Man, am I really bad at time management 😂. I started my Vax cosplay with what I thought was plenty of time to complete it without rushing, but loosing a couple of long weekends (to fun things, I have no regrets) meant that I ended up with work piling up and barely enough time to do it. I’m real glad I factored in that overflow time now!
I was also trying to get fixes for Aloy done, something I definitely should have started earlier as they did add to the chaos, switching between costumes.
I was packed, the night before I set off for con and in front of me sat a large wheeled case, duffel bag, rucksack, camera bag and tote bag. Oh. Oh no. I need to take that all on the train.
Cue me staring dead eyed at the pile, some frantic thought, and a last minute swap of Aloy for my Rincewind. It is 11pm and I’m doing a quick wash and hoping that the cosplay is still in good enough shape.
I repacked as much as I could, ditching the tote bag and big duffel bag and hoped things would be dry in the morning (Nope, I had to use my heat gun to help dry them 😂).
Skipping ahead to the Friday of the con, I was happy to find that my Rincewind cosplay was in decent shape! I spent the morning coating it in hairspray, which I’m glad to say did reduce the amount of red fluff that came off it to a manageable amount and mean I didn’t shed over everyone else like last time!
The con itself was great, the weather wasn’t too hot and I was convinced to get a lightsaber (which tbf was not that difficult at all). No regrets!
My friend Ben brought his camera which means I now actually have more than a couple of grainy in con photos of my as Rincewind!
Vax came out and immediately there where issues. I’d forgotten to do a few fixes the night before and it became quickly clear that the hot glue had not adhered well at all to the faux leather. I had to head to the cosplay hospital twice to get things re-glued, big thanks to the woman who I kept bothering for superglue!
Between myself, Lana (as Keyleth) and Daisy (as Vex) we had a small Vox Machina comic book group going and where able to take some good group photos, as well as participate in the big Critical Role meetup. It was way too busy to hang around for long which was a shame as I was looking forward to chatting with folks.
As we where leaving the con I did come across some very cool automated wings that convinced me to make winged Vax. Wings are cool!
Hot glue is terrible on faux leather. Superglue is effective though, I’ll bear that in mind when working with it. Thread is by far still the most effective way of keeping it together.
Pack in advance to check you can fit everything in without requiring 76 bags and a team of baggage handlers.
Don’t leave repairs until the last minute - get them done well in advance of any con to save stress.
I’m hoping to get the photo’s I took edited, as well as get the ones of me in costume off Ben and the lovely photographer I was introduced to.
Next up for cons is MegaCon in Manchester at the end of July. I’ll be hopefully taking Aloy and Vax; I’ll be wearing the costumes from home to the con so don’t have to worry about packing.
MCM wasn’t even over before I was thinking about what I was going to do next! The next big con is probably going to be MCM London in May, but I’m hoping to do some photo shoots and there’s always the chance other events will crop up.
Aloy is definitely making a return (with some minor repairs/tweaks) but it’s not a very flexible costume to move around/sit in, so it’s only going to see a single day. That means I need another cosplay for the other days, one that I can cram in with my Aloy outfit.
I want something lighter, more comfortable and able to deal with the heat. And I have one that not only fits the bill, but also allows me to do some group cosplay shots: Vax’ildan from Critical Role! I’d previously thought about doing Vax before, potentially Legend of Vox Machina or the Vox Machina Origins comic book version. I do like the comic book version, and with three volumes with different evolutions, I had choice! I eventually decided on the one from volume two (less layers, less belts, more knives).
Looking at the reference there’s only a few props, with most of it just fabric. This should mean that it stays in the craft area rather than taking over my flat, plus hopefully reducing things like dust and nasty vapours. It also looks like it’ll be comfortable to wear, and as a bonus get a swooshy cloak!
I’ve got plenty of time to get this done (famous last words) so hopefully there’s going to be much less stress than with the Aloy outfit. Stay tuned for more updates, as well as looks back on other cosplay I’ve done!
MCM wasn’t even over before I was thinking about what I was going to do next! The next big con is probably going to be MCM London in May, but I’m hoping to do some photo shoots and there’s always the chance other events will crop up.
Aloy is definitely making a return (with some minor repairs/tweaks) but it’s not a very flexible costume to move around/sit in, so it’s only going to see a single day. That means I need another cosplay for the other days, one that I can cram in with my Aloy outfit.
I want something lighter, more comfortable and able to deal with the heat. And I have one that not only fits the bill, but also allows me to do some group cosplay shots: Vax’ildan from Critical Role! I’d previously thought about doing Vax before, potentially Legend of Vox Machina or the Vox Machina Origins comic book version. I do like the comic book version, and with three volumes with different evolutions, I had choice! I eventually decided on the one from volume two (less layers, less belts, more knives).
