Rebuilding Rapture

Hi there!  FishyBob here to show you all of the hard work that went into our (Mumbles and I)  Bioshock cosplays.  Both the Subject Delta and Big Sister cosplays were a group effort, and would not have been possible without everyone working together.  Now, before I delve into the pictures, I would like to inform you all as to why the title of this post is "Rebuilding Rapture".  These cosplays were quickly made in only two months, and came out great, but we were both dissatisfied and knew that we could do better.  So this year we will be remaking most of the cosplays.

I'll start with some of the progress pictures of each cosplay, and the process of what's going on in them.  I'll start with my cosplay, Big Sister.

First of all, the helmet.  I started with a globe as the base, then used a knife and Dremel to cut out a face hold and hole to put my head in.  For the porthole, I used a random piece of pipe from the plumbing section at Lowe's, and fish tubing for the raised surface.  Afterwards, I spray painted the globe with white paint.  Next, I used craft foam for the raised rectangles behind the porthole, and an air freshener for the vent.  The metal coil was randomly found at Hudsons.  The three smaller portholes were made from cardboard and paper mache.  Lastly, I painted the helmet with a mixture of blue, green, and black acrylic paint.

The first shoulder piece was made from cardboard with a craft foam covering, then the borders were made using fish tube.  The circles are made from thread spools cut in half with a craft foam circle on top.  The second shoulder piece was made from paper mache and resin, formed over a balloon.  Fish tube and thread spools were also used on it.

This monstrous cage was made from a cement tube and thin metal found at Lowe's.  The cost was roughly $30.  Anyway, we drilled holes into the tube and metal, then bent and attached each piece.  It took an entire day because the metal was uncooperative, but the final product turned out to only weigh 10 pounds.

The outfit itself took FOREVER to sew.  I cheated and used white leggings and a white long sleeved shirt for the under suit, but the rest was all sewn.  I used brown vinyl, which is a bitch to sew with unless you have tissue paper sitting over where you want to sew.  The shorts alone, I do not kid, took 6 hours.  The shoes were made from a pair of old wedge dress shoes I had and I just covered them with vinyl, belts, and craft foam.

Now, onto Mumbles' Subject Delta.

Lol my foot is randomly in that picture.  BUT I DIGRESS.  The Subject Delta helmet started as a construction hat with a cardboard skeleton.  After that, hours of labor went into adding layers of paper mache and resin, until the helmet was hard enough.  Then, the Bondo was added, bringing the helmet to a whopping 25-30 pounds (I'm sure you can guess one thing that will be being rebuilt).  Lastly, craft foam, fish tube, card board, and plastic rivets were added and then painted to bring the final product.  The helmet also lights up with the help of push lights!

One of the back tubes, shown here, was made from camping mat foam, which can be found at your local Wal-Mart in the camping section.  All of the dots are made from "googly eyes" and the borders underneath those are fish tubing.  The other, large back tube is made from concrete tubing, and the two smaller ones are PVC pipe.

The drill, in all of its glory, was made from the metal garden piece that is used to let tomatoes grow on.  He duct taped it toget to a point, and then used thick foam and cardboard to form the center circles.  Next, it was covered in duct tape, then Bondo.  The center rod inserts to a small handheld drill, which causes the whole thing to spin, as shown in the final picture.

If you guys have any questions, feel free to ask!

Cortana Process

Hello! Kio here and we just recently got back from MechaConVII. It was fun yet stressful all at the same time. Over all the experiences was good. It lacked a few things, however nothing that could ruin our trip.

I'm here to give a visual walk through of my Cortana cosplay progress. For those who don't know who Cortana is, she is the AI found in the Halo Series. When I was at MechaCon, there was an extreme lack of Halo fans.. People kept calling me "Tron"...I have no idea how they got a female figure out of that but I won't question people.

First thing I do is order an wig. I almost always order my wigs from Ebay and never have trouble. I ordered a blue-black wig. Cut and Styled it myself. At first, I added fiber optics to the wig, however decided to remove them due to complications. The first video shows it style and cut.I I added purple extensions to the wig to give it more color variety. Sparkles not added yet.

Then I added tinsel extensions and glitter spray! For teh extensions, I simply hot glued them into the hair. It works just fine.

