The Kushana Cosplay - part 2

So over the last few weeks I have made a lot of progress on the armor parts of Kushana's outfit. There were several challenges and I would like to share some insights from a newbie on armormaking. First some notes on my materials of choice and some insights into working with very small details in Worbla.

Rubber sheets (formgummi / dekorgummi / craft foam)

I chose to work with sheets of craft foam, 2 mm thick. In Sweden these are available from Panduro in most cities, but I recommend that you buy them from Skapamer.se instead. They have the same sheets cheaper. Or, if you are feeling adventurous, you can order them from China for basically nothing - but be careful, you might get slammed with custom or additional freight charges.

The rubber was pretty thin, but very workable and suitable for the style or armor I am making. It is possible to cut out really tiny details of this rubber and it's very easy to work with. Most pictures of cosplayers show people working with black foam and I started with that, but for the detail work I found that white foam is superior as you can draw on it easily. I will always work with a light color foam in the future.

The foam is a good base for the flimsy Worbla, but you can also coat it and use the foam as it is. 

Worbla

The short story is, Worbla is fantastic. It is a sticky plastic that you heat up and shape to whatever you like. It is not available in Sweden, so you have to order it from the outside world. I have bought it from Coscraft in the UK and from Mycostumes in Germany. It was cheaper to buy from Germany and I will continue to buy from Germany for future needs.

Here are some tutorials I found really helpful in making my first set of armor:
Worbla's Finest Art Several varied turorials for big and small
The perks of folding Worbla - some good insights for your first projects. Since you will end up making mistakes, don't spend more Worbla than you have to, this stuff isn't cheap!
Kamui Cosplay - a good FAQ

I also bought a whole bunch of velcro, d-rings, elastics and cans of stuff that smell really bad, but more on that later. Let's look at what I made for Kushana.

The crown

One of the last pieces I made, but the most intricate, was the crown. Very few people seem to cosplay Kushana, but a lot of those who do seem to decorate the crown with only the rough lines from the anime. Why? Those lines are clearly just representations of a more intricate pattern that an 80's anime couldn't quite express. She is a princess - of course she doesn't just have rough lines on her crown. The design we see in the anime is clearly a simplification of the snake-banner of Torumekia, which has two snakes meeting at the tail over a sword and/or jewel and in some instances the snake is shown breathing fire.

So I went for the detail. After drawing the rough shape of the crown and cutting it out in foam, I grabbed an image of the Torumekia flag form the net and broke it down. I cut out all these tiny paper pieces and drew them on foam. Then I cut them out (which took forever), and placed them on the crown. Then I hot-glued each piece to the crown and left room for the jewel in the middle. Finally I covered the crown with a sheet of Worbla, heated it, and shaped the Worbla around the elevated foam pieces using a small shaping-tool for clay. Below you can see the progress in pictures. The next step will be to shape it to my head, sand it a bit, glue on the crazy eyes that will become rivets, and start spraying and painting!

I was quite amazed at how mych detail the Worbla can carry off. I was worried that the tiny pieces would get lost beneath the plastic, but it worked out fine. On many tutorials, you see people working with relatively large details like strips and long, flowy shapes. But I can tell you this - Worbla works with really small details as well. My smallest foam pieces were about 2x2 mm. If you look at the pictures below, these are the smallest pieces of the snakes' tails.

Another method to do this detail work would of course be to glue on more Worbla on top of the big sheet, but I would strongly advice against this. When heated, the Worbla will deform pretty easily and it is very very very hard to keep the shape of such small details so close together when you have to heat and reheat the piece. A likely scenario is that your smallest pieces will melt or move around when you heat the material and then you will end up with a messy-looking object. It is much better to put the details below a solid sheet and press it down along every edge - because the foam below will keep its form!

In conclusion - do not be afraid to try and make details below the Worbla.

1. Get a pattern, don't be afraid of the details!

2. Cut everything out, and mark every single piece or the cat WILL destroy everything

3. Put all the pieces where they will go, adjust as needed.Don't forget to position the pieces that are going on after the worbla, in this case the rivets.

4. Place the worbla over the foam and start heating, pressing down every edge as you go.

5. Press down the edges of the item when you are satisfied with the level of detail.

6. Cut away theexcess worbla and enjoy the awesomeness that you now need to give its final shape. And sand. And prime. And paint.

The Kushana Cosplay - part 1

So, my next project is for the Science Fiction Convention in Stockholm in April.

I'm doing Kushana from my all-time favorite anime/manga - Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä. Kushana is kindof the villain, at first, when she arrives in the Valley of the Wind with some brutal methods in order to reclaim lost land to humanity. Her goals are admirable, but her method is fire and war. Her struggle is a different one from that of the heroine and Kushana follows different paths through this dystopic world that is on the brink of being consumed by mutated vegetation and giant insects.

