Frequently Asked Questions

I get quite a bit of e-mail/PMs/IMs of people asking me questions about my costumes, and nine times out of ten it's the same three questions. Since I'm notoriously bad at answering e-mails and messages, but I don't want to deprive people of help, I'm going to do my best to answer everyone's most frequently asked questions (and some not so frequently asked).

1) Do you commission costumes?

I'll get this one out of the way right away. No, I don't commission costumes. If there are any costumes on this website that appear to have been commissioned, such as Asaba or Sniper, it's because those were commissioned under unusual circumstances. Other than that, I don't make costumes for anyone other than G-Mal. I am extremely flattered you would consider my skills desireable enough to commission from! Trust me, though, there are plenty of comissioners out there that are way better than me (and WAY more reliable, if how often I respond to my e-mails says anything).

2) How did you make you Fran armor?

This is easily the question I get asked the most. My Fran armor was made entirely from craft foam. Specifically, 3mm-thick craft foam from Joann Fabrics. If it's not 3mm thick, it's not what I used. You see, the craft foam sheets at Joann's comes in three thicknesses: 2mm, 3mm and 6mm. 2mm is simply too thin and doesn't really stand up under it's own weight, and it tears easily; 6mm doesn't come in sheets large enough for big projects like body armor, and it's really too thick to do anything intricate. 3mm thick foam is the best because it A) holds up under it's own weight, which means you can make things like shoulder armor without it being too flimsy, B) you can use 3mm thick foam relatively safely without having to support it with something like wonderflex or worry about it tearing, and C) it comes in large enough sheets to do large projects. Craft foam in general is cheap, which is A++++++.

Now that you've learned all you ever wanted to know about craft foam, let's move on to the basics of armor making. The best place to start is to pattern yourself out a mock-up of your armor with some stiff paper (printer paper is a little flimsy; I use Bristol paper a lot when making patterns). If you can't make your armor out of paper, chances are you won't be able to make it out of craft foam. That being said, you can get pretty creative with paper patterns, so don't let compound curves scare you. The boob parts of my Fran armor are compound curves; you just have to cut pieces of paper out like the pieces of a beach ball to get a curve. The patterning phase takes a lot of time; I probably went through 3 patterns before I finalized the thigh armor. It's just a lot of going back and forth and adjusting and such. [Before I start posting photos, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't steal these designs. I know it is SO tempting to use a template that someone has already drawn out for you, but I spent an obscene amount of hours with the game open rotating the camera around Fran and drawing these designs out. A lot of it is my own design anyway, since I had to make up the parts that I couldn't see in the game.] Once I got a rough sketch of the armor, I clean it up on the computer (it makes it easier to make things symetrical that way) and print it out to the right size.

With all my armor, there's two layers: the base layer, and the "raised" layer. All of the designs that stand up off the armor are part of the raised layer, while the base layer is the layer that all of the raised designs are glued onto. Therefore, you'll start by cutting out the base layer. I use a pair of sharp scissors; an exacto knife works well too, but my fingers start to get tired after a while with an exacto knife, so I usually use scissors. Above all, you have to be 100% committed to your cut; it's very, VERY difficult to go back and cut back over the same spot on the foam and still get a clean cut. So cut once and be sure of what you're cutting. Once you've got the base layer, it's time to start cutting out the raised layer; what I do is use the pattern to draw the outline of the raised layer onto the base layer with a ballpoint pen (so not to tear the foam), so you know where to glue the raised layer onto. Speaking of glue, I have experience with three types of glue, and I have my own opinion of each one. Elmer's glue is strong and flexible, but takes a bit of time to dry. Crazy Glue (super glue) is the fastest drying, and actually develops a chemical reaction with craft foam which causes the two pieces of foam to literally fuse together, but Crazy Glue has the potential to crack foam the way it cracks fabric when you get it on your clothes. E6000/Goop is probably the strongest bonding, but it takes 24 hours to dry and really, I never found it to hold any better than Elmer's or Crazy Glue. With the case of Fran, I learned really quickly that I needed a glue that dried in seconds if I was going to make progress faster than a snail's pace, so Crazy Glue was my choice. It's held together great even after a year. I will suggest that you find a bottle of Crazy Glue that has a brush-on top, because it makes it easier to apply the glue more precicely (which helps with the little details).