A head needs a body right? Well first I had to decide the color scheme I was going for. Being skilled in many forms of visual arts and also going to school for it as well, I decided to take my many years of color theory practice into good use. People are most likely to be attracted to a high value color scheme with low value details with fully saturated colors. People are also drawn to blue over purple by the fact it's more pleasing to the eyes and brings emotional calmness (no I'm not making this up lol) Cortana in Halo 3 is majority a middle value over all. Taking in consideration makeup, body size and wig style, a middle value was not going to cut it. 

Now, once I had that decided I needed to find a zentai suit. Majority of ya'll should know what a zentai is since I've seen a lot of undersuits made from them. Well I went on a random website (NOT RECOMMENDED) since the price for it was $50 with custom fitting and no hood attatched. Biggest Mistake Of Life FML. When I received the zentai, It was the wrong size and had a hood on it. Just look at this piece of crap!

O well I had to make it work cause I was pressed for time. So I COMPLETELY tore it apart and reconstructed it from scratch to fit my size. Sorry guy's my butt isn't actually that big, It's carved foam to look like a butt that's attached to some panties. Cortana has a very.. large backside so I tried to duplicate that effect. In the video I'm showing the suit isn't actually white, it's a tin white.

After sizing it I needed to dye it the correct color. It is possible to dye spandex, it just takes a little more effort than most fabrics. I dyed it with liquid Rite Dye in a bathtub full of hot water. First I presoaked it in normal water, next I let it soak for about 10min in the Rite Dye, stirring and squeezing occasionally to get the dye in it nice and strong. I rinsed the bodysuit of all the extra dye and washed it with color safe detergent. Here is the color that came out, except a shade lighter. It's still wet in the picture

 After the suit dried, it was time to draw on the designs. My best friend used a blue sharpie to trace all the designs on the suit while I was wearing it, so I could get an accurate reading on where to paint one the suit was off of me. She did a wonderful job, and many thanks to Bexi and Cortana (LiquidFire3 on other websites) for having such awesome Cortana cosplays and progress. We used their photos as reference majority of the time.

Now it was time to paint. The painting took 10+ hours to finish. It was ALOT harder than it looked. First I stuffed the suit, because I already had the markings where needed, it didn't matter how big or little I stuffed the suit. Once stuffed, to paint. The paint I chose to use was Pedeo Setacolor in Colbalt Blue transparent 8.8 fl oz and Black shimmer 4.0 fl oz. I mixed them together and got a darker blue with a slight black shimmer. This paint isn't like normal paint, it acts like a dye instead so no flacking,cracking, or extreme stiffness to the suit. Best paint option for spandex in my opinion.

I won't bore you with the entire process of painting so just gave you the base coat, front and back pretty much. Well once the base coat was finished, time to add the binary details. For the details I chose Createx airbrish paint in pearl, white and florescent purple. I didn't actually airbrush anything on, I used a normal paint brush and painted lines and dots for binary.First coat was the pearl all over. 

Next came purple to add depth to the costume, to make it seem not so flat with just blues and whites.(sorry no photo of just the purple) Finally at the last minute, I added white dots, which REALLY made the whole costume pop. It made it more dynamic and not so boring with just lines and dots.

I fixed the hands so now they aren't so long since I have short nubbly fingers. I was having trouble finding shoes to go with my costume, but my mother came through for me and founded some sock-shoe things which I cut and placed inside the suit. They are barely noticeable and SUPER comfy.

BUTT SHOT, but no seriously, I love how the pattern fits well around my body and fake butt haha

Well all I had left was the chest piece. It took FOREVER to come in, it actually came in the week of the con and I made so many mistakes with the chest piece. It was upsetting but I had to keep going cause I was pressed for time. This was the chest piece before I added it into the suit.

WELL Here is some final pictures of me from the con. You can see some of the glue that seeped through but I think it's alright for now.

Teehee Me and my beautiful friends Megan and Mary

Of the only pictures I don't have super squint eyes.

HAHA Casen caught this shot when I wasn't paying attention

You can see the colors better when people don't use nasty camera flash

Thanks to Cold Candle for the awesome photo! She has more to come! I'll post those soon as she gets them edited.

Me and the famous Ray Bot (Saints Spartan) I was SO happy I got a picture with him!

Me and Ashlyn with a little bot :3

Just getting started!

Hello everyone! Kio here to tell you that our blog will up and ago soon. As of now, we are preparing for MechaCon VII August 26th-28th. Here are some sneak peeks at the things we have been working on!

Look out for updates after August 8D