My plans for which and where cosplays are to be worn next year have changed over the last couple of months and with some major hurdles overcome it’s time to give an update!

Chaaaaange places! #

Indecision is out, Sam Vimes is in! Given it’d end up being Rincewind yet again for MegaCon, I decided I might as well stick with the Discworld theme and get my Vimes cosplay done earlier than planned. TLoVM Vax and Sam Vimes are now set to debut at MegaCon in January, with the hope I can get both finished in time.

This frees up a bit of space between MegaCon and MCM, and being that I’ve been playing Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered I put a poll on Instagram to decide which of my favourite outfits I was going to make (first). The winner was the Nora Protector (medium), so that’s going to debut at MCM May, joining Sam Vimes for that. The Carja Behemoth Trapper outfit is still going to be made, but given the complexity that’s going to be a late next year thing (maybe MCM October/MCM Birmingham).

The list of outfits for cons is now:

• TLoVM Vax - MegaCon Jan
• Sam Vimes - MegaCon Jan + MCM May
• Aloy Nora Protector - MCM May
• Aloy Behemoth Trapper - Late 2025

Will there be more? Almost certainly. I’m hoping to go to a Steampunk event and I’m not sure what I’m going to do for Fantasy Forest as of yet.

Vax Progress #

The Vax design I’m doing is based on the Death Walkers Ward from The Legend of Vox Machina and comes from a pattern by PieceOfCakeCosplay on Etsy¹. I’d previously looked at doing this design, but between me struggling with the pattern and how I’d do lighting I ended up abandoning it. The templates I bought fall into the middle - rather than a flat design they using embossing to show the patterns the light traces. There where two options I could take to give the leather effect: Texturing foam and covering foam with faux leather. I took the latter as I thought the material would lead to a better embossing effect.

There are five major parts to the costume: the armour, the cloak, the base clothing, the props and the wig.

Outcomes so far #

The armour is mostly complete! The embossed look has come out well, though definition in some areas did not take as well as I’d hoped. It does look better than I think I would have got from shaping and texturing foam, though the downside was that it took far longer than I expected. Vax has 28 separate armour pieces, each of which needs cutting out of foam and faux leather, gluing and carefully shaping the embossed areas, then sealing the edges up. It took nearly 3 days and roughly 2 litres of contact cement to accomplish this, for which I am very glad my respirator was working well.

Assembling was easy, using superglue to attach the parts together. I managed to avoid sticking myself to anything, though I fear I left a few blotches from runny glue. I discovered I’d managed to mess up the back though, so I need to do a little work to make it more consistent so I can attach some sort of closure properly.

The cloak, and all the fur, was actually the first thing I did. Initially I thought I’d just double layer the fur for the shoulder pauldrons but it didn’t have enough structure, so I used 2mm foam as backing for those areas and only a single layer of fur. The cloak itself was made out of cotton, which I’ve gone over with some fine grain sandpaper to add a bit more texture and wear. I’ll likely use some paint later as well to add a bit of dirt as it’s still looking too new.

I’ve 3D printed off two daggers for Vax (based off a design by igvite on Cults3D²) in PETG, with the handle split in half as I was having a right time trying to get the blade inserted. It’ll take a little more work to remove the handle lines, but that’s a small price to pay. Some sanding has been done, but I’ve been waiting for a sanding tool to arrive to do the rest.

Lastly, nothing has yet been done on the shirt or trousers apart from some sketches. I have patterns, I just need to trace, cut and sew them together. Hopefully I should get around to this in the next couple of weeks. I’ve got a wig; I just need to style it!

Vimes Progress #

Sam Vimes is one of the those cosplay’s that I’ve wanted to do for years (as long as Rincewind), but never had the time. Last year, just before I left for MCM May, I realised that a) MCM falls on the Glorious 25th May this year and b) I wasn’t wearing Rincewind that day. So for the next MCM I swore I’d get a Sam Vimes done and wear it on the 25th! That’s still going to happen, but instead of leisurely building it between Jan Feb and May I shall be cramming it into my winter builds!

There are only three parts to the costume: armour, shirt and props. I’m going to be reusing my Rincewind trousers and wearing my everyday boots, which saves some time. This is the theme of this project: reuse as much existing material as possible!

Outcomes so far #

The armour consists of a breastplate, helmet and a skirt of leather strips. The breastplate and helmet are based on some templates by Kamui Cosplay^{3 4} but with modifications to improve fit and match the style I needed. I used some leftover CF150 (I think) foam for the helmet and a hodgepodge of CF100 and CF65(!)⁵ for the breastplate. The breastplate and helmet have been built, as have the leather straps which use 2mm foam wrapper with faux leather like I did for Vax. Gaps are not patched and with a little more sanding the breastplate and helmet will be ready for priming and painting. It’s been nice to not have to rush and so could make sure all gaps are filled for once!

Al of these need details and I’m using my 3D printer to make them. The skirt needs roundels and the helmet needs rivets, each of which was easy to design in Blender and print out in bulk. There’s one plate left to go, but these just need sanding, with the rivets being attached to the helmet pre-prime and the the roundels being made fully (including painting) before they go on the skirt.

The longest part of the process has been the development of the chainmail sleeves. I decided to 3D print them which has lead to a lot of experimentation and failures. More details can be found on my post on 3d printing chainmail. Good news is that I’ve got a process that works and I’m cranking out sections like a machine.

Vimes has a leather cloak, so I’ve got some faux leather and cut a quarter cloak out of it. Unfortunately as I’ve used some fabric designed for upholstery I’m going to have to line it, can’t have the white under layer showing up! It’s light enough it should be no problem attaching to the shoulders, though I’ve not worked out how I’m going to do that yet!

Much like with Vax I’ve still got the shirt to do, this just needs of course patterning and cutting out, knowing me I’ll the inspiration will hit and I’ll end up doing all my sewing on the same day!

Aloy progress #

I’ve now got two Aloy designs I’ll be doing: the Carja Behemoth Tracer from Horizon: Forbidden West and now the Nora Protector from Horizon: Zero Dawn. I’ve not progressed much on the Behemoth Tracker other than working out how I’ll be doing various fabrics pieces. The models are extracted and just need re-topologising - this is something I need to sit down and get done as it’s going to probably be tedious work.

The Nora Protector is currently in the “I’ve got some reference images” state; I’ll get working on that properly once MegaCon is over.

I’m currently working on a costume that needs chainmail sleeves. I’d previously cheated and used spray painted knitted fabric (as used in many prestigious shows, such as monty python), but it’s very obvious that it’s just fabric when you take more than just a glance at it. So off I went to the internet to research what my options are.

• Buy some actual metal chainmail. It’s only used in one cosplay and I don’t plan on building more armour/going to LARP, it’s a bit too much. They don’t just sell sleeves so I’d have to invest in a chainmail shirt, which is going to set me back at least £70+ for the cheaper options.
• Buy some rings and make the sleeves. Cheaper than buying a full pieces, but time consuming and you’ve got to buy the right tools. If I can get away with not doing work I will 😂.
• Buy a sheet of foam chainmail. Laser cut sheets of EVA foam just need slotting together and spraying the colour you need. The downside are there are few places selling it and larger sheets start to add up in price. They do look surprisingly good, and if you have a laser cutter the company that invented it sells the patterns¹.
• 3D print the chainmail. If you read the title of this you know this is what I picked! Only cost effective if you have a 3D printer already. Don’t go out and buy one just for this.

Experiments: Part 1 #

The first model I found was an amazing design from Propsmaker² on Cults3D. It looked perfect, one whole sleeve that just needs printing and then unfolding, with all supports etc designed in. I chose silver Polymaker PETG as the filament as it has better UV, impact and temperature resistance than PLA, so I thought it’d be perfect for this purpose. The instructions did stress the need for a 0.3mm layer hight, something at which my printer with it’s standard 0.4mm nozzle warned me was not entirely supported. I got a successful print of the calibration model, so I thought I’d be set for the full size version.

The full print did not go well. It’s a 23hr(!) print and incredibly delicate. The design is stacked, so one ring failing will affect the rings above, thus ruining the print. Which happened 3hrs in, with two separate locations having rings torn off by blobbing (remember this blobbing issue, it’ll come up later!).

I realised that if there’s a chance that if it fails at any point that’s potentially ~22 hours wasted, and I did not have the time to properly calibrate the printer to ensure this beast of a print had the best chance to succeed. I decided to go back to the drawing board and see what alternatives where out there (as I’d need to order them quickly).

Experiments: Part 2 #

I stumbled across design number two purely by accident as I was at this point considering foam chainmail. The model, by savingthewow³ on Etsy, is chunkier and with flat, riveted style rings. It’s also a single layer, so no worrying about single ring failures taking out the entire print.

Unlike with the previous model I need to do multiple calibration test prints to figure out the best settings. I started first with the suggested options, and then slowly removed things I didn’t think I’d need. I’ve got a good printer (Bambu P1S) so I know I could take advantage of that to remove a lot of “safety” structure. I lowered the resolution to 0.2mm (still looked fine), replaced the raft with a brim (easier to remove, unnecessary with an auto levelled bed) and reduced the support angle back down to 30 degrees to get rid of a lot of extraneous support.