Looking at the reference there’s only a few props, with most of it just fabric. This should mean that it stays in the craft area rather than taking over my flat, plus hopefully reducing things like dust and nasty vapours. It also looks like it’ll be comfortable to wear, and as a bonus get a swooshy cloak!
I’ve got plenty of time to get this done (famous last words) so hopefully there’s going to be much less stress than with the Aloy outfit. Stay tuned for more updates, as well as looks back on other cosplay I’ve done!
As I mentioned in my last post I still had a few minor things to take care of the night before, a couple I’d identified from my costume test (reinforcement of flaps join to the belt) and a few minor things to the bow that I just hadn’t got time to finish. My friend Lana also helped detangle the mess that was my wig which I am grateful for (and subsequently just got tangled again after I’d worn it).
Getting to the accommodation much earlier in the day rather than later afternoon/early evening really helped to relieve some of the anxiety I had (that and the Gideon the Ninth book, I highly recommend for all your transported away from your worries needs!).
Comic Con was fantastic, as usual. There where some amazing artists in artists alley as well as people selling amazing merch; I definitely spent more money than I should have! The variety and quality of cosplay was so good, so many fantastic costumes that I of course completely forgot to take photos of. I promise every year I’m going to do better but never do.
All the things I bought for me from comic con. The frog theme is completely unintentional, and I absolutely love the dice shirt.
I also got stopped a lot for photos (as did my friend Lana, having disney princessed it up and made so many kids days) which was nice, though I’ll admit not being able to make it down one row of artists alley did start to grate a bit! I got some nice photos outside, both with me in front and behind the camera, these will but up in galleries over the next week or so.
I took a few selfies in the various mirrors about the place, but this is my favourite.
My costume wasn’t too bad to wear, but was restrictive enough to make things awkward - I couldn’t really bend or kneel down and I was concious of crushing things when I sat down. It definitely was on the warmer side and I think it’s a bit much to wear two days in a row.
I made some fixes across the weekend, firstly safety pinning the upper arms to hold them in place, and for the second day sewing belt loops onto my trousers which where constantly falling down.
My biggest gripe was how many people where allowed in on the Saturday afternoon. I know Saturday is a busier day, but the fact was you couldn’t move or look at anything due to the crowds. The aircon was on stronger but the temperatures inside where stifling and we quickly escaped to outside where it was cooler. It was apparently 22 degrees as well, which shows just how bad it was!
I really hope that MCM restricts the number of people for Saturday at least because it was ridiculous. We left earlier than we wanted, and already have plans to avoid the bulk of Saturday afternoon in May.
I’m not planning on going to MCM in Ocotober next year, whilst it’s a lot of fun it’s also real close to other cons I might want to attend. We’re instead going to go to May MCM, something I’ve not done in a long while!
Stay tuned for photos I’ve taken over the weekend and details on my next cosplay!
Hello there! MCM was last weekend which is why you did not see any blog posts for the last month as I entered con crunch. These posts take a lot of time to put together and I ran out of that quite quickly as I crammed as much making into the free hours of the day as I could!
Cast your minds back a month (or read the last blog post) and you will recall I had the armour made, the flaps painted and the bow base structure made. Please note that although I’ve laid these out under headings in this order, everything was pretty much happening all at once!
So, the armour had a base coat but that does not make it look real, just a base to work on. There were details to add and weathering to be done. I masked off and used some black and silver spray paint to add those colours to the relevant parts. For the gauntlets I first sprayed silver, then hair spray and then the black coat with the idea that I could scrape off the black to reveal the silver below.
This works, but honestly looks awful and each time I’ve tried it it’s led to me painting over it to fix the rough edges and peeling paint. It was much more effective just to dry brush the damage effects on as you have a lot more control over how much and where. Scrapping of the paint would often take off too much or pull up the under coat of paint too.
Next up was adding details to the upper arm pieces and headpiece. I got those nice sharp lines by carefully masking off the area and using a good brush to paint the colours on by hand. Whilst I could have airbrushed it, the setup to do so would have taken much longer than just using a paintbrush.
With the details in place I could start weathering. This involved just throwing on some watered down black and brown paint and wiping it off until it looked grubby, adding a few splotches of grey paint dabbed on using a piece of kitchen roll. Extra grubbiness was achieved by using a brown oil paint on the edges to give a look of rust or ingrained muck, wiping a lot of it away to get a more organic shape.
Boom! Armour done. This time I took the pieces outside to varnish which meant things where much, much less fume-y this time around.
I have armour, now I need to attach it to the bits of costume I’ve made previously. First up is the front piece where each of the armour pieces and the emitter is attached using velcro contact cemented to the front. This works great! Cables are cut to length and again contact cemented into place on the back of the elements. Boom, easy!
To attach the arm armour first up I made some holes and threaded through lengths of blue rope I had bought. It frays like mad, but holds together enough to be tied into place. Extra rope is wound around the arms and then glued into place since this rope is slippy AF. The armour is then also contact cemented on.
