Getting going (Posted 22nd March 2013)

Thanks to the help of Bootheghost I have all my popper places marked. Now I just need to sew ALL the poppers on D: Gonna take ages, but I shall get it done over Easter hols. This fact has slowed down the project quite a bit as I really DO NOT want to sew around 50 poppers onto the dress. But it's got to be done! After that though I can start sealing and painting the armour! Then I will order the wig sometime after May so I can get the helmet going. Hopefully it'll be dry enough over summer too to do the sword!

Whoop whoop (Posted 5th January 2013)

Spent 2 hours with Donnie making the pattern for my cosplay. She was a big help and I'm glad to get it done. Because of that I could spend 3 more hours cutting it out, transferring some to tissue paper then trace, cut out and shape my armour! So above is a piccie of the breast plate. I am surprised at how easily you can shape craft foam with an oven. This cosplay doesn't need to be ready until Oct. but I'm having such fun making it actually. Nice change from sewing 8 panneled bodice D<

Pauldrons (Posted 21st December 2012)

I thought I'd make these first as I wanted to experiment with friendly plastic. I knew pauldrons would be hard to make out of craft foam as they are rounded which is why friendly plastic works so well for these. I spent about an hour moulding the paldron on the right, it's thicker than the one of the left for that reason, it's basically the prototype. The thin on of the left is the friendly plastic stretched to it's potential. Of course friendly plastic is hard to smooth if you don't have a hot air gun. I need to re-heat them to attach the snaps and the spikes. Once that is done I can make the fluted/frilled edge with fimo/air clay and then smooth the whole thing with paper mache clay to make it all one. Then I will have to paint, which I'm still working out how I'm going to do that to get the metalic/bronze colour Rikku's armour has but also the whole armour affect and also getting it to blend with the rest of the cosplay. So yeah. These were so fun to make, I can't wait to get started on this cosplay once I have more money!

Worked it out (Posted 25th October 2012)

The sketching is going well now that I've finished the torso part @__@ the rest is easy enough, I have found plenty of reference pics for that part. I have also worked out what I'm going to make it of. I will make the Torso armour from craft foam. This is because you CAN shape it with heat (carefully). And then I am going to use friendly plastic to get the pauldrons. For what the torso armour goes over I will probably buy a blue leotard and that's that. Maybe a trip to primark and I'll find something. Most challenging part? The boots I'm guessing. No idea how much this will cost either! The sword will be ok, I'll just use curtain rail/thick plastic poles (straight + round) + card for the structure & handle, then use spray foam and carve the shape out of that. Cover that in paper mache to make it nice and smooth, add all the other bits using some wire as well and bam! Paint + varnish. Whooo. Gonna take a while though. Never made armour either so I've no idea what I'm in for. Luckily I have no deadline so I'll just make this over time!

Armour sketches (Posted 23rd October 2012)

So I've begun sketching out her armour. Unfortunately there are very few reference pics. The main official picture of her outfit is of a strange angle! Luckily I realised that Paine, Rikku & Yuna's dark knight outfits all have the same base, and luckily Paine's main picture is an upright, standing straight picture. Hallelujah! So thankfully I can see how the front of Rikku's armour looks from the pics of the others. I have already done a first sketch of her helmet and front of body piece. So many parts though. It's quite fun sketching it all out though, I keep having to cross reference between 10 pictures but that's ok. They're not the best quality though so there is a little bit of artistic license with how this will actually turn out. There are clear reference pictures of her sword though so I've already sketched that out! Will upload the pics once I've done the final sketches :D