Masamune arm guards pt.2

I guess no one remembers how I back in April this year started working on Masamune's arm guards? Feels like so long time ago, heh. But hey, guess what? Today on 22 September I finally finished them! .. or well, sort of.

Needless to say I went to mom's place today and started painting!

This is where I stopped last time and thus started with today

And of course I need dem references:

Reference picture

Now I checked several references of Masamune and noticed that the patterns on his arm guards change on pretty much every picture; sometimes they were these softer "waves" and sometimes more like jagged lighting bolts. I decided to go with the more wavy approach. Oh, and I just free-hand painted all the designs instead of doing exactly like they were on a specific picture.

I used a metallic gold colored paint. When I started painting it didn't look like it would turn out good.. but luckily when the paint dried it went from crappy looking to pretty fabulous. Yes!

Painting in progress ~
You can see here that parts of it has started to dry and turn goldish and shiny

And here's some more painting progress pictures!

To the left is a sort-of-dry guard and on the right an unfinished one

The painting mission didn't take very long and they dried surprisingly quick too. This is what all pieces looked like after I had added the golden "waves" to them:

I let them dry for a while more -just to be on the safe side- and a little bit later I figured I could paint the undersides black so that, eh, if anyone would catch a glimpse of them when I'm wearing this cosplay at least the color would be black. Not so much more to do than grab the black paint can (it's actually paint for walls but who cares, still paint!) and start painting! One, two, three, go!

The piece closer to the paint can has been painted and the one farther away is still its original color - dark blue

I finished painting all undersides black and left them to dry at mom's place; I had to go back home to my own apartment at some point ya know. They will be dry the next time I go there and with that the arm guards should be finished unless something crappy happens. You won't get any try-them-on pictures now because I don't have any (and it's hard to put them on alone, yes, I tried) but you'll get to see them worn whenever I do either a second "this is what I have so far!" post or at the very least when I do the cosplay preview or a test-run photoshoot or something.

Bye ~

Masamune arm guards pt.1

I've been working on the arm guards for Masamune the last few days and figured I could write a progress post now that I'm about half-way into the process. So well, back on last Monday (1st April) I cut out the pieces for the arm guards from craft foam, namely two "bottom" and two "top" parts.

One of the "bottom" parts cut out

With all the needed parts cut out I asked Jäätynyt Enkeli to come help me with the heat forming because hey, two pairs of arms are always better than one. So we went outside and one of us held the craft foam piece in its wanted form while the other one used the heat gun to form it. The first piece we finished looked like this after the heat treatment:

Tadaah ~

And this is what I had after we were done forming them:

Dem shapes ~

I must say craft foam, at least in my case, doesn't hold the shape really well.. it keeps the shape semi-well but I noticed it straightened itself out with time.. at least mine did. *shrugs* Oh well. I didn't do any more progress on Monday.

Yesterday (2nd April) I decided to try using fabric backing for the first time as a way to stiffen, strengthen and support the armor. So I went into the attic to check what fabrics we had that could possibly work; I wanted something smooth, something light-weight that had a bit of stretch. After looking around I found this one very dark blue very soft and nicely flowing knit-like fabric that seemed pretty cool. I took it with me back inside and cut out fitting pieces for the armors, making sure to have some excess just in case.

Fabric backing cut out

I then just took the craft foam armor pieces and glued the fabric on the side that would be against my body, obviously. I used your standard white universal glue and, in my case, that was Erikeeper. I just took a pencil and brushed glue all over the foam and then put the fabric on and pressed it and let it dry. I used a little bit too much glue on the first try because when I was applying pressure the glue "leaked" over the fabric. Well, now when I think about it it's not weird that it did.. the fabric is knit-like after all.. aka small holes. -.- Oh well, it made no difference so no harm done.

Fabric glued to the back side of the craft foam

I did this same thing for all the pieces and after they had dried completely I trimmed the excess fabric away.

Fabric backing to the right

Next step was to seal the craft foam. This step is optional (as well as fabric backing) but I always do it because otherwise you will be spending more paint on the foam because.. well, it's a bit like a sponge or something so it sucks in color a lot. It's better to just seal it because if you do you will get away with fewer coats of paint and posssibly a nicer result as well. Not to mention sealing the craft foam seems to give it a bit more strength too. I use a glue & water mix, aka diluted glue. I just use a normal white glue (Erikeeper, again) and mix it with some water until it's watery enough not to leave any pencil strokes when you brush it on.

Water & glue mix ready to be brushed on

And here's the foam pieces after their first coating, still wet
(you can notice at this point the pieces have lost pretty much all of their curving...)

