MH4U Eldaora's Taus Hunting Horn cosplay prop [part 5]

Hello costumers and hunters alike!

Here comes the fifth part of my bigass Monster Hunter cosplay project – I'm making a Hunting Horn called Eldaora's Taus from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. I've been a dedicated fan of the game series since I touched Freedom Unite and now I'm finally making one of my cosplay dreams come true – a MonHun costume!  

I am for now just doing the weapon but I will make an armor set later, to go with this build. 
No idea what I've done before this? :D No worries, the previous parts of this project can be found here: 1, 2, 3, 4

Note: this project is split into several parts because otherwise it would turn into a kilometer post; I need to document my progress carefully (many photos etc) since it's a school project.

Let's go, yo-ho!

Added filler to the face.

So, remember that little tube of filler that stepdad brought when I ran out of the original filler that I was using? I used it up in like 30 minutes. xD He then came with a 3 kilo bucket on the following day and, honestly, I've used up half of it as well just trying to cover up this thing. I don't want to think about it but I've probably used like 5 kilos worth of filler on this project by now...

Doing the whole filler covering is really tedious and time-consuming. I mean, every time I add filler somewhere I have to wait for it to dry before I can rotate this thing, on the floor, to get to the opposite side. The more filler there is the longer it takes to dry (thicker layers dry slowly) and yeah, this part of the process has taken up a lot of time.

The last parts that I added filler to was all the spots that were hard to reach – like all the deep and narrow splits separating the "hair bananas" on the back mane, for example. Once that was done I left it to dry for some days.

Around mid-May I returned to mom's to work on this project. Next up was to sand the whole thing to make it smoother. It's not super visible on the photos how uneven it was after the filler but below is a close-up on which you can really see the uneven and textured surface.

Head before sanding.

So what do I do? I bring out all the sand papers and get to work, of course! It needs to be mentioned that so far I've done all of the work inside the garage, but for the sanding process I carried the Hunting Horn outside and put it on a working table. Mainly to make cleaning easier afterwards and the weather was nice.

No one can say that there's not enough sand papers.

Okay, I'm not gonna lie – I had somehow underestimated how much time sanding actually takes. Like I've done it a lot in my life but still I had not counted it into my plans and it was just this "nah, it'll just take a couple hours tops and then I can move on to the next thing". Oh, so wrong I was. xD 
So yeah, even just the rough sanding (60 grit sand paper) took 6+ hours. Guess if I was sick and tired of sanding after a while? I was. It was really tedious and I just wanted to get it done so that I could get forward since, at this point, I was really stressed about potential deadlines.

Rough sanding done.
Anyone want to snort the table? ::DD

I didn't actually do any sanding with finer grit papers since it felt like it would be impossible to get it perfectly smooth and even anyway... especially something of this size. There's a myriad of spots where the foam still peeks through and the foam has all these small air bubbles etc and it's just never gonna be a perfect porcelain finish, lol. Anyone who has worked with expanding foam knows what kind of texture it has – it just felt like a lot of time and work just to make it "a little less uneven", if that makes sense. Also, a lot of the filler was unevenly applied as well, meaning that even after sanding the surface random holes and level differences kept appearing, making the surface bumpy and lively. It's really hard to explain but it's this thing that when you apply an amount of filler to a surface and let it dry, it will show its undermost "layers" (in the exact same position they originally hardened in) once you sand through the outer layers.

Oh well, at this point I just decided that screw perfection and let's go for a more realistic and battle-worn appearance instead. I mean, in the Monster Hunter games any weapon would be made from slain monster materials: fangs, claws, scales, shells, wing webbings and the list goes on. Oh and yes, slain monsters, meaning that a hunter –or a group of them– has been beating the poor monster to death with various weapons ranging from Great Swords to Hammers and Bows. :D So yeah, with that logic the monster parts used, most likely, were far from in pristine condition and came with whatever bumps, dents and cuts that the hunters inflicted during the hunt...
The Eldaora's Taus is made from materials from the (rusted) Kushala Daora, a powerful Elder Dragon with metal skin and wind-controlling abilities. Hence why I'm gonna paint this thing a metallic silver later on and add rusted accents, just like in the references and in the game.

Eldaora's Taus reference from a MonHun art book.

As you can see in the art book it looks different from the game (I don't own the art book, a fellow MonHun fan sent this to me online!) and because I had no access to the art book I based my representation of the weapon on the in-game model and took multiple artistic liberties to make my life easier while making it. As I've mentioned in earlier progress posts it's thus not 100% accurate and that's a choice I made during the process to save my sanity.

