Foaming the Head

I wanted the head to be a nice, big, round owl head shape.  OvO  So I wrapped the mattress pad foam around the plastic canvas, and kept cutting and gluing until I had a nicely-shaped lump.  I didn't worry too much about it being smooth, since the fur covering it would make it look smoother.

The next blog photos will be the ones taken during or after Katsucon!

Starting the Feet

Olcadan has big yellow bird feet with two toes in the front and one behind, all with long, black claws.  :O  I made the feet using craft foam and old shoes, but they didn't hold up well at Katsucon, and I think I'm going to scrap the craft foam and find a better way to make them for the next con.

I decided to use my old Asics running shoes that I was going to throw away because they had holes in the top, and were getting pretty ugly since I spray-painted them green and the spray-paint was wearing off, lol. The soles were still decently comfortable though, which was why I was hesitant to throw them out.  I'm glad I didn't, my feet were very comfortable at Katsucon!

The first thing I did was take the laces out and cut off the end of the tongue of my shoes so that the tongues lined up with the hole where your foot goes into the shoe.  Then I hot-glued the tongue like that so the shoes would be loose enough that I could slip them on.  I hot-glued craft foam into the shape of a tube, then hot-glued the tube onto the top of my shoes.  The craft foam was still pretty wimpy, so I put Mod Podge on the tubes to stiffen them up.  Here they are with a fresh coat of Mod Podge drying on them:

After this, I cut mattress pad foam (very similar to upholstery foam, but with one flat side and one egg carton side) to be the shape of toes and hot-glued them onto the shoes.  Then I hot-glued craft foam on the outside to create a smooth silhouette.  I ran out of yellow craft foam, so I used white and green, and they had to be painted yellow to match later.  I cut out claws from black craft foam and glued them on (I really like their silhouette, although SOME PEOPLE think they're too long).  All the craft foam was Mod Podged.  The next picture is from after Katsucon:

They were tricky to walk in.  As you can see, the foam got beat up, dented, and cracked in some places.  The claws fell off at times and had to be glued back on.  :P

Some References Used

I knew the belt buckle in the game and official art were different (I was going for the game look, note the blue eyes at the end), and I wanted an idea of depth, so I looked at the game model for references.  Here are some of my reference pictures (photos of my TV, lol!):

And a CG reference from the game compared to the official character illustration:

Armor Progress

Here are my armor pieces in different stages of completeness.  The loincloth and owl-head belt buckle have a flat coat of paint, but have not been antiqued yet.  The tassets and cuffs have been antiqued and sprayed with shiny lacquer to seal them.  A ruler that just happened to be there gives a size estimate:

I made the owl-head belt buckle out of an entire 8-oz. pack of Paper Clay.  It dried feeling extremely light.  It took a few days to dry completely.  I filled in some cracks on the back and the inside of the beak (from the bottom) with hot glue to improve its structural integrity.  I was regretful to have to antique the owl-head belt buckle because it was so beautiful when I painted it with flat metallic gold acrylic paint:

Unfortunately, you couldn't see what it was from the side:

This is how the owl-head belt buckle appeared after antiquing:

To create an "antique" effect on my armor, I mixed black and blue paint together to create a shadow color, rubbed it on my armor, and wiped it away, but left it in the crevasses.  (Sometimes I had to go back in with a paint brush to get the effect right, especially on the stripes on the owl-head belt buckle.)  I also painted on faux "shadows" because I knew you would not be able to see any real shadows in flash-photography.  You can especially see this on my loincloth, where the point in the middle "casts a shadow" on the swirly pieces under it.  On the owl-head belt buckle, the dark areas are also shadows and recesses, for instance the nostrils.  (My friend said that the beak looked all lumpy with thumb-prints all over it before I painted it, but I think it was because she didn't know it had nostrils until I finished the antiquing process, and maybe she thought the nostrils were weird dents.  I don't think the beak looks lumpy...)

Here you can see the antiqued owl-head belt buckle, barn owl-head knee armor, and loincloth.  They have all been sprayed with shiny lacquer to seal them.  The barn owl-head knee armor was made from another 8-oz. pack of Paper Clay with some to spare.  They took a few days to dry, and I painted them with silver and copper metallic acrylic paint, and antiqued them with the same black and blue mixture of acrylic paint.  Note the faux "shadows":

More to come!

After Katsucon!

So, Katsucon has come and gone!  I attended Katsucon February 18-20, 2011, travelling with 3 friends of mine and meeting others there.  I had a great time! :D  I got my Olcadan cosplay done (barely in time!)  In the hotel room on Friday!  There were also mishaps, like my toe claws falling off, but luckily my friends carried superglue to glue them back on!  I also crushed some of my armor when I tried to get my cell phone out of my pocket (due to incredibly limited vision!), which was under my tasset armor!  Luckily, superglue saved the day again!


More progress pics, then pics from Katsucon will be uploaded to this blog soon!  My cosplay is still not 100% done, and I didn't make a custom weapon (I borrowed foam nunchaku from a friend).  Hopefully I will get more done by Animazement, which is May 27-29 in Raleigh, North Carolina.