And the remaining part of yesterday I applied shitlots of coatings; every time the earlier one had dried I put a new one. I think I coated them around 10 times, I'm not so sure, I didn't count. Today I put on a few more glue coats on the morning and then waited until stepdad got back home from a trip to town; he bought me some black spray paint, like I had asked yesterday.

The spray paint in question

I went outside and made a makeshift working table out of small wooden steps and cardboard. I put the foam armor pieces on top of the cardboard.

My makeshift working table ~

I then took the spray paint and shook it for some minutes before I sprayed away.

First coating...

Okaaay... my first reaction was something along the lines of "Oh god why didn't I use a black/white primer?" It's easy to be wise after the event.
I must say the first coating made me scared because the foam didn't seem to take the paint well at all and all sorts of "oh fuck don't tell me it won't work" thoughts appeared in my mind. I then thought that maybe I diluted the glue too much and/or didn't use enough coatings. I don't know, but I got nervous and waited a bit before I tried spraying on a second coating. 

Second coating...

The foam pieces seemed to take in the second coating better but the bright colors still shone through when you looked at them from certain angles and my hopes about this working as well as it had done with earlier projects sunk pretty low. When I looked at them my expression was like:

But I decided to let them dry outside for a while and came back an hour or so later to check. I was not surprised to find out they hadn't completely dried yet...  stupid 0 °C weather, takes forever to dry! Oh well, I decided to spray on a third coating just in case to see if they would turn fully black now.. if not I could just paint them over with an ordinary black paint and then try spray painting on top of that.

Third coating

Okay, my hopes for these arm guards are slowly recovering! I'm not so sure how they will look when dry but at least now the original color doesn't shine through much at all. Currently the pieces are in the sauna drying (mind you, sauna is power off xD) because at this moment it's about to get dark outside and the paint really doesn't dry well in the cold. Oh well, tomorrow I'll see how they have dried. Hopefully the paint will still flex with the foam when dry, it seemed to bend just well without cracking while I tried bending them when they weren't completely dry. Here's to hoping.

More progress later.

Masamune armor patterns + Craft foam heat forming test!

Back on last Friday I started drawing the patterns for Masamune's leg armor and arm guards. Basically I just looked at some references, took measurements and improvised.

Just one of my many Masamune references

After I had made a pattern I tried it around my leg/arm to check if it fit like I wanted and so on. Here's some pattern photos:

Started drawing the first pattern (leg armor)

To make sure that my patterns were symmetrical I drew one side, cut out half of it, folded it over and traced it to make the other half identical.

Leg armor pattern (front curves at top, back doesn't, hence the lines) with knee cap

Top arm guard pattern

I had to redo the lower arm guard pattern a few times because I noticed that the arm guards won't lay like straight on "top" and "bottom" of your arm.. they'd be angled a bit diagonally or eh, so that the spike of the top arm guard is turned more towards your elbow. If that makes sense.

Original pattern wasn't wide enough at top so I widened it..

Then I noticed it was maybe a bit too wide so I made secondary unfilled lines just in case...

.. but I ended up cutting them off and modifying the pattern a third time.
The final pattern is the one with the red marker on top of it.

Okay, enough of patterns. Yesterday I went to town to buy some craft foam for the project and the more I thought about it the more I felt like I wanted to make the arm guards out of craft foam instead of the polystyrene sheet.

Craft foam sheets!
(well, they are pretty bright colored but you can paint over them so it doesn't matter..)

Today I then traced the top arm guard pattern on a sheet of craft foam and cut it out.

After tracing

I didn't cut out more than one piece because I wasn't sure how to go about forming it.. or well, more like I've never done it before. I knew it was possible to form craft foam into different shapes with a heat source, like a stove burner or heat gun for example. The stove burner option wouldn't work at my home and I wasn't sure a hairdryer would do the trick so I asked stepdad if he happened to have a heat gun... and he did! Wohooo!

I took a few earlier scrap pieces of craft foam and went outside to try heat forming the foam into a new shape.

Heat gun, gloves for protection and a few scrap pieces

There was a metal rod protruding from that working table I used.. so I decided to use it as a form to test shaping the craft foam on. I just put on the gloves, rolled the craft foam piece around the rod and kept it in place with my hand while I applied heat. When it seemed like the craft foam started to get soft/floppy I turned off the heat gun and kept the foam in its new shape until it cooled down.. and this was the result:

It works! :DD

A few more tries later I had this:

The one to the right is the first try, second in middle and last try to the left
(those cuts were there before, they are not cracks that happened during the heating)

I must say while I formed the last one my hand slipped from keeping it in place on the rod and so it got a slight mark from my hand because it hadn't cooled down enough to regain it's normal.. consistency. I need to be a bit more careful with the actual arm guards then so that their surface stays nice and even. Oh and yeah, I plan to make it tomorrow!