Okay so, back to the sanding. I didn't even bother to sand it perfectly even and there are small imperfections everywhere. At this point I just don't have an infinite amount of time left on this project and thus I decided to just make it more realistic instead, as mentioned above.
But yeah, after all that tedious sanding there was a shitlot of white filler dust everywhere and yes, in every single hard-to-reach crevice on the damn Horn. Good thing stepdad has this special cousin to the common vaccuum cleaner that is just right for the task!

Hello my best friend!

I carefully vaccuumed all over the Hunting Horn, every nook and every cranny, to get rid off as much loose dust as possible. This took quite some time. Before I even started vaccuuming it I could slap the Horn anywhere and these huge white clouds of dust would just explode out of it and float everywhere. xD There was a lot of dust, seriously. My working clothes were all white from it...
Oh and yeah, all that white dust left on the table? I threw it out in the backyard and hey, over at my Instagram you can see how I made some unintentional art with it!

I noticed a not-so-fun thing soon after. :( You see, because both filler and PU-foam are kinda soft and porous materials they get dented easily. I noticed during the sanding that these weird dent lines had appeared at the shaft and I wondered where they had come from – turned out it was from the pressure of the shaft hanging off the table's edge and being pressed down from the weight of the Hunting Horn's main body, against the table.

Red arrows pointing at the dents formed from the table's edge.

Those dents pictured above were actually some of the smaller ones. There was this approximately 15 cm long deep dent on one of the "hair bananas" as well. I was not happy when I saw it. Oh well, no can do but to go back to the filler stage and cover up the dents.

New filler added on marked areas (there were more) to cover
up dents and holes in the foam.

I left it to dry over a couple days and when I came back I sanded it down, to make it look like nothing had happened to it. At this point I also started thinking that if it already takes notable surface damage from minor pressure etc then God knows how much damage it would suffer when taken to a full day at an anime convention! 
My grinding gears were grinding, fast – I had to figure out what to do to make it more tolerant to outer impacts; I needed to make its surface harder. I mean seriously, nothing would suck more than doing all that intricate painting work and then have the whole thing dented or chip off because of the surface below the paint not being strong enough. It would be so frustrating!

My first thought was to cover it in worbla but then I realized that it would need a lot of worbla sheets and worbla is expensive. I then remembered reading some expanding foam prop tutorials on which it was recommended to cover the surface of the foam with papier-maché, probably the most known way to do it but honestly, I don't really like working with papier-maché and would rather avoid it, if possible (it's so messy and tedious). :/ Besides, it would be incredibly time-consuming to cover a build of this size and especially considering that papier-maché requires several layers. I just don't have the time nor patience for that right now and so I looked around for other solutions. I even considered Plasti-Dip (never used it before) but scrapped that idea because I read somewhere that it doesn't really add hardness.

Another problem that made this whole coating issue a bit more troublesome was the fact that the Hunting Horn is already really heavy for a cosplay prop, probably weighing in at anywhere between 10-20 kg for the moment – not gonna lie, it's easily my heaviest prop to date. I'm bad at guessing weight but it's definitely heavy enough to be impossible to lift with one arm and it's even harder to carry since the weight is not balanced at the center but at the main bulk of the body, meaning the head area. So yeah, in other words I ain't gonna easily be swinging this thing around by holding it at the shaft, not even with both arms.
In other words – I must try to keep the weight down as much as possible, which also limits my choices; no one wants to carry around a heavy-ass prop for a whole day at a convention. I've honestly been thinking about the weight all along during this process (hence my material choices) but even with that in mind the extreme size and unbalanced bulk of the prop takes its toll along the way. I'm sure there would have been lighter and more convenient options on how to build this thing but this is all a big learning experience for me and my first big and challenging prop in this caliber.

So yeah, I ruled out worbla and Plasti-Dip. I also didn't want to invest in any of the resins nor fiber glass because I lack the know-how and don't feel comfortable getting into toxic materials yet. Stepdad pulled a blank when I asked him (much to my surprise) and so, after thinking and searching, I figured that my cheapest and easiest choice would probably be to just go ghetto and use the old glue-and-water trick. It's probably not the most effective option out there but I've used it before to seal/harden stuff like craft foam and it has done its job decently enough to get a pass – and it shouldn't be one of those materials that dissolves the PU-foam either.

On early September I returned to try the glue trick. Stepdad suggested not diluting the glue to avoid it getting too runny and thus not very effective. I decided to heed his advice, it's worth a try to see if it's possible to just directly brush the glue on and have it harden nicely without making the surface all streaky and ugly.

First layer of glue hardened on the shaft. Notice the shine!

I used normal white glue that you can find in most stores. The brand I used is Eri Keeper (Finnish brand) but any PVA-based glue should work. To my relief the glue seems to work decently – it doesn't turn rock-hard or anything but it clearly stiffens up the surface a bit, while still keeping the elasticity, and gives it a nice shiny coating (no visible brush streaks!) as well. I'll need to do a couple or so layers but it works and that's the main point.

One thick layer of glue added.

I ran out of glue before I got done with the front (this thing just ate it up!) and thus took a break from gluing and went to finally do some more progress on the protruding parts – the horns and ears.
My original plan was to cover these in expanding foam and carve them out but yeah, the more I thought about it the more I felt like there had to be a better option. I had previously made the base shape for the horns and ears out of wire net.
After some thinking I remembered that I have two big rolls of black worbla, a thermoplastic used by cosplayers, lying around in the storage; I ordered them some years ago from Germany and have barely used them. The drawback with worbla is that it's so expensive and I haven't used it much, so this will be my first time using worbla for covering some more complicated shapes. I've only done really simple stuff with it before. ^^"
I needed to cover the horns and ears in something to make the worbla have some sort of surface to stick to, especially since the wire net has holes all over it and well, when the worbla gets heated up it gets soft and malleable and would probably just sink through the holes... or something.

#grillivartaat :DD

Budget thinking led me to use extra-strong aluminium foil; it should be able to stand the warm worbla being applied on top and also provide enough support. I just basically wrapped the foil tightly around each shape and then just carefully pressed it down into a snug fit. I kept the foil together (the horns are made of several pieces of foil) by adding some masking tape to cover seams, edges and the like.
I'll get to the worbla part the next time – now I want to get the base treatment over first so that I can get to painting and attaching the protruding parts. So yeah, with the glue gone my work stood still. Stepdad suddenly remembered that he had some kind of leftover glue-ish filler lying around somewhere and went to fetch it – the plan was to experiment and see if it could do the same thing that the glue did, namely harden the surface.

Renovation filler.

I'm sorry I don't have a photo of what it actually looked like but it was similar to normal filler, except perhaps a bit more gooey. It's like filler mixed with glue (some sort of wallpaper adhesive?) so we thought that maybe, if we mixed it with water to get the consistency more liquidish, it could work. We did a test spot and left it to dry but once I came back it didn't seem to have done much of a difference. :( It mainly just darkened up the spot we applied it to and I didn't really notice a difference on the surface's texture. We decided to go back to the glue method, although I think this might have worked if we had used less water but oh well, the glue is safer. I'm sure I'll get some use for this glue-filler later for other projects, heheh.

I feel like this post is getting a bit too long right now so I'll just split it here and yeah, keep your eyes peeled for part 6!

~ Shiro Samurai

Hotaru's tengu geta update!

Yo!

I have been silent about my finished Hotaru cosplay for a while now, sorry about that. I do plan on debuting him eventually and the truth is that I was actually considering to wear him for Närcon earlier, but I changed my mind at the last second. ^^"

You might remember that I made a pair of tengu geta for him earlier and back then I didn't try to walk or balance in them, hence why I wasn't sure how they'd handle that part. So yeah, some time after I had taken home the finished shoes I did some experimenting in my apartment (with a really slippery floor I might add, hence no actual walking, just standing/balancing) and came to some conclusions.

Originally I was thinking that I might need to resize the hanao (aka the thongs) because of them maybe being too long, but after some testing and measuring it turned out that the problem is not the length but how loosely I had tied them in place! I compared my self-made hanao with those found on some of my imported Japanese geta and the length is the same, approximately 30 cm long. 

Tengu geta before any modifications.

Same as above, but from a different angle.

Standing with the tengu geta in their original setup was wonky at best; it basically felt like the hanao didn't support –nor hold on to– my feet enough and it was impossible to lift my feet without fearing that it would just slip out of the geta. So yeah, I really didn't need to do much testing before it was clear that something needed to be done or I'd be faceplanting all over the place while wearing this costume... :D

I undid all the knots keeping the hanao in place, at the back of the shoes, and then just pulled everything as tight as I possibly could and retied it all. At first I was thinking that "this shit is gonna be so tight that I can't even get my feet in!" but after some wiggling it works and it actually feels sooooooo much safer – how safe walking on tengu geta now can feel, that is. :)) It's not the most comfortable but at least it doesn't feel like my feet will slide out as soon as I lift them from the ground!

Also, I want to mention –in case it wasn't obvious from the photos– that these Killer Platforms from Hell™ are not made in an authentic way, just for cosplay purposes. Same thing goes for how I've tied everything in place, it's all just a lot of spontaneous knots here and there that seems to do their job.

Hanao to the left tightened, to the right unmodified.

Same as above but from a different angle. Notice the arch!

Another thing that I noticed was that those plastic pieces that I cut out and glued to the bottom, in hopes of protecting the 'teeth' of the geta from wear, and to make them less slippery to wear for example indoors, was that they actually fucked up the balance! The little plastic protections made it really hard to balance on these shoes (possibly partly because of the uneven, bumpy texture) and it was a suicide attempt to even try to take a step because the plastic would "flop at the edges" by any kind of surface contact/movement – it just felt incredibly risky, aka gave exactly the opposite effect of what I wanted.
Good thing I had only fastened them with hot glue and so it was easy to just rip them off, which I did.

Geta to the left modified (incl. removed plastic sole), to the
right still in original condition.

Once I had fixed up both shoes I tried standing on them again, of course holding onto the nearby table because my apartment's floor is like a fucking ice-skating rink, lol. The difference the tightened hanao and the removal of the plastic sole did is HUGE!! Like seriously, I feel like I could actually even learn to walk in these. :'D Maybe.

I'll still probably reserve these monster shoes for photos/photoshoots only because I don't want to wear them out by normal con walking and without the plastic the 'teeth' will take damage really fast, especially if I walk on any ordinary outdoors road (aka where there will be small stones etc).

Pssst! As you might notice, all of the actual in progress photos are taken with flash. This is simply because I was modifying these fuckers in the middle of the night that's when we all get the cosplay motivation, isn't it and thus the natural light was way too crappy to do me any good and I had to resort to using flash.

Improved tengu geta!

Now I just need to do a cosplay test for Hotaru because, truthfully – I have not even tried on all the parts of this costume together. :'D I don't know yet when that will happen but I promise that it will happen. I really love Samurai Deeper Kyo and Hotaru is just one of the many characters that I want to cosplay from this awesome shounen manga. SDK is love!

Thanks for reading!
~ Shiro Samurai out.

MH4U Eldaora's Taus Hunting Horn cosplay prop [part 4]

Hello all cosplay and MonHun fans! 

What you're now reading is the fourth part of my big Monster Hunter cosplay project – I'm making a Hunting Horn called Eldaora's Taus from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. I've been a huge fan of the game series since Freedom Unite and now I'm finally slowly making one of my cosplay dreams a reality – a MonHun costume!  

I decided to start with the weapon prop and I will do the armor separately, later. I'm fairly certain on what armor I'll do but I'll keep it a secret for now, hehe. It's gonna be from 4U too, of course.
For the previous parts of this project you can find them here: 1, 2, 3

Note: this project is split into several parts because otherwise it would turn into a kilometer post; I need to document my progress carefully (many photos etc) since it's a school project. 

Let's get to it!

Reference of the end knob's shape. Enjoy my hunter's manbutt.

I left off last time with shaping the end knob and yeah, it was rage-inducing because of all the angles. xD The next day when I went back to my working space I noticed that I hadn't carved it in the right shape, bummer! I had done it from memory the last time (didn't have references at that time) and I thought that it was shaped like a rhombus but no, not quite. So yeah, I corrected it a little and then shifted my focus elsewhere – namely to those protruding parts on the shaft of the Hunting Horn. I'm not sure what their purpose is but I'd assume that in the games its either the sound pipes or some kind of buttons that the hunter presses to create the different notes. I might be horribly wrong on both though, but whatever they are supposed to be I had to add them to my creation!

Notice the protruding parts on the lower half of the shaft.

A slightly better angle to view them from.

They are placed so that the outermost ones still show when
viewed from the other side.

To create these, err, let's just call them pipes, I had to sacrifice my stepdad's old broom. Good thing he planned to replace the shaft of it anyway and so I didn't have to feel bad about it. The wood itself had seen better days (it had cracked on top) and so I had to use the middle of it because it was the most healthy part.

Rest in pieces, broom. ;_;

Three pieces, each of 10 cm, were cut out. I left the handling of those for later (filing, sanding) and I started to think of what to use to cover the Hunting Horn with. As far as I know the most common material that cosplayers use for covering is a combination of masking tape and papier-maché. It was an instant no to me because I don't even want to imagine how hard it would be to tape around a prop of this size! Not to mention how many rolls it would take. So yeah, had to come up with something else – and then I remembered that back when I made Harada's spear a couple years ago I coated the spearhead with filler/putty/whatever-you-call-it and it worked amazingly. Sure that the Hunting Horn is on a completely different size scale but at least it seemed like a better option than the tape and papier-maché.

Test-run of the filler, to see if it can also
cover up the bigger holes.

Stepdad showed up, fetched the bucket of filler and we test applied it to some particularly hole-filled/uneven parts of the Hunting Horn. He said that, because of the depth of the horns, the filler might sink in when it attempts to dry and, if that happens, another layer will be needed. No big deal I thought and, besides, it seemed to apply effortlessly and neatly – looked really promising, in other words! Now I just needed to wait a full day for it to dry.

The next day dawned and I headed out to check what the filler had done over the night. I noticed that where the deeper holes had been covered (aka where there was a big amount of filler) the filler had cracked a bit. Nothing that can't be hidden underneath a second layer though! I also noticed that it wasn't completely dry yet.
Being quite pleased with the filler result I took some more of the gray stuff and started patching up the Hunting Horn, focusing on covering the bigger holes (air bubbles left by the foam, mainly) and such first. I made sure to not accidentally put a second layer over a spot that hadn't completely dried yet, because otherwise the drying time would get slowed down a lot more.

Patching up the worst holes with filler.

I didn't cover it up properly because I still need to carve out holes for the pipes so that I can sink them into the shaft. Speaking of the pipes, I rounded and sanded them down a bit before I left to go back home to my apartment. I left the other end untouched since it won't matter because it will be embedded into the shaft anyway.

Sanded pipe things for the shaft.

After almost a month, in mid-July, I returned to work on this project (I got a summer job! I mainly continued with covering the whole shebang in filler, which is quite a time-consuming project because of the shape and size. I also carved out the holes for the pipes (with a knife) and attached them. I had marked out the position and instead of using glue I just sprayed a click of PU-foam onto the bottom of each hole and then just planted the non-sanded end of the pipe in there. It stuck very well.

Pipe placement test (not attached) and filler progress.

After "gluing" on the pipes I used the remainder of the foam can (maybe 1/4 left) to fill in holes in the foam to make my filler life easier. I also added some foam to a couple of the back mane's spiky ends because there were huge and/or missing gaps. 

Foam, what are you doing? Foam, stop.

Above is one of the back mane spikes that I wanted to thicken, since it was super flat at the end. The problem was that I couldn't rotate the thing so that this particular area was facing straight up (because there were other newly foamed areas on other places), straight up is of course the ideal curing position because of avoiding gravity screwing things up. The consistency of the foam was a bit funny as well (this was the very end of the can so yeah, extra runny) and so it slowly just started gliding downwards and all I could do was watch, since I had already tilted it as much as I could (without fucking up other areas) and turning it any more would end up with some other foamed areas hitting the ground and/or falling off, including the pipes.
Oh well, luck in misfortune was that the area that the spike foam ended up covering by accident was actually a spot that needed some fixing anyway – there was a visible carving mistake there that I didn't notice until after I had put filler on it, which made it more obvious. *shrugs*

Foam added to cover holes, pipes attached
and continued to put filler on head area.

Bonus!
My empty foam can wanted to be artsy til its dying breath. xD

I had put some quite thick layers of filler to cover up the unevenness of the foam, which means that it'll take some days for it to dry completely. I also covered up some of the earlier cracked spots with a second layer.
I also realized that I shouldn't attacht the horns and ears until I've completed the filler episode because yeah, once the horns and ears are set I won't be able to rotate the Hunting Horn as freely as I can now without risk of breaking off the protruding parts.

The next day I came back to tidy up the foamed areas, which mainly meant cutting off the excess foam wherever needed and then (re)shaping and improving the back; a couple of the back mane bananas had huge gaps in them, especially close to the tips (because of the foam randomly leaving big holes when it cures). I had also used foam to thicken the handle a bit.
After the foam episode was done I continued to apply filler.

A lot of filler later.

And then I ran out of filler. :'D So. Much. Filler. You might notice that on the photo above I left one of the middle mane's without filler, that was simply so that I had somewhere to hold the damn thing to keep it from moving while I put filler everywhere else. Stepdad brought a new tube on the day after and so I used it to cover that bare spot and some other stuff. 

I still have to put more filler on this thing, before I can start sanding, but I feel like this post is getting a bit long and so I'll end it for this time. ^^; Part 5 coming up later so keep checking back in, yo!

~ Shiro Samurai out.

New gray hakama for Yasusada and Kenshin, finally!

Hello peeps ~

After almost 2 years of searching on and off I've finally found some new gray vintage hakama that I can use for improving my battousai version Kenshin Himura (Rurouni Kenshin) and nimihirviö Yamato no Kami Yasusada (Touken Ranbu) cosplays! 8D I'm so happy I finally have a suitable hakama because I've been searching for soooo long for the right one to show up and with the right price! It's been stupidly hard to find, I tell you. -.- What's even better is that this one is made of cotton, which is more convenient for cosplay purposes because I can iron and even wash it, if needed! Most times vintage hakama are silk, meaning that cotton is hard to come by.

When I originally debuted Yasusada back in 2015 it always bothered me that the cosplay hakama that I used (same one that I've used for Kenshin and Hakuouki's Hijikata) was way too light. I always wanted a darker pair and preferably a vintage piece, to fit better with the kimono that I use for him, which is also vintage. The wrong hakama is the main reason I haven't reworn Yasusada since then, even though I've wanted to rewear him all along!

New hakama, so excited! >u<

I'm sorry for the crummy mirror photo and the yellow light but yeah, the hakama is a dark-ish gray. I also tied the hakama knot differently from Yasusada's (didn't check references) but it doesn't matter since this was just a quick test. I basically just did a proper knot instead of an "anime knot", lolol. 

It's also andon (skirt) style, which is the type that Yasusada is also wearing, according to the art book – if one wants to be precise.

Yamato no Kami Yasusada reference.

As I said I will also use this new hakama for my battousai Kenshin cosplay, which will see the light of day again once I remake his (or well, actually Ichito's) gloves, aka tekkou. They actually broke at Närcon Vinter last year. :'( I want to make sturdier ones that are easier to wear because the now dead gloves were quite a bitch because yeah, they kept warping around and undoing themselves. Then again, I made them in fucking 2012 so totally not the freshest build I've done, lmao. I should make a new pair specifically for Kenshin and then another for Ichito too...

That's all for this quick update post, see you!

Shiro Samurai out.

MH4U Eldaora's Taus Hunting Horn cosplay prop [part 3]

Hello cosplay fans and monster hunters alike!

Here comes the third part of my Monster Hunter cosplay project. I'm building a Hunting Horn weapon prop from scratch as part of a big school project. I've been a major fan of the MonHun games for years and I thought that it would be high time that I made a costume to make my love for the games visible, haha. The Hunting Horn that I'm making is the Eldaora's Taus from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and, if you missed the previous parts of this project, you can find them here and here. ^_^

Note: this project is split into several parts because otherwise it would turn into a kilometer post; I need to document my progress carefully (many photos etc) since it's a school project. 

Let's get to crafting this thing!

Starting position. I know that the end knob
is crooked but it was unavoidable. I will
hopefully fix it later.

Okay, so I left off last time with my Hunting Horn looking like a sleeping foam mummy. I had run out of the two extra cans of PU-foam (aka expanding foam) that I fetched from Säästötex earlier and, meanwhile I was busy with school since I left, mom actually went and bought more of the sale cans for me. Once I got back to mom's on 4th June five cans of foam were waiting for me. The sale 5 cans for 10 € was still available, God bless. 

I continued applying expanding foam to the build, mainly the knob at the end of the shaft, the back of the "horse head" and the thickest part of the shaft's backside. I left it to dry for some hours and when I came back I noticed that the foam had hardened but it wasn't ready to be cut. I checked the knob and noticed that the foam had indeed fallen off and was partly stuck to the ground (thanks gravity) and so I separated it from the floor –which thankfully I had covered in plastic before, for protection– and decided to turn the prop so that it laid on its side, to allow for the "inside" of the knob to dry. You see, where the foam had fused with the ground it actually was all wet on the inside, and when I turned it I accidentally grabbed on that non-hardened spot and my fingers just sank into the sticky goo. Eww. Protip: if you ever get PU-foam residue on your hands (it sticks like a second skin and feels like really sticky glue that won't go away) you can get rid of it by applying nail polish remover onto a cotton pad and swiping the affected areas with it. It's important that the remover contains acetone.

The following day I returned to start shaping it. I started off with the back half of the mane and just cut it somewhat into its general shape. I noticed at some point that I'd need to to make each of the mane hairs (there would need to be 7 +1 on the back of the final product) deeper.

Started carving out the back mane.

While I was working I suddenly caught a sniff of that strong distinct smell of fresh PU-foam. I stopped in my tracks and checked where the smell was coming from – it didn't take many seconds before I noticed that some thick, yellowish and unhardened foam was bubbling up from the inside! It was all gooey and sticky and I used whatever scrap pieces I had at hand to wipe it off, but it just kept coming out slowly but steadily. I was just standing there like "oh come on..." because it had gotten about 24 hours to dry but it was still, seemingly, not enough.

Red arrow points to the fresh foam bubbling out.
(note: this was taken directly after I noticed it, it grew a lot more since then)

No can do but put the carving on hold until it has completely hardened. What a bummer, I don't have so much time to finish this project.
During the remainder of the day I went out a couple times to check on it and there had formed a pillar of foam! It was probably close to 10 cm in height and had this weird I've-kinda-hardened-on-the-surface-but-still-gooey-on-the-inside consistency – like I could touch it without making a sticky mess but I was sure that my finger would crush the surface if I applied even a small amount of pressure, aka I could feel it give in under my fingers. I decided to rip off the protruding pillar of foam (using tools and not my own hands) to make sure that, if anything else would flow out later, it would be able to come freely.

The next day I checked the hole that the foam had been flowing out of; it had hardened and so I continued work. I continued to shape the "hair bananas" in the back, aka the back mane. :) As I've mentioned before I'm not even trying to make this thing 100% accurate to the game (which would be a pain in the butt because of all the symmetry) and so all the mane bulks are free-handed; I kinda wanted them to have a natural "flow" to them, if that makes sense. I did make sure that there were 7 of them though – and I'll add the small pointy tip one later.

Mane carving in progress.

Once the back mane was somewhat in shape I decided to test out the papier-maché ears that I had made in school earlier – turned out indeed that they were a tad too big. :/ It's really hard to get the size right when you don't have the head there to compare with and have to go by memory and a note.
I quickly made some new ear bases out of chicken wire, slightly smaller.

Comparing old ear(s) to the head.

Comparing new ear(s) to the head.

I decided to skip the papier-maché approach on the new ears because I don't have the equipment for it and I think I might get better end results with the foam anyway, since the whole build is covered in expanding foam. I'll save the old ears for another project so they won't go to waste.

New and old ear side by side. For size comparison.

I didn't attach the ears yet and instead continued on carving out the shaft (handle, whatever you want to call it) of the Hunting Horn. I thought that this would be easier to do than the manes but lolnope. :') So yeah, I started carving as usual and then, at some point, I realized that those separating lines (showing where each of the three levels end) didn't meet! It was really annoying to notice it after I had already done a majority of the work. Even the slightest difference would add up and then when you had spun the thing around completely the separating lines, at worst, had more than a 10 cm difference. -_- It was impossible to keep track on if the line was straight or not because of the foam's bumpiness and the circular shape, aka I had to constantly rotate it to do any progress and thus couldn't get a good grip on if I was cutting it straight or not. I had to improvise a lot and it's not perfect nor symmetrical – good thing it's not super noticeable because of the shape.

Started carving out the shape for the shaft.

I took the can of foam and filled in some uneven spots on the manes, on the shaft and wherever else there wasn't enough foam. Meanwhile it was drying I made the horns in the same way as I made the ears. They had to be 50 centimeters long each.

Horn bases done.

You might notice that the horn sketch is under and that the curve on it is different. I can say that I drew the reference image way too big for the paper (common mistake that I do, lol) and thus the proportions were off (I had to fit it in); I wasn't planning on doing strictly the same shape anyway, just drew it to get a general idea and as a reference for details, once I get to painting the horns.

I left the horns for later and left the Horn (hihi) for drying overnight. The following morning I continued carving – this time doing the rest of the shaft, except for the end knob. Now it's starting to look like something!

Shaft carved out and new foam added to uneven spots + end knob.

I can't help but think that it looks like an oversized fancy chess piece. It's quite noticeable that it's not exactly like in the games and yeah, I had to make it different for a number of reasons and hey, taking some artistic liberties every now and then is fine~! The main difference is the shape of the upper neck (where the head attaches to the shaft) and thus the head's position, as well as the position and shape of the manes. It just ended up differently and I don't even mind – I made it my own and it will still be easily recognizable. It's like, maybe 85% accurate, haha.
I have used so much money on this that I don't want to butcher half of my hard work just to correct some proportions and/or placements. I can't change the shape of the head/neck part anyway (which is the only thing that slightly even bothers me) because it's a placement miss that happened so early on, aka already at the cardboard base. Because of that, and how I started with the front mane hairs, the head is pretty much doomed to be almost stuck to the neck instead of being more up and free like in the game. No can do and no big deal – it will be awesome anyway! 

Before I left it for the day I added some foam to even out the end knob and to patch up some small spots on the shaft that were uneven. The following morning I went out to carve the end knob and oh boy, it was a pain in the ass! I was thinking all along that "it can't be so hard" but I swear this was the most frustrating part of the project – by far.
I quickly gave up on trying to get the knob to be identical on all angles because it was flat out impossible! Every time it looked good, when viewed from a particular angle, I would spin it around and then the opposing side looked like a case of "end my misery". The more I tried to correct one side the more it messed up when viewed from a different angle... or when compared with another side; it basically needed to have the exact same angles on all four sides to be perfect. It just wouldn't line up nicely no matter what I did and I ended up losing my patience, which is rare. Yeah, I was at the verge of ragequitting.

Fuck this shit, let's call it close enough. 8C

So yeah, the knob is far from symmetrical and it's obviously tilting more towards one side than to the other but oh well, I did what I could. It's not bad enough to be a complete eyesore but it does trigger my perfectionist side a bit, lol. It could be worse though – at least that's a consolation!

That's all for this part and next time I'll get to start on the surface treatment! Be sure to follow my blog if you don't want to miss it. ;)

~ Shiro Samurai out.

MH4U Eldaora's Taus Hunting Horn cosplay prop [part 2]

Hello hunters and cosplay fans!

If you've been following my blog or social media accounts you know that I'm currently working on a big and challenging project, namely my first Monster Hunter cosplay prop! I've been a huge fan of the games for years now and as part of a big school project I'm now making the Eldaora's Taus (aka Rusted Kushala Daora one) Hunting Horn from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. I will eventually make a full MonHun armor as well, to go with this Hunting Horn, but for now I'm focusing on making the weapon prop first!

And, in case you missed it, I highly recommend that you take a look at part 1 of this cosplay build to know what I did before this post! ;)

Note: this project is split into several parts because otherwise it would turn into a kilometer post; I need to document my progress carefully (many photos etc) since it's a school project. 

Let's get to the prop making!

Above are some additional reference photos of the Hunting Horn in question, seen from different angles. Enjoy my hunter in his undies! These have been my main references while I've been working on this project. I'm not aiming to make it perfectly identical to the in-game version (that would be really hard when it comes to symmetry) seeing how I'm making the whole thing by hand and with materials that I'm new to.

Continuing from where I left off I went to school's art classroom to work with chicken wire. This is a material that I've barely working with before and so my art teacher –and supervisor for this project– showed me how to work with the chicken wire. At first it was a bit hard to get the net to do what I wanted but once you got the hang of it it was actually quite easy! Save for accidentally poking yourself with it – use gloves, people. I needed to fill some gaps on one of the ears with steel wire, which basically meant just "sewing" it closed.

Wire base for the ears.

I was supposed to make the ears about 10 cm long but I ended up making them almost the double, oops. When I made these I thought that 10 cm looked ridiculously small, to be honest. Now to hope that the ears aren't too big once I get to the part that I'll attach them to the head. Before starting putting papier-maché around the whole thing I wrapped it in masking tape, for extra sturdiness and to even out any bigger gaps.

Ears left to dry after first two layers.

I returned to the art classroom on several days to add papier-maché layers to the ears. The problem with papier-maché is that once the wet paper dries it sinks in a bit and, unless you have enough layers built up, the hollows left by the chicken wire's hexagonal (or whatever size you have) patterns will show through. I did over 5 layers to get it to be somewhat smooth.

Reference sketch for the horn's general shape.

I sketched some references for the horns but I didn't start building them on the same day. Instead on the weekend I went back to mom's to continue working on the main body of the Hunting Horn in the garage – which mainly meant adding a lot of PU-foam to the back and sides.
The thing is that I had to add PU-foam (aka expanding foam) in layers and move the head around every time I wanted to get to a different area because otherwise gravity would do its job and I'd waste foam. Learn from your mistakes.

Backside unfoamed.

Added some foam to the back.

I kept spraying on some foam, waited for it to expand and dry and then came back, turned the thing around, rinse and repeat. It's time-consuming but it's better than messing up and I'd rather be patient and not take risks.

Once both halves of the backside had gotten their fair amount of foam I started building the shaft. After having worked with the ears I figured that I could try my luck at using chicken wire for building the main body. I must admit that I hesitated but ultimately went with a yolo mindset. Half the time I was not sure what I was doing because yeah, it was a complete trial and error episode. Good thing Sacchan was with me and so she provided a pair of extra hands for holding things in place meanwhile I secured the nets to each other with steel wire etc – it's convenient to have friends around when you're working on large-scale builds.

Base for the main body done.

Same as above but from a different angle.

I'm actually surprised how well it turned out! It took some hours but it was worth the effort. It's satisfying to see things for once in a while turn out well, even though you went at it looking like a big question mark. I just hope that I'm gonna be disaster-safe until the end, lol.

Close-up of the front of the shaft.

Same as above but the backside.

Now the next part was to cover the whole thing with something and my first thought was to use expanding foam as well, but I wasn't sure if it would actually work. I was afraid that while the foam was fresh it would fall through the wire's structure but once I stared applying it onto the chicken wire it actually stayed on top – good! It seemed to stick just fine (then again, my stepdad said that it has some glue in the contents anyway, hence why it's a bitch to get off if you get it on your clothes etc) and I left it to dry for some hours. Once I came back the foam was still on, now expanded and hard.

Started spraying expanding foam on the wire parts.

Knowing that the foam method works I continued to apply PU-foam all over the build. I had to go out and buy some more cans because yeah, my spare can ran out before I knew it. Luck was on my side and Tamperen Säästötex in town had big cans of expanding foam for dirt cheap because the best before date had recently passed. I bought two cans (different brand than the one I used before) and happily went home to continue the project. For anyone interested the cans were 2,50 € each and you got 5 for 10 €!

Almost done foaming. It looks like a sleeping mummy horse... :'D

I'll need to add even more foam later, especially to the back of the head and to the little end knob, but I'll see what it looks (and weights) like once I start carving out the details.

I'll end the second part here and next time I'll continue adding foam to the back, carving the main body of the Hunting Horn, start making the horns and more! Stay tuned for part 3!

~ Shiro Samurai out.