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