat gun, I can raise its temperature to the point where it is workable, allowing me to make nice curves and more complex shaped. Right now, however, it is only being used as a structural material.

 

 

My wrists will be fastened in place using a pair of athletic wrist braces. I had to to a bit of modification, but this is more or less how I intend the acrylic to fit together with the wrist braces. Each brace contains a metal splint, which is what the acrylic will be attached to.

 

 

This will be held together using epoxy putty. This is another medium I love working with. It comes in two parts, and after mixing them together thoroughly, it takes about 5 minutes before it sets to form a concrete-hard bond.

 

 

Like most things like it, it is important to make use of proper safety equipment when handling epoxy putty. Gloves are a must.

 

 

funk.

 

 

Anyway, at this point I have now properly seated the braces inside the outer shells, everything held snugly in place with copious amounts of epoxy putty. After a quick test fit, I realized a key issue with them: It is basically impossible to reach the straps, as the overhanging portion of the outer shell gets in the way. Time for something drastic.

 

 

I cut them in half. So that the straps are fully accessible during fitting, each bracer will now go onto my arm in two parts.

 

 

I also added this bit to the area that rests on each of my palms. It gives me a stronger hand-hold, so that I can keep the bracers stable while doing quicker movements.

 

 

Because of the shape of my wrist, the crossbeams on this side of the shell need to be staggered.

 

 

This is my setup for... drilling hole in objects. I mark the clear acrylic with a black paint marker, then use a backlight to make the hole location easily visible.

 

 

Then I add some bolts. The bolts are held in place with even more epoxy putty, but for whatever reason I didn't take a photo at that stage.

 

 

And now the beams are in place. I may or may not be addicted to using epoxy putty. Jury's out.

 

 

I made some mother fuckin blocks.

 

 

After drilling holes, I use hot glue to affix tiny neodymium magnets into them.

 

 

Contrary to what I did before, this is the actual use for wood glue. Crazy, I know.

 

 

Setting the blocks into place, they stick to the bolts, because that's what magnets do. I left about half a centimeter of leeway between the tops of these blocks and the opposing beams.

 

 

Apply epoxy putty, and squash it into place. I wrapped the bracers in duck tape while the putty set, so as to keep them stable.

 

 

Pull the two halves apart again, so that now one side has the bolts, and the other the magnets. Time for a test fit.

 

 

Hell yes.

 

 

Next up is further reinforcement, adding a latch system to lock the two halves together, and finally the outer layers and aesthetic details. Oh, and I should probably figure out how to make the levers while I'm at it. And the rest of the cosplay.

 

The convention is less than 3 weeks away, so it is time to kick it into high gear.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

 

Extremely low-effort color test to make sure my black rubberizing spray and green spray paint give the right appearance. I'm pretty funking happy with it.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

[spoiler=Proper write-up will happen once these are done, but for now I couldn't help but show off a progress pic. Just putting them on has me hella excited]

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

...How heavy are those anyway?

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

A bit under a kilogram each, by my best estimate. I will weigh them when they are finished.

 

Really, they aren't that heavy at all, but after 12 hours it's gonna be a different story entirely.

[Darj]

I truly admire your creativity with the cosplay, both in the design and resorting to different materials that can get the job done or make it easier. I cannot but wonder if this is a talent of yours, or if you developed it, be it with practice, tutorials, courses, etc.

Also I noticed that you got a workshop to handle the different materials and craft different things. I'm curious on how do you have access to one.

 

Can't wait to look at pictures of you wearing the end result.