Over the past few years I've been creating halloween costumes that have been getting progressively more complex and using more materials and techniques beyond regular halloween costumes. This very recently progressed into actually going to a comic con and wearing Commander Shepard armor that I made last year for halloween. Maybe I'll post up pictures of that armor in a later post, but for now, I'm starting with the costume currently underway, The Weeping Angel.
I made a Queen of Blades costume two years ago (again, pictures in a later post perhaps) and got a real kick out of actually scaring kids on Halloween. It's supposed to be a scary holiday right? Anyways, I decided this year to make something really scary, that actually creeps me out from one of my favorite shows, Dr. Who. It's popular to cosplay as the doctor or other characters, but not as popular as villains from the show, although I have seen plenty of weeping angels on le internets. I'm trying to go pretty faithful to the reference images though, so that starts with a mask. Since I have no experience with making prosthetics or making anything out of latex, etc (yet!, skills/experience yet to be developed) I went with making the mask out of paper mache.
I considered buying a base mask, but that would create a mouth that i would have to sculpt over and the mask would have weird proportions due to the mouth being open on a mask that was premade with its mouth closed. So I made a really crap model of my face by pressing aluminum foil over my face and then paper mache-ing over the foil. It turned out ok, looking pretty weird without a mouth. You can see the base below, before I had really started to sculpt over it.
Reading other posts on how other people have made the masks, I bought some paper clay (air dry clay) to do the sculpting over the base mask. Progress photos are below, and you can see how I began the sculpt, from top on down. I have some art skills from my past days as a high school art student (I took AP art, got a 2 on the AP exam LIKE A BOSS) but I have never really made clay sculpture before. Turned out pretty decent, I think. I think it took me about 3 hours to do all the sculpting on the mask. It did dry tighter and cracked a bit, but yesterday I went in and filled the cracks and sanded down the surface for painting.
One problem I did create though, there were some parts of the mask that were uneven that I filled in with clay, but it ended up drying and tightening the side of one cheek inwards, so that now the mask is really tight on my face. I might sand down the interior somewhat, but I think this is something that I'm just going to have to live with.
Next step is painting the sucker. I had to wait until the clay dried all the way through, and I laid down a layer of elmer's glue on the inside to seal the newspaper against moisture from when I try and breather through the tiny nose air holes I gave myself.
On the to do list still:
Make a wig, paint the wig
Since I don't want to do any body painting, make gloves/neck cover out of tights
Make the dress - one of the largest pieces, but a fairly easy day of sewing
Paint the dress - this is going to be one of the no fun parts, as the whole thing has to be painted
And finally, the most complex large piece, make the wings and the harness for the wings. I might make the harness before the dress, so if it turns out bulky and needs to be hidden, I can adjust the dress appropriately. Actually, that sounds like a good idea, do that.
The make or break parts of the costume in terms of accuracy are the mask and the wings. Wings are going to be a pain in the butt, but if I can get them fairly accurate, it's going to be good. A lot of weeping angels I've seen don't look that great because the wings are not as accurate as they could be. Judgemental costuming, being elite and such since 2013.
More to come if I don't forget to take progress photos.
No comments:
Post a Comment