It’s far from perfection, but I don’t have the skill sets needed to really excel at this. I think I did pretty well seeing as nothing is sewn (it’s all either modified existing clothing or just glued together), I’ve never built a sculpted foam head before, never made EVA hair before, and color matching was such a nightmare (still not thrilled with the skin color but I needed a specific fabric so my options were limited.) Still, pretty happy with it, all things considered. I hope other people like it, too.

And I finished waaaay ahead of schedule so this will need to sit in a closet for months. Christmas con and all that. But I wanted it out of the way since I’m making a Noelle for my wife and Bender for a friend…so I still have a lot of work to do. Having Susie done means I can concentrate on other things.

It’s not pictured, I should have taken one, but there’s a secret in this cosplay! (minor spoiler ahead, skip if you’re concerned). I went to the trouble of building and attaching…drumroll please…a tail. Will anyone notice it under the jacket? Maybe not. But if anyone does, I’m hoping they’ll be thrilled.

Full costume to be posted tomorrow, finally!

Insert axe pun here.

All that's left is to paint the axe. Then I will put all the pieces on at once and hope they harmonize.

Pants are inherently funny, I don't care who you are.

We have arms now.

Alright so the studs didn't work, but after taking a closer look at official art as opposed to sprites, they're not studs anyway. They're spikes. I wanted to buy the perfect premade EVA foam ones I found online, but it would have been more than $80!! So...while obviously hand-made, that's exactly what I did. Made them by hand. Wobbly, imperfect, a little lumpy, more seams than I'd like, but...they're okay, and ready to be painted.

Also, boots, boots trim, and belt buckle are ready for painting as well. I didn't take a lot of in-progress photos for those, but here's everything primed and ready!

I'm having to start over with the metal studs for the costume. I began with styrofoam balls and slowly and carefully cut them into halves. Then because styrofoam is melted by the solvents in sprays, I had to hand-paint Plastidip on so that the smooth styrofoam would accept actual paint. But the Plastidip didn't go on nicely the way it does when it's the spray form. I thought, "Okay that's fine, it'll even out when I paint" and after two coats of Plastidip I put on three coats of paint...and ended up with golden meatball halves as a result. They're SO lumpy... This failure represents about $30 (styrofoam balls, liquid Plastidip, two paints, pins) and 12 hours of waste.

I have ordered EVA spheres to be cut in half instead. I can use the Plastidip spray on those, so hopefully they will look nicer. But I have 5 months for these kinds of screwups. It's okay.

This is as far as I can take the hair for now. Time to work on other parts of the costume.