Once you've got your base layer cut out, it's time to cut out the raised parts. Using a separate piece of craft foam (this is what scraps are good for) , pattern the raised design and cut them out the same way you did the base layer. Exacto knives might be better for intricate designs, but if you have a pair of small scissors, that'll probably save your hands. If you've drawn on the pattern of the raised part onto the base layer, gluing the raised parts onto the base layer should be a piece of cake.

Cutting craft foam at different angles can give you neat effects. If you cut a piece of foam at a 45 degree-angle and glue that edge to another edge that's been cut at 45 degrees, you'll end up with a 90 degree angle. That's how I did all of the beveled edged on my Fran armor. Also, you can trim off the square edges of foam to make it look more rounded; I did this extensively with my Fran helmet. It takes a bit of practice to get the right technique so that you're getting a nice, clean cut without messing the edge up.

Keep in mind that armor is often made up of different parts; my Zelda armor (which, BTW, was made exactly the same way my Fran armor was) is assembled from three separate parts. Hopefully before you even began your project, you thought about how to attach the armor to your body. There's a hundred ways to attach armor to your body; with my Fran thigh armor, I sewed snaps onto a piece of wonderflex and used E6000 to glue those snaps onto the armor (sewing into craft foam is a no-no since it'll tear, and E6000 seemed like the best glue to glue wonderflex onto craft foam), and sewed corresponding snaps onto my body tight that I wore with the costume. If you've got all the logistics about how you're going to wear the armor worked out, you can go ahead and paint. Lots of people claim that you have to seal craft foam with watered-down glue before you can paint it, but I never had the patience to paint ten layers of watered down glue. Instead, I went out and bought a fairly high-quality acrylic paint and coated the armor in about 5 layers of it, only letting the paint dry about 15-20 minutes in between each layer. You see, acrylic paint is a resin, which means it's a plastic. Have you ever let a chunk of acrylic paint dry completely? It turns hard and rubbery, like plastic. So if you paint enough layers onto foam, the paint soaks into the foam and creates a layer of plastic. With my experience, if you paint with enough layers of acrylic paint, the paint itself acts like a sealer. Granted, I never tried to make any armor that had a mirror finish, so that might need to be approached differently. Bottom line: enough layers of acrylic paint and you can skip the watered-down glue step.

One thing that I feel is worth pointing out is that different colored craft foam absorbs paint differently. I know it sounds crazy, but I found that it's true with the particular brand that I use. Yellow craft foam is the most absorbent foam, and thus less likely to have visible paint cracks; red craft foam, on the other hand, has a slightly smoother texture than the yellow, and thus isn't quite as absorbent. I found that the armor I made out of red foam cracked a lot more than the armor made out of yellow foam. Of course, you can save yourself a lot of grief by using foam that is similar in color to the final paint job, but I'm very particular about the texture of my foam and I didn't think the black foam had a nice texture to it. The texture of the foam is ultimately going to be reflected in your paint job, afterall.

And that is my Fran armor (as well as my Zelda armor) in a very large nutshell. Every piece of my Fran armor was made this way, from the helmet down to the shoes. The helmet was the only part of the costume that was entirely backed with Wonderflex, but only because I wanted it to feel more like an actual helmet. I hope this helped you out!

3) How about the ears?

The ears are shaped out of wonderflex, covered with fur and bolted onto a headband. They're probably my favorite part of the costume. :3

4) How did you make your Zelda crown/chest/waist piece?

The crown was made differently than the other pieces. I first drew out a flat template of the whole crown (the same way I drew a flat template of my Fran armor). I had some leftover PVC foam from my Belldandy wings, so I copied the template onto that and cut it out; since PVC foam is heat-sensitive, I was able to use a hair dryer to shape the template onto my head. Once the template was finalized, I sculpted the three-dimensional designs onto the PVC foam out of paper clay. Let me say this: PAPER CLAY IS LOVE. Seriously, it's my material of choice for anything that requires sculpting. <3<3<3 Once I had all the raised parts sculpted, I let it dry and then coated it in resin to harden and strengthen the paperclay. Then I primed and painted it with my trusty acrylic paint, and voila! I would definitely do it a bit differently if I were to ever make it again (which I won't, but hypothetically speaking), but it worked pretty well for not really having a game plan.

The other two pieces of armor were made with the traditional cast resin technique. I sculpted the design out of clay and used liquid latex to create a rubber mold of the sculpture. With the rubber mold-technique, you basically paint layer after layer after layer of rubber latex onto the sculpture. You then peel the rubber mold off the sculpture and fill the mold with resin. There are a billion tutorials on casting resin, so I'm not going to go into much detail about it, especially since my results weren't perfect. I'm really not that experienced with casting resin; it's definitely something I would like to have more experience in.

5) Embroidery?

Jinyo. Don't bother asking him. :P

6) Can you describe how you weather your armor?

I cannot stress how simple this is, and yet how much more awesome your armor will look if you weather it. Theoretically speaking, if you were to wear armor on an everyday basis, it would probably get dirty. So you would clean it, but you'd have trouble cleaning every little crevice, so those crevices would remain discolored while the rest of the armor was shiny. That's the frame of mind you ought to think about when you tackle weathering armor--where would the armor stay shiny, and where would it get dirty?

I've mentioned that I use acrylic paint when I paint craft foam, and the same applies with weathering. I take black acrylic paint and make about a 70%-30% mixture with black acrylic paint and whatever color you're painting the armor (70% being the black part). I use a paintbrush and daub it into the crevices of the armor; mainly, where the raised part meets the base, or anywhere there's a joint or a seam in the armor. I then blend the paint out away from the crevice until it blends nicely with the color of the armor. This takes a lot of time and practice, as acrylic paint dries really fast and sometimes it's hard to get a nice, even blend. Don't get frustrated; you can use a little water to water the paint down so it blends better and doesn't dry so fast. Above all, if you mess up, you can always paint over it and start over again. It takes some time to get it blended perfectly, but keep in mind that it doesn't have to be perfect, because it'll look totally fine from 5 feet away. Don't spend too much time tearing your hair out over it. :P

7) Can you discuss the makeup you use for your cosplays?

For Haydee and Dorothy, I wanted a makeup that wasn't totally stark-white and was more breathable than grease paint/clown white makeup. My local theatrical makeup shop recommended Starblend Cake Makeup, which is a water-activated liquid-to-powder makeup. I love this stuff--when properly applied, it covers great and it is sooooooo breathable and comfortable (unlike oil-based makeups), I don't even notice I'm wearing it. It also goes on more or less opaque depending on how much you use, so you can go from stark-white to sickly-pale with the same makeup (yay versatility!). It also comes in a gajillion colors.

My Fran makeup took a bit of experimentation to get right. While I originally bought Starblend Cake Makeup in a tan tone, I wanted something that gave a more natural coverage, so I bought some Ben Nye Matte Foundation SA-1 as a base color and used the Starblend as a setting powder. Turns out, that combination was too dark. So I used the Ben Nye Creme foundation and set it with CoverGirl Professional Loose Powder in 110 (my natural skin tone), and that turned out much better. It noticeably darkened my skin without making me OMGDARK, and I thought that was a good alternative to going in for a spray-tan (which would limit the costumes I would be able to wear at a convention).

I'll add to this as people ask me questions. Until then, I hope you'll find this useful! :)