A little bit of cosplay progress

Hello cosplayers! Thought I would give you a small update on the progress on my latest cosplya which is a genderbend of Sabine Wren from Star Wars Rebels.

As mentioned before in a previous post, I gained some weight lately, so I decided to start with the props before the actual costume because I want to be slightly more fit before I get into tight pant and a shirt like Sabine has. Ofcourse I could just make a suit that fits me as is, but I really want to make my beer belly disappear a bit. The end result will be so much better. Don't get me wrong here, I am not the shallow type and I actually encourages people to cosplay nomatter what they look like. Cosplay is for everyone, and I do not, or will ever not have a perfect body anyway. Just a little better proportions is what I am after here.

Anyway, here comes some pictures of my progress so far with the Sabine outfit and som ideas I have for future parts.

The Mandalorian helmet

This is the top dome of the helmet made out of EVA foam. For this I checked out Evil Ted's awesome Youtube channel for how to make this. You can see the tutorial on how to make a foam helmet here.

I then drew around the base of the dome to cut out at flat round piece. You will see further down why.

I used the flat round piece of EVA foam to tape the cardboard templates of the helmet sides on to it. This way I had the helmet perfectly sized after my measurements.

Then I glued the dome on top of the round piece, and then built polyester resin and glass fibre(the kind you fix and build boats with) layer by layer around the template to form the sides of the helmet.

I also covered the EVA dome with polyester resin to make it more sturdy. The dome itself is still there and actually makes the helmet more comfortable to wear. The surface of the dried polyester resin is pretty gritty so I used just polyester resin and mico glass ballon to make a putty for the finish. It did involve a lot of sanding afterwards. But totally worth it. The surface is now completely smooth and ready for small parts and paint.

Guns and holster

I have seen a few different ways to do the guns and holsters for Sabine costumes, and it has been made in EVA foam aswell as balsawood and plain hard wood. I know EVA foam better than any other material so I went with that, both for the holster and the guns.

I just drew out a template I found online on printer paper and cut out two layers of 12 mm EVA foam. Then I glued them together and stroke som wood glue on cracks and dents to make it smoother. 

The holsters I cut out the frame from 6 mm EVA foam and cut it to fold around the gun. Check out this clip at 3:17 how to do it. It is a little tricky but the result is worth it even if you fail a couple of times like I did.

Here is the result of the glued holsters with the guns. I made the small parts on the guns with 2 mm EVA foam.

My uncle in Finland had a good elk hunt last year so he sent me som left over elk skin a couple of months ago. Lucky me. The skin came in handy for the holsters, and I think it turned out to be a perfect detail to the finished job. 

Well, future work continues. The costume itself will need to be made. The idea is to sew the shirt from scratch. The pants I will buy a pair of cargo type pants and alter them to look more like the pants Sabine use. The belt I will also make from scratch since the style is typical Star Wars and nothing like that really exist in the real world, and attach the holsters on it. The armor I will continue to make from 6 mm EVA foam, the templates are finished after my measurments, they just need to be cut.

I hope you liked the progress I made so far considering this is my first cosplay. Please come with suggestions, tips and comments below.

Later, awesome nerds!