This design has a much shorter print time (~4:45hrs vs ~23hrs) at the expense of it being only 15x8cm. This means that overall it’s going to take much longer to print all the sections I need, but with the upside that if one fails I’ve only lost (at max) 5hrs of time.

Whilst I was able to complete a couple of prints, I was finding that it was blobbing heavily on the lower sections of the rings. Filament was then sticking to and slowly building on the nozzle, risking tearing rings off. I had to repeatedly pause the print to clean it, which is less than ideal. I spent some time attempting to calibrate it (only to find out the settings I use are actually correct), as well as printing other parts for the project which came out perfectly thanks to the new settings. The conclusion I drew was that PETG was the wrong filament for this model, bringing out all its worse aspects.

Experiments: Part 3 #

I know the model prints, just not well with PETG. So what if I try PLA? I’d initially discounted it for strength reasons, but maybe a PLA+ could mitigate this. Much to my annoyance, the first print using some Bambu PLA Basic came out perfectly, zero issues. It may have looked odd, being a green filament, but the bridging issues had gone and it was much smoother. I purchased some silver PLA⁴ rather than spray the existing green filament (which would have looked odd when the paint wore off), and have so far managed to print the section multiple times with no issue.

As these come in small sections, they need to be joined together. I just snip the ring that needs to join on, thread it on (kind of like a keyring) and then glue it closed with superglue. Once you’ve figured out how to do this it takes very little time to get two sheets joined together.

Conclusions #

• PETG doesn’t do well with what are essentially many close together small towers. I’m guessing the constant, small amounts of filament leads to stringing and then blobbing as the strings get stuck on the nozzle and pick up yet more stray filament.
• Brims > Rafts. Rafts take ages to remove, so it’s much better to have a levelled bed and rafts for the stability.
• With brims you’ve got much moe stability and can really cut back on supports.
• Removing the brims will ruin your nail polish, so be warned.

Final print settings #

These are probably only good for the P1S, but jut in case:

• Nozzle: 0.4mm
• Filament: 3DQF PLA+ Silver
• Print profile: 0.2mm Standard @BBL X1C
• Support: Enabled
• Support Type: Normal, Snug
• Support only on build plate: Enabled
• Brim type: Outer brim only (brim width 5mm, 0.1mm brim-object gap)

That’s it for the year! #

And lo, my con season comes to an end. MegaCon Manchester was the last for me this year, with nothing for the next few months. Plenty of time to rest, recover and start making stuff for next year!

I’ve had a fantastic time with all the events I’ve made it to. MegaCon in January was such a (good) throwback to how earlier cons felt. MCM in May surprised me as how less crowded it felt (and convinced me I don’t need to be there at 8:30am 😂). Fantasy Forest was everything I wanted out of a festival in a forest and of course MegaCon Manchester continues to have one of the best atmospheres at a con. I’m hoping to attend most of these again in 2025 as well as add in a few more. Next years calendar is going to look pretty busy!

Next years events #

So far the only event I’ve confirmed is MegaCon London in January, but I there are plenty more I have plans to attend:

• Secret con! There’s one in march but I don’t think I’ll have the costume I want ready for that. There are others at different locations so I’ll be keeping my eye out for them. Might be a combo of photographer/cosplayer, depends on the location.
• Either MCM May or MCM October. My preference is for October as it’ll fill in a gap at the end of the year. May usually has the better weather though which still tempts me.
• Fantasy Forest. I had so much fun there and absolutely want to do it again.
• MegaCon Manchester. The old fav. It’s got such a great atmosphere, very relaxed and close enough I can get ready at home.
• Asylum. The big steampunk event in Lincoln, I haven’t been in years and it’s apparently a big birthday celebration for it next year!
• Camp Cosplay. No one I knew got space in April and so I’m hoping for more luck in September!

I’d also like to get a few more location shoots in so I’ll be scouting out places I can go/stay over to do them.

Next years costumes #

I’ve got two costumes (at least) lined up for debut next year. The first is a Legend of Vox Machina Vax’ildan that I’ve bought the pattern for. I’d wanted to make it for a while but couldn’t get myself into the planning head space, so this allows me to skip most of that step. I’m still going to need to scale it, but at least all the bits are there!

The second, and much, much bigger build is a new Aloy! Forbidden west has a lot of interesting armour designs, but the one that I think looks the best¹ is the Carja Behemoth Trapper. It’s such a gorgeous design, with amazing colours, good armour detail and best of all looks comfortable to wear². I’ve no idea how long it’s going to take and so I’m not putting a deadline on it. I’ve plenty of other cosplay’s to wear and I want this to be as accurate and well made as I can get it!