RWBY Cosplay part 2

So that you know what I'm talking about, here's a picture of Jaune Arke from RWBY (he's the one on the right).

 Awkward: it's going to be depressingly easy for me to get in character.

 

This task is a lot biigger than I thought   D:   

Someone once told me: “how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”.

I discovered that doing this:

1.       Make Jaune Arke’s armour

2.       Job done. time for cake

Does not work. So I broke it down into steps:  

1.       Gather required materials

2.       Foam armour

2.1 Pattern pieces for: chest plate, back plate, joiners, shoulders and gloves.

2.2 cut them out in foam

2.3 heat gun them to shape

2.4 paint with PVA glue (3-4 layers), coat with plasti-dip, and paint with spray paint. (fine detail can be added with a permanent marker).

2.5 cut the vinyl into strips

3.       Cloth bracers – hem tape required (because screw sewing that by hand)

-          Not sure if or how pattern pieces are required here.

4.       Cut gloves to size

4.1 finger holes,

4.2 hot glue on the ‘metal’ plates

4.3 hot glue on the armour plate

5.       Belts

5.1 cut vinyl to size & glue together

5.2 attach eyelet holes

5.3 attach buckles

5.4 new belt  

5.5 for extra bonus points, make the leather pouches from the spare vinyl

6.       Cut sleeves off shirt and hem them (careful about size, I want to get this perfect on my first try)

7.       Wait for wig to arrive in the mail

8.       Try it on, take photos and congratulate myself for being one damn fine looking otaku : D

 

Yay! The task itself has remained the same but is somehow easier now that I know what I need to do. Sort of. Its my first costume that I’m making myself and I know that I don't have the experience or skills to get things perfect, so I shall have to go easy on myself when/if I don't get things one hundred percent on the first try. This won’t be easy. Maybe my standards are too high. Homer Simpson once said this:

“You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

Which is strangely encouraging in a subverted sort of way. There is so much that’s wrong with that statement. If you never try, there’d be no point to doing anything and you may as well be dead. You just need to keep trying different ways until something works and then you get better at it and it builds character. That’s why hard times are called “trying times”.   Yay wisdom!

 

Someone once told me that art is about "not telling yourself you suck, and just going for it". so here I go, one Jaune Ark costume coming up.

I don't know how to do some of the finer steps such as sewing hems on things. If anyone knows of easy ways to put hems on stuff (I don’t have access to a sewing machine) please let me know in the comment area below ↓

Also on a different topic, I’d like to get good at drawing pictures/landscapes/scenery. the plan is to eventually draw something good enough for the background to this blog. I may play around with sketching first but I would like a better program than MS Paint to edit things on PC when I scan them in or maybe to even draw straight in to the program itself (I’d like to draw like what you see in anime, but not sure how they make the pictures the way they do). If anyone knows of any good freeware programs that will help I’d appreciate it if you let me know.

 

For now I'm going to get as much done as possible because Animania is only three weeks away. For the next few weeks I will have to put my hectic social life on hold if I want to get this costume done in time. If you don't see me please don't worry I'm not becoming a recluse and I still care about you all, I'm just working on this project.  

Love you all and until next time,

This is James signing off.