I am going for the animated movie version of Kushana (below). In this version of the story, Kushana was attacked by giant insects as a child and lost both her legs as well as her left arm. She has replaced theses limbs with armor prostethics.

So, what I am making is:
x) A white tunic in wool or jersey
x) Armor for legs and one arm
x) A tiara crown
x) The snake flag
With the possible addition of Kushana's pistol - a very intricate and beautiful piece



My first mission will be the leg armor and for this I will premiere the use of Worbla. But first, I'm making a leg model so I can make a pattern and later on form the Worbla in the correct size and shape.

Here is how it went:

1) I used plastic bags and duct tape. I cut out the bottom of two of the bags and wrapped the third around my foot. Then I made my husband duct tape me. It's strongly adviced to get help for this, do not try this alone.
2) With 2 layers on duct tape in place, we used a scissor to open up the cast in the back, all the way down to the heel.
3) I used fabric scraps from previous projects to stuff the leg and as I worked my war upwards, I closed the opening with more duct tape.
4) Finally, a complete leg! Now I can make my armor!

The leg in the process of getting taped

Taped leg

Stuffing the leg and closing it on the way

The finished leg in all its glory

The Merida Cosplay - part 3 (underdress)

Step 4 - underdress

Before finishing the overdress completely I wanted to make the underdress so that I could try the dress on with the correct "underwear" and trim the neckline to fit. The underdresses of this time were most likely linen, but you can also use a sheet. The pattern is fairly simple and there are a ton of free patterns to find online. It's basically some squares and triangles with a hole for the head. These patterns will give you something that is historically correct, but perhaps somewhat bulky.

The finished underdress

I went slightly more fancy and draped the front- and backpieces on my dress form to get a good fit. I oversized the sleeves so that I could get some extra fabric to pop out at the shoulders and wrists. Just enlargen the sleeve pieces so that they are maybe 10-15 cm wider at the shoulder side than the shoulder hole. Put lots of pins in them and make small wrinkles as you sew. I put all the wrinkles in the top half of the sleeve.

With the sleeves attached, I then tried them on, put some pins in them and cut away to a rougly triangular shape. I underestimated how much fabric the pop-outs would eat lenght-wise, but I fixed this later by attaching wristpieces to the ends of the sleeves.

Merida's underdress looks to be of a larger sort, with a rouched bodice. This is a bit overkill in the sewing-machine era, since this method really eats fabric and most of it will be covered. If you plan to rouche the whole thing, you need to make the body very wide. I went for a more form-fitting bodice and then I made a wrinkled neck-outlay that I simply sewed on around the neckline. It ended up looking fine.

Closeup of the neck outlay

Merida also has rouching along the sleeves, but you don't need to do that. With tight outer sleeves and somewhat bigger underdress sleeves, they will wrinkle themselves when you pull them out and the hand will keep them in place. Doing wrinkles along the wrist will only make it feel bulky. When I lenghtened the sleeve, I make the wristpiece a little wider than the sleeve to get some extra wrinkling when it pops out at the hand. It won't fall out terribly long, just a little bit to give a hint at the wrist. I hand-sewed the wrist-seams, since they will be sticking out and I didn't want machine-seams showing.

Closeup of the wristpiece

All in all, my underdress ended up being very comfortable and it saves me from the itch of the wool. It is somewhat form-fitting, mainly in the shoulders/chest-area. It is not quite as wide as the overdress, but nor does it need to be. I can absolutely use this again in other projects, since the only Merida-specific thing with this underdress is the wrinkled neckline and since it is sewn-on I can easily remove it if I want to make a simpler neckline later.

Some hints and tips for this step: 

You definately do not need to pay for a pattern to make this! This is midieval underwear. You can figure it out from free patterns available online on basically any mideival fan-site. You can trace a pattern off a nightgown, cut out squares in approximate sizes... it's very very easy. The only difficult part is sewing the neckline and fitting the shoulders, but you will have those issues whether you have a "real" pattern or not. Two big sqares become the front and back. Two smaller squares are the sleeves, which you can trim down. Use the scrap fabric to make trim for neck and wrists. Don't be stingy with the sleeves - make 'em bigger and longer than you need! It's easier to trim down than to lenghten. That's it. Keep it simple. It's an undergarment, after all.

Make the underdress so big that you can get into it without closures, but not so big that it feels bulky. Having lacing or a zipper is neither necessary nor recommended. 

If you are on a budget, use an old white sheet for the body and if possible pimp the visible parts with a nicer fabric. It's totally OK to use sheet-fabric for the body and linen for the sleeves and neckline.

Most of the dress will be invisible, but if you want to put some extra effort into making it look nice, put some handstitching into the wrist- and necklines.

Fit the shoulders well! The flat part of the shoulder should be so high that it's mostly (or completely) the sleeve-part that shows in the overdress gaps. Put some time into that.

That's it for the underdress!