I’m not going to lie, the answer to “how did you do that” is mostly going to involve me saying contact cement a lot so I’m going to gloss over a few things. Feel free to drop me a message
@smojcosplay
to get more details!
I added some piping to the leg wraps, this was just 10mm (I think?) foam dowels from PolyProps that had been primed and painted black. It worked great! The blue cables where actually some black CAT5 cable I had spare, painted a glorious blue. They looked so much better than I’d hoped.
It’s threading time! This was pretty time consuming as I had to drill small pilot holes before I could drill and actual sizable enough hole to push the faux leather cord through. Why? Because just drilling with the bit of the size I needed caused a right mess, and just cutting a slit with craft knife led to weird lumps.
So I sat there and threaded the cord whilst playing D&D, adding some black paint to the edges to make it look weathered. Easy! Next step: the red patches.
A few trials led to the solution of gluing a piece of 2mm foam to the flaps, cutting a slit next to it and then just winding the red thread around it until it looked right. With 3-5 of these per flap, there was a lot of winding to do (again, mostly all done during D&D!).
With the flaps done, I sewed a simple belt out of some old black canvas like material I had (which did used to be a no-face costume. It was far, far to warm to wear though!) and used velcro to hold it shut. The flaps where then arranged and sewn on using black thread. I only did one line, which did come back to bite me during the costume test.
Aloy has pipes around her torso, something I thought shouldn’t be that hard to get right. Oh boy was I WRONG. I went through plan after plan, none of which worked right but thankfully did provide ideas for the next.
The one that ultimately worked, Plan G, involved getting the pattern for a waistcoat (from the sewing bee website, thanks!), making said waistcoat and attaching the dowels (using contact cement of course) after adding slashes to one side to give them more bend.
The waistcoat was then held shut using a lot of velcro, sewed on for extra holding power. And this worked! It was as conformable as you can get having a bunch of pipes wrapped around your upper body.
Of course, whilst I’m doing all of this assembly of the main costume I’m also priming, painting and on the fly redesigning parts of the bow to have it work. I tried the hairspray layer paint trick to give rough edges but it didn’t look great and I did end up painting over whole sections to hide a lot of this.
There’s not much to say about the bow, apart from the details where fully hand painted - no masking here as I was running out of time. I simply cut out a template and used that to pencil on the lines and carefully paint within! I am especially proud of hand-painted wood grain on the bow wood, this was brought out more by using a gloss rather than matt varnish on it.
I am quite proud of the bits that clip onto the string, they’re just 10mm foam bevelled and with a hole drilled to create the slit. They aren’t glued on, just held in place with friction as they are on the reference images!
I run out of time to attach the cord around the ends of the bow, throw it in my suitcase and plan to attach this once I reach the flat I’m staying in.
The days are rapidly flying away and I’m still adding details. I know I’ve got no chance of getting the cool electronics done, so I instead concentrate on getting the lenses in place so at least that bit looks good. I buy a blue plastic folder and cut out some circles, then use a white pen to draw more smaller circles on the back. This completely wild-card idea works fantastically and I’m able to fix these now much fancier emitter lenses into place using hot glue.
The arrows I have been slowly getting ready, using old arrow shafts I had from my archery days painted with a layer of brown to darken them. The fletching are just 1mm craft foam sheets, sliced with a craft knife and them primed and painted with my airbrush. Of course, me being the archer, I did use my proper fletching jig to make sure they where sort of accurately attached! I only made three arrows fully, the other three where simply taped together. This saved time as I carved the heads out of 10mm foam, drilled a hole for the shaft, primed, painted and attached using hot glue. Simple but looked great!
Oh how I hate doing wig styling. The damn thing just loved to get itself tangled and I spent most of my time detangling it just to get something done. I’d like to thank the Silvousplaits Hairstyling channel for having a video on styling Aloy’s hair (here if you want to watch) with which I would not have been able to do this.
I do wish I’d tried some of these braids on my own hair when it was long because I did enjoy doing them once I’d got tha hang of things.
Honestly I’m not especially happy with how it came out but it looked enough like Aloy’s hair (plus I was leaving for the con the next day after I’d finished it). I had made some beads out of foam clay, primed and painted a couple of days earlier. They held up real well, stayed in place and looked like proper beads which I was happy with.
It is the night before I leave. I am still adding details to the bow and making sure everything looks good. My plan to have an early night is out the window and it is approaching midnight. My train is at 10:07 the next day. And I am now doing a costume test.
And lo and behold… the costume works! Sure I immediately notice a few issues I’ll need to correct, but I arrive mid-afternoon which means I have the evening to make any last minute fixes.
I collapse into bed, anxiety consuming me and sleeping awfully. There’s a few more minor things to do but London, and MCM Comic Con 2022 awaits!
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