My 5 dream cosplays

There is a vast number of potential cosplays around. Extremely many so called mainstream ones from hit movies and television shows, you know the type any average Joe can spot in a convention. There is also a lot of obscure characters out there, some you have a vague memory of but can't place, and some you have no idea whatsoever what the hell it is. But it is fun. For my part, I have very little or no knowledge of japanese anime characters. Some I have seen before but I can't tell from what show they come or their name.

When I look at characters I want to cosplay, I tend to look at the mainstream ones - more or less anyway. I might go for a supporting caracter in a movie but mostly I go for the well known and I also go for what I like and think I can pull off. Both in my appearance and the skill of my craftsmanship. I am still a beginner so I should not go overboard the first thing I do.

I am currently doing a genderbend of Sabine Wren from Star Wars Rebels, and I recently posted pictures here on the blog with my progress so far. I don't know about you other cosplayers out there, if you constantly think of the next costume  you want to do. I sure do anyway, and I think most people working creatively do in some way atleast.

Here is my, without any specific order, the 5 cosplays I want to do:

Greedo, from Star Wars A New Hope Tusken Raider

 

 

Greedo is only in one scene of Star Wars A New Hope, but an iconic one. The rodian bountyhunter is really cool.

Tusken Raider, from Star Wars A New Hope

The Tuskenn Raiders, or Sand People, in the first Star Wars movie was intimidating and had a very different look. Fairly easy to cosplay to and I have actually already made the tunic and the garderffii stick.


 

The Lich King, from World of Warcraft

 

 

This one really takes some work. Lots of detail. Most cosplays I have seen is very good but are made in the cosplayers hight, which is a common way to do it. I made a monster for this Halloween which involves a body rig that when worn makes me over 8 feet tall. My idea is to rebuild this into the Lich King.

 

 

 Jason Nesmith, from Galaxy Quest

 

 

This might count as an obscure character to do. I know it has been done before by other cosplayers, but I like this movie. One of the best spoofs ever. Tim Allens character Jason Nesmith would be a great one to do and I already have the Galaxy Quest uniform patch, so....

 

 

Any male Togruta, from Star Wars

 

 

There are so many great female characters around. I love Ashoka Tano, but I will settle for any custom male Togruta instead. A really cool alien species. 

 

I could list a couple of dozens of other characters I would want to cosplay, but I picked five I can think of right now and that I have a personal connection with. Many Star Wars characters here, but hey I am a fan so... 

 

Lunch now and then time to make ready for Närcon Gävle!

 

Later, awesome nerds! 

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!

A hell of a summer....and good ending of the year 2016

In my last post I promised more to come during the summer, well I hit a wall with my studies this spring and got behind some. Been catching up since and suffered from a minor depression during the same time. So with the lack of strength I have not held up my promise. Sorry about that, but I hope I can make it up to you know when feeling better again.


I have been taking it easy during the summer not doing much but been outside fishing on the lake nearby or working a little on my next cosplay and helping my youngest son with his cosplay.

Sabine Wren helmet in the making

Curious? Well, if you follow me on twitter I revealed my cosplay there not long ago, If you missed it the costume is a Sabine Wren of Star Wars Rebels genderbend. I really like that show since it is part of the new canon and actually Sabine is my favorite character. The idea was to have it ready for Swedish cosplay convent Närcon (more about that further down) in my town last weekend of this October, but I will not be able to finish it in time...and I packed on a few so I really want to lose some weight before I make a tight outfit like that, LOL. I have begun on the helmet, armor and weapons though, and I am pretty far in the progress of that as you can se in the pictures. Hopefully I can lose some weight and be able to finish the costume for The Scandinavian Sci-Fi, Game & Film Convention in early December.

Dinner party Jason 

My 10-year old son, Mattias, has caught up with the liking of cosplay and wanted to join me at the convention in December, where they have a cosplay contest for kids. Because of the small amount of time we decided to make a mash up cosplay we call Dinner part Jason, basically it is a Jason Vorhees costume but instead of the movie G.I. Joe kind of gear we have resown an old black suit of mine, adding a white shirt and a red bow tie. Voilà! Dinner party Jason! LOL. 

Making a cast of Mattias head to build goalie mask and rotten head

I helped him ofcourse but he did do a lot himself on the head part we made from a bald cap bought from a movie make up shop. We then sculpted burnt and distorted skin on it with latex, grease make up and acrylic paint. The picture provided isn't the best but I will upload better ones. The iconic goalie mask we will make from scratch in polyester resin.


Conventions comes in three....? 

This fall and winter is heaven for a convention lover like myself. First up October 28-30, it is Närcon in my town of all! Amazing I´ll say. Närcon is the largest convention in Sweden with around 8000 visitors when they crown the Swedish champion of cosplay every year in February and The Nordic Champion in July every year. These two conventions take place in Linköping, but this year they decided to have yet another convention in another town so the luck fell on my town. Happy me! Fifteen minutes from home to the convention arena. No cosplay ready for this since they dropped the announcement as late  as June, and I was in the making of my Sabine Wren costume. Did not have the energy to start something new.

The weekend after, November 4-6, the MCM Comiccon takes place in Kista Convention Center north of Stockholm, less than 2 hours travel with train from where I live. Nothing to argue  about. Taking girlfriend (am I aloud to use that word at the age of 42?) there and staying att the Kista Victoria Tower Hotel wall to wall with the convention center. Can not be better I think. We also celebrate the first year together that particular weekend.

A little rest then for a about a month before The Scandinavian Sci-Fi, Game & Film Convention, December 10-11. Lots of vendors at this convention, hopefully for my liking a lot more Star Wars vintage than usual. Lots of cool other stuff it will be though, and cosplay competition debut for my son also. My friend Björn and my girlfriend will probably acompany us there.

A couple of days later is premier date for Rogue One - A Star Wars Story. I really usually don´t like fall and winter, hard not to like this one.

Later, awsome nerds!

No Loot Crate yet....gaah!

Well, Swedish customs is now officially the most sluggish customs office in the world. I mean how hard can it be? A Loot crate. God damn it. Check out what it is, let a narc dog take a whiff and be done with it! My February Dead theme Loot Crate has been with Swedish customs since Feb 23 now.

Sorry about my absence from the blog lately, and twitter also in some way. As many of my readers know I am a full time student and I had a period of hard studying last couple of weeks. That's the reason, but I will better myself.

Star Wars Rebels is a favorite of mine. The last episodes have been awesome and you really feel the connection with the original movies now. I love it. Buying all the seasons on blue-ray later. The 100 I also follow and like but I am a little afraid it is getting Lost-sickness, yeah I call it that when shows just derails into total craziness. I think the hologram girl is a little too weird.

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Ryan Reynolds and Morena Baccarin

Saw Deadpool last weekend, finally. Many have said before hand that will be a bad movie, as of some of my friends that did not want to go see it. My buddy Björn to the rescue. He wanted to see it so we went.

I will occasionally review movies, but this blog is not about reviews in the common sense so I will not grade movies in anyway, just tell you what I liked and disliked about them. Deadpool I really liked for the fact that it makes fun of itself as a movie. The jokes may be rather simple, but they work and the chemistry between Ryan Reynolds and Morena Baccarin is actually really great. The comedy aspect of the movie is its strength and in the long run also its weakness. It is not going to be a movie you see over and over again, the jokes will wear out too fast eventually. I will probably by the blue-ray at some point.