Finished Taako Cosplay

And now, folks, the moment you've all been waiting for! For once in my life, I've actually taken photos of a finished cosplay and posted them in a reasonable amount of time. So without further ado, I present to you: Taako!

Unfortunately, some of the images are a little grainy. It's difficult to take good photos of yourself when all you have is a phone camera and a bunch of textbooks playing the role of tripod. What can I say? If I waited for a better camera and an actual photographer, you all would be kept in suspense until next Halloween!

The perceptive among you might notice that I never made the corset belt that was in my original concept design. This wasn't an oversight: I actually did make a prototype belt, and it worked pretty well. However, when trying it on, I realized something: corset belts really accentuate your curves. Taako's a male elf and I'm a female human, so that detail wasn't really working in my favor, so I ended up scrapping it. Not that I went to huge lengths to crossplay in the first place... I basically just put on a sports bra...

Have I mentioned that Taako is super fun to cosplay? He's just so over the top! That's the opposite of how I act in real life, so it's really fun to pretend!

And that concludes Halloween 2019! Overall, I'd say I'm happy with it! If I had more time, there are some things I would have changed or added (like modifying the umbrella I bought, or coming up with a more interesting hairstyle), but those are mostly nitpicks. The project also taught me a lot of new skills, especially working with foam. Maybe for my next cosplay, I'll experiment more with foam and prosthetics!

With that being said, I think I'm going to wait a while before I start a new cosplay. As fun as they are, they're a big crafting commitment, and I'd like to do some smaller projects to recharge. Hopefully, that means my schedule will become a bit more predictable again. No promises just yet, but stay tuned and we shall see. And until next time, stay crafty!

Brace Yourself

I'm back again with the final DIY piece of the Taako puzzle. Much like the hat, this accessory is one of the few things we know Taako wears in canon: it's the Bureau of Balance bracer! All of the members of the Bureau are issued one, and since they don't exactly come off, we can safely assume that Taako, Magnus, and Merle are all wearing theirs throughout the story. I have to imagine that Taako wasn't thrilled to have to restyle his wardrobe around a permanent accessory, but what else are you gonna do?

Enough chatter, let's get right to it! For this project, I decided to go with foam. It's a common cosplay substitute for armor and the like, since it can easily be painted to resemble metals without carrying all the weight and rigidity of actual armor.

Looking back, it seems I forgot to take pictures for the bracer, so this post is going to be a little light on process photos. There are plenty of cosplay armor tutorials out there, though, so if you're looking for something instructive you should be able to find it elsewhere.

A forearm is essentially just a tapered cylinder, so it was simple enough to measure and cut a corresponding shape out of craft foam. I put two layers of foam together to give a sturdier bracer, making sure to glue them together while they were curved around my arm so that they would hold their shape better. In order to secure the bracer, I used hot glue to attach velcro to the inside.

Then it was onto the detailing. I used scrap strips of foam to create a raised rim around the top and bottom openings, and then set to making the BoB symbol on the front of the bracer. Originally, I figured I would draw the insignia on in hot glue in order to get a sort of embossed effect. That didn't work out too well.

As you can see, the hot glue lines were far from the smooth embossed look I had intended. As it turns out, it's very difficult to get a perfectly even, straight hot glue line! Painting the bracer only made it look worse, so I tore off the hot glue and went back to the drawing board.

It occurred to me that the rim details I made out of foam had actually turned out quite nice, so I decided to try a similar tactic for the symbol. It was fiddly to cut and glue so many thin strips of foam, but in the end, I was much more satisfied with the result.

I covered the whole thing in a few coats of silver paint, and then dry-brushed some black paint into the crevices for a tarnished-metal feel. Then, a coat or two of glossy mod podge sealed everything in and brought out the shine.

There are definitely things I would do differently if I were to make this again, but overall I'm happy with it. It's comfortable enough to wear for a day out cosplaying, and durable enough to withstand it. It won't fool anyone into thinking it's actual metal, but some better paint and thicker foam might be more convincing. And most importantly, it reminded me not to give up if something doesn't work the first time. None of us are perfect crafters, and sometimes we need to try multiple techniques before we find the one that works.

And with that, I've finished all the DIY aspects of this costume. Tune in soon for the reveal of the full thing! (I promise that this time, I'll take pictures of the cosplay sometime this year!) Until then, though, stay crafty!

I'm All (Elf) Ears

Hello again, crafters! In my endeavor to dress up as the entirety of the TAZ cast, I've been working on completing my Taako cosplay. Or, well. It's already finished, I wore it for Halloween and stuff. But I haven't finished writing about it here, so for all intents and purposes, it's not done yet. I've made quite a few things in order to embody this elf wizard, but I'm missing some key components. He's an elf wizard, so I need elf ears!
I've never dipped my proverbial toe into the world of prosthetics, so the first order of business was to do some research. How are they made? Are there multiple techniques? And can I do any of them at home, on a grad student budget?
Well, most of your professional grade prosthetics are made from latex, molded to the shape of the wearer's ears and kept on with special adhesives and whatnot. This is definitely the most natural looking option, though due to a combination of the skills required to make them and the supplies I'd need, it was out of the question for me. I also saw lots of stylized, wire ears. These aren't meant to look realistic at all, just pretty. That was more in my skillset, since I have some experience with wirework from jewelry, but it wasn't quite the look I wanted. So I turned to the third option: clip-ons.
This class of ear prosthetics differs from the professional variety in that they're not meant to fit perfectly over the wearer's ear, leaving no seam. Instead, they clip over the ear like a cuff, or onto the hair, and are worn that way. They might be made of silicone, latex, even fabric or cardboard. Because they don't require precise fitting, I felt like this type of ear was doable. I planned to wear a wig that would hide the clips (and my actual ears) anyway, so a bit of disconnect wasn't an issue. After fiddling around with techniques for a bit, I came up with an inexpensive, easy pair of ears to DIY for my costume!
Because this is a construction method I came up with myself (only very loosely inspired by things I saw online), I'll do my best to provide a tutorial that you can follow along with yourself. Assuming you already have a hot glue gun and some spare paint lying around, you can make a few pairs of these ears in a few days for under $4. So go forth, and make yourself some ears!

Speaking of supplies, here's what you'll need:

• One 12" x 18" sheet of craft foam, preferably in something close to your skin tone
• Acrylic paint, in your skin tone
• Two pairs of clip-on earring backs (note: it might be possible to use regular post earring backs if you have piercings in the right places, but as I don't have pierced ears, I couldn't test that out)
• Hot glue
• Regular craft glue
• Scissors

First, in order to make your ears, you need to know what shape your ears will be. Take a piece of paper and draw out your ideal ear, making sure that the base of the ear (the part closest to your head) is just about as tall as your actual ear. This project works best with the large, exaggerated ears. In order to get a more realistic shape, you can plan out a few layers of depth in your drawing. Ears have an outer rim that give them a cupped shape, and then they funnel in towards the head. In my drawing below, I've labeled the three layers that I'm going to use with numbers. Each layer will have its own piece of foam.

Now, use your paper pattern to cut out your foam. If you want two ears, don't forget to cut each layer out twice! Here you can see the three layers I've made, showing the differences in depth. The outer rim is most raised, and the inner part near the head is the deepest. Notice also that I put a slight curve in the foam at the base of the ear. This is to match the curve of my head, when I put the fake ear behind my real ear (like where you hand goes when you cup your ear to hear better). The better your foam ear fits into this groove, the better it will stay on overall.

Now, glue your pieces together and let them dry completely. