Making of my Big Sister cosplay (Bioshock 2) - part 2

Hello everyone,
this is part 2 of my Making of my Big Sister cosplay. For part 1, click here.

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(Click on images for a bigger version.)

So in the last post I'd just spray painted the helmet silver. After the spray paint dried, I started weathering the helmet to make it look worn and old and, well, not so shiny.

I used the technique from this video. I used some acrylic paints and some of my husband's old miniature paints. I mixed up black and brown, added some water, painted a small area making sure I got the paint in all the creases and then dabbed the excess off with a damp cotton ball. I did this to the entire helmet and the still unglued window frames. (The window frames were spray painted with copper and gold prior to the weathering process.)

Meanwhile I was also building up the oxygen tank and the adjoined Little Sister basket. The oxygen tank was made with some wire netting and a piece of a sleeping pad, plus some craft foam, a styrofoam ring, bottom of a yogurt container, another serger thread cone, a soda cap etc.

The top of the tank is actually a lid. It comes off so I could still work on attaching the Little Sister basket onto the tank later, and figure out how the tank would be attached to me eventually.

I then made the basket, using strips of craft foam and a single "row" of wire netting. I placed the wire netting in between two strips and glued everything together with hot glue so the netting was completely hidden between the two layers of craft foam.

When I had six long strips, I assembled the basket by folding the strips around one another and hot gluing the entire thing together. At some points I also used steel wire to reinforce the basket, and then glued more craft foam on top of the wire to hide it.

The ends were attached to a sturdy piece of cardboard and some sleeping pad pieces with actual bolts-and-nuts. Washers were placed at both ends to prevent the bolts from slipping through the wire netting.

The basket was spray painted with copper and later on weathered. The tank was spray painted black, dry brushed with dark blue and the top was painted red and then weathered. The tank rings were dry brushed with dull metallic color.

After the paint dried, the basket could be attached. This is how it then looked:

***

After weathering the entire helmet, I added lights. I bought a set of battery-powered LED lights for 10 euros. I made a pouch for the battery pack from pieces of sleeping pad and glued the pouch to the back of the inside of the helmet.

Next I glued the lights in place around the windows using pieces of craft foam. When I was happy with the placement of the lights, I glued the window frames on, with the red office divider inside the frames as "glass". It was starting to look like a Big Sister helmet!

I started working on the chest plate next.

The base is two identical pieces of sleeping pad, glued together with wire netting sandwiched in between for support so the piece keeps its shape. The piece is longer at the back so the tank can be attached later.

A "collar" that matches the sleeping pad ring on the helmet was added to the chest plate. I also added some corset lacing string on the back and the front so the chest plate could be anchored around my torso. (The front strings can be seen hanging below the chest plate in the next photo.)

I needed to cut the chest plate narrower at the shoulders, so then I had to cover the edges with craft foam to hide any poking pieces of wire. I also added some rivets (bottle caps) on the chest plate. The actual edges of the chest and back were cut separately from craft foam and painted copper, whereas the plate itself would be silver.

"What? This is my normal bathroom selfie look!"

The red arrow in the mirror selfie points at a hole I cut in the collar, and it's housing a bluetooth speaker! So I could play actual Big Sister sounds (more like screeches) from my phone via the speaker. I made a craft foam ring around the hole I cut to hide the raw edges.

Next up, shoulder plates!

I used this blog post as my guide. Following the blogger's example, I used a styrofoam hemisphere as a base for the bigger shoulder piece, topped it with pieces of sleeping pad and decorated the shoulder plates with craft foam and some random caps and things as rivets.

(This post is not sponsored by Fanta. :P)

The chest plate and shoulder pieces were spray painted silver and the copper edges glued to the chest plate.

The shoulder plates attached to the chest plate with zip ties to allow for some movement. Everything was weathered using the same technique as with the helmet.

***

At this point I realized that if my armor was going to be all worn and weathered, I couldn't don crisp clean white (or even ivory/cream) clothes underneath. At this point it was two days til Ropecon, and I didn't have much time left, and lots to do still.

So I quickly made a huge pot of black tea (using like 40 teabags), let it steep for 20 minutes. Then I fished the teabags out and left the clothes to soak for about two hours.

After I took them out of the tea bath, I rinsed the clothes in cold water with some vinegar and ta-dah, the clothes were a lovely shade of tattered yellow.

(They also smelled like tea. Which meant that when I started sweating in my costume, I also smelled like tea... XD)

At this point, I was in such a hurry that I didn't stop to take many pictures. I made the leg-warmer-guards (or whatever) using pretty much the same technique as with the waist corset. I made four of these altogether.

I was fast running out of the scraps from the secondhand leather coat, so I switched over to a brown fake leather backpack I'd thrifted earlier for 3 euros. From this, I salvaged the front pocket and the backpack handle, and made them into a kind of a "fanny pack" that was hanging from my hip with two ropes. The Big Sisters in some pictures are carrying something (that looks like an empty photo frame but I don't know what it actually is) on their hips, hanging there by a rope, but I decided I needed something to hold my phone, hotel key and some cash, so I made it into a fanny pack that matched the outfit.

I also cut off a suitable-looking piece and sewed it into a loop using two straps from the backpack: this was the arm brace for the arm with no weapon on it. The straps can be tightened and loosened to get the brace on and off. The fingerless gloves I was using with the outfit were recycled from an old steampunk outfit.

I just used a pair of boots I already owned for the cosplay. My shoes were actually black, but my husband splashed them with some brown spray paint to make them blend into the outfit a bit better.

My husband also made the arm stinger weapon. It was made with some styrofoam, a piece of a pipe that forks in y-shape, some old wires, another empty serger thread cone, reusable straws and an empty hair oil bottle. The hair oil bottle was filled with water that was dyed red with food coloring and it attached to the other fork of the pipe. The styrofoam plate attached to the pipe, and on top of that were actual old gate valve pieces my stepdad found in his father's garage.

I attached the leather backpack's closure mechanism and some straps etc on the arm stinger so it would go around my arm. I also dyed some water blue with food coloring. The water was inserted into the chocolate syringe I bought from New York, and it was attached to the arm brace with another two scraps from the backpack.

The pieces of the backpack were also used to make the knee pads, along with some wide elastic band at the back to make them stretchy. When I tried the outfit on, everything was all good, until I moved. Then the thigh guards and knee pads started sliding down in about three seconds.

So I took the remaining straps from the brown backpack and I sewed them along the inner and outer sides of the leg pieces, essentially making the shorts and leg pieces "pants". Some very, very weird looking strappy, buckled pants. :D

...Well, at least they stayed up this way.

Lastly I asked my husband to paint some fish on the tank, while I sewed some pink bows for the Little Sister basket.

The chest plate was strapped onto my torso at the front and the back with corset lacing strings going around my waist. The tank was then attached to the chest plate with three leather straps that went through the chest plate at the back, in and out of the tank a few wire netting holes apart and then buckled up between the chest plate and the tank. For added security the tank was also strapped around my waist beneath the corset using leather belts. Still the tank contraption was the most difficult thing, it swayed from side to side and needed to be fixed constantly. When I wear this next time I need to figure out a more secure fastening for the tank and the basket.

So here's the final result:

Photo credit: my husband

Photo credit: Lauri Maijala

Photo credit: Jani Mutikainen, awful drama filters by me.

We also met this hilarious guy who was dressed up as Deadpool in a bathrobe ("Edpool"). He took several pictures with me and my husband (dressed up as Warhammer 40k Imperial Missionary, with a gun hanging from his back), but at the time this guy didn't know who we were dressed up as... so this hilarity ensued on his blog:

Photo and story credit: stchucky

"Go-Go Death Star Head."
"Machine-gun Jesus."
Best. Thing. Ever. :'D

***

Walking around in the costume was entirely possible, if a bit difficult. I could see out of the main window, meaning I could see straight ahead, but not my feet or the floor ahead. My sides were completely blind and I couldn't hear properly. So mostly what we did was that my husband with his book-on-a-stick (patent pending) walked ahead of me and I simply followed the book, hoping I wouldn't crush any small children, hobbits or dwarfs underfoot, because I couldn't see anyone shorter than 4ft if they came up right next to me.

Not that I was walking long distances anyway... I was stopped fairly often for photos. People were snapping so many pictures of me, it was insane. I don't think I would have been able to stand all the attention with my own face visible, but this cosplay is perfect for hiding your face, so it was actually kind of fun! (I'm not shy or hate attention, it's just too much attention on me for too long makes me anxious.) People were telling me my cosplay was amazing, which naturally felt really good. And while most people taking photos probably didn't know the character I was cosplaying, quite a few did and came to talk to me about Bioshock. It was really cool and I loved talking to everyone and posing for photos.

I also participated in the annual costume competition at Ropecon, and after I'd already left on Sunday I was informed by phone that apparently I won first place on the "Individual" category. I find myself unbelieving this is true until I receive my certificate in the mail, but a cautious "yay" might be in order? :D

(Update: I received confirmation in the mail! It's true! :o)

All in all, I'm very happy with how this came out. I've never built a cosplay of this scale, so I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Of course there are a few things I could have done differently and saved myself some time and trouble, but it's a learning process. I'll know better next time.

Total time it took to make this cosplay? I don't know the exact amount, but a 100+ hours.
Total cost: something like 250€. This included all the materials bought for this project - but not all of it was used, so there's some left over for the next craft project (like craft foam, wire netting, hot glue gun and glue sticks etc). But this is definitely not the cheapest cosplay to make. Ordering stuff online would probably have saved me quite a lot of money - well, like I said, had I gotten this idea earlier... I personally think it was well worth the money. I mean, cosplay is a hobby. Hobbies sometimes cost money. I don't have other hobbies that cost this much, so I can afford this once-in-a-lifetime project. (No, I don't think I'll be making another cosplay of this scale of complexity anytime soon.)

***

Well, if you're still with me after all this rambling and billions of photos, thank you very much for reading! If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to leave a comment!

love,
Satu / Sew Scoundrel

Making of my Big Sister cosplay (Bioshock 2) - part 1

Hello everyone,
Last weekend was Ropecon, the biggest role playing convention in Finland. Last year I went dressed up as Margaery Tyrell. This year I had a rather ambitious idea of making a Big Sister costume.

You know, Big Sister from Bioshock 2?

This gal here.

(Next time, I should probably get these kinds of ideas a bit earlier, and not like three weeks before the convention? Yeah, just a note to myself.)

There are several distinct pieces that make the Big Sister costume. There's the helmet, the chest plate + shoulder plates, an oxygen tank and an adjoined basket for a Little Sister; and the arm piece(s), like a harpoon style weapon or a sharp needle-like stinger. I left out the leg braces because of time and material restraints, but those are another piece in this elaborate costume. And that was just the props - then there's also the dirty white bodysuit under the brown leather leg pieces and corset-like top, some brown shorts, boots and gloves etc.

***

(Click on images for a bigger version.)

At first it felt overwhelming to embark on this cosplay mission and I wasn't sure where to begin, so I simply made a pair of ivory leggings and a long-sleeve t-shirt for the undergarments. It's actually supposed to be a full bodysuit, but the shorts hide the fact that the undersuit is two separate pieces and as someone who's spent some time in cosplay costumes before, I knew that a two-piece undergarment was going to be a lifesaver right at that point when I needed to go to the bathroom.

So two pieces it was.

I tossed these two pieces together rather quickly with my serger, as they were not going to be that visible so they did not need to be exactly pretty. I bought the fabric from a local fabric store for like 10 euros.

I also bought a brown pair of pants and a men's fake leather coat from a secondhand shop for 11 euros. The small bags on the pants in the photo below are buckles from a craft store, they were pretty expensive (around 20 euros altogether) but I couldn't find any other place that stocked the amounts I needed of the same style buckle, and the time restraints didn't allow ordering them online (hence, next time I'll have to start brainstorming my cosplay earlier!)

I cut the pants into shorts and hemmed them, and set the pant legs aside for later use.

I sliced up the fake leather coat. I used the bottom front hem for the front pieces of my waist corset. I cut long strips and folded them in half to use as the straps. I sewed buckles on the straps on the other side and pieced the whole thing together.

I tested on what I had so far...

...and realized that none of this would be any good if I didn't have the prop armor and the helmet.

So I set out to make these next.

I started with the helmet - I covered a beach ball in paper mache (3 layers, allowing each layer to dry before starting the next) and two layers of plaster gauze. I copied this method from this helpful YouTube video.

I used two packages of plaster gauze (29 euros altogether). So as you can see, the costs pile up quickly with this kind of project. Luckily I could afford it at this time, but it's not every day I can (or want to!) toss this kind of money towards crafting.

Next, I cut out the holes where the red light shines through: one big window at the front, one "medium" sized at the side and two small ones rather low near the bottom, spaced evenly below the main window.

I made the edges of the two bigger windows from craft foam. Altogether this project swallowed up something like 25 pieces of A4 sized craft foam sheets (one sheet cost 90 cents, so ~22 euros).

I made the covers for the smaller windows from craft foam (for the medium window) and some emptied-up serger thread cones (for the two small ones - I simply cut the wider parts at the bottoms of the serger thread cones and used those!). I used googly eyes as rivets (because they're cheap and function well as rivets when painted over :D). The googly eyes cost about 2 euros for the entire project. (Also, I used a hot glue gun for most of this project, and while the gun itself was a cheap investment, it was the hot glue sticks that I seemingly needed an endless supply of - and like most craft materials in Finland, they're fairly expensive...)

I purchased some red see-through office dividers for the "window glass" (you can see some of it in the above photo). This, and the idea to use googly eyes and much more I found in this other helpful YouTube video.

The magnifying glass type of piece in the lower right corner of the picture was made of some old jar lids and a bottom of a see-through plastic jar, all covered in craft foam.

Next, I glued this piece onto the helmet, and cut up strips of craft foam that ran from that point to the main window. I glued some secondhand plastic hose (2 euros) around the main window and the craft foam ridges and the "magnifying glass piece" (I'm coming up with imaginative names because I don't know what they actually are).

I also cut the main window frame from craft foam and marked places for googly eyes.

I didn't attach this or the other window frames yet, because they would be brass/copper color and the helmet would be more like dull silver.

Next, I decided where I wanted the raised plates to be on the helmet, and glued craft foam on it. I just did what looked good, there wasn't any real plan for this stage and the Sister helmets are slightly different from one another anyway. Where I didn't put craft foam, I smoothed the surface with some putty filler (acrylic kind, because it was cheap, like 2 euros...). I used the putty filler because I didn't want the surface to look like strips of gauze, which it did thanks to the plaster gauze. I then glued some purple jump rope (4 euros) around the edges of the craft foam plates. Lastly I glued a strip off of a sleeping pad around the neck hole as a "ring" to which the chest plate piece attaches later on.

***

With the jump rope and neck "ring" in place the helmet base was done. Time for paint!

I covered the window on the top of the helmet with masking tape to keep it paint-free, and I spray painted the entire head silver.

Shiny!

***

I think this is a good point to end this post. In the next part I'll talk about making the rest of the pieces, adding lights and sound effects, and weathering all the pieces to make them look less shiny and more worn. Click here for part 2!

love,
Satu / Sew Scoundrel

Margaery Tyrell cosplay pics and a maxi skirt to dress refashion

In my last post I posted about the cosplay I made for this year's Ropecon. Here are some better pictures of said costume:

(Both photos by Kyuu Eturautti.)

Also, here's a picture of the hairdo, because I think it turned out pretty nice (considering Natalie Dormer wears a massive wig to play Margaery and I only had my own hair to work with...) :P

I did a slightly modified version of this YouTube tutorial. And by "modified" I mean "simplified". :D Meaning I didn't bother to take the bobby pins out of the twists and tie them into a small ponytail; instead I just left the bobby pins where they were and added the second ponytail on top of them and twisted it around itself once. But I rather like the way it turned out. :)

***

So, I managed to finish a skirt-to-dress remake today, and about time, too. This one had been waiting for its transformation for about a month.

I started with this thrifted maxi skirt (I think it was handmade by someone, I simply loved the pattern and the colors):

Sure, it would have been good to use as-is, but I'm not a fan of maxi skirts since they are always a bit too short for me and look rather silly.

So I measured from hem up to get the desired length for the skirt part of the dress and sliced the skirt:

Then I cut the top part:

I decided to make a side cutout dress, so I chopped off small triangular pieces from both the front and the back pieces, then sewed a lining all around the pieces and turned them the right way round. Sadly I forgot to take pictures of this...

Then I sewed basting stitches around the lower part and gathered the fabric until it matched my waist.

I added a waistband of plain black fabric and attached the top pieces together and then onto the bottom part. Lastly I added a zipper, and lo and behold, maxi skirt turned into dress:

Here's how it looks on me:

***

So, what do you think? :)

love,
scoundrel