Firstly, I know I've left this extremely late, but I guess it's too late to change that now. ;^^ Anyway, I need to make some pauldrons for my Ratchet costume for Kitacon, but I have no idea how to pull it off after my original idea fell through. I need a method that's relatively quick to do (as in takes less than a week), and that will look good. There are some reference pictures here:

http://www.hookedgamers.com/images/337/ratchet__clank_future_quest_for_booty/previews/header_408_ratchet__clank_future_quest_for_booty.jpg

http://mnrukat.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/rfqfb_1.jpg

http://images.wikia.com/ratchet/images/d/d0/Ratchet_in_Quest_for_Booty.png

I don't know if it's possible to mould craft foam into a partial sphere like that, so I was thinking of using paper mache. I'm not sure if that would look good enough, though. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Gah, wrong forum! Could a mod please possibly move this to the Costume Help forum? ;^^ Thanks in advance!

The shoulders are more like shoulder bell than sphere shapes. Look at a warhammer 40k space marine pauldron.

They're similar to that shape just small and tight fitting.

Two ways you could do this with in a week i figure are:

Method 1:

Take cardboard or card and make a semicircle this will be the base. Next take another piece and extend it and make semicircle at the top.

The next case will be two tape these two parts together and cut out strips of card and follow the bottome semicircle round and up. To help with this create a centre strut with the desired curvature for the shoulder.

Hard without pictures sorry.

The other would be your papiermache idea of creating a sphere then dived it up into halfs or whatever size. then half coating the marked out half in desired material and cutting off the excess. Technically if you get it perfect symetrical you could make both puldrons at once :]

Regards
CosMech

Go into a costume store and find the most spherical helmet you can. Police helmets are very good for this, buy 2 if needed. Go home, cut it into the right shape, sand it to make the surface ready for paint, prime it, paint it and then seal it with a clear spray.

Cheap, quick, and damn effective when it comes down to it.

Pretty much Tab covered what I was going to say.

I'm just going to add that I have done this a few times both with baseball helmets and cycle helmets rather than costume ones (costume ones would be easier to cut). It took roughly a day to cut and sand two pauldrons. My Sephiroth ones took longer as they needed to be made wider to fit over other pieces of armour. Depending on the thickness of the helmet you'll need a cutting tool like a multitool. I pretty much love this method and have used it ever since.

I modroc'd over a helmet when I did mine but it gives an uneven surface. With a dremmel, the helmet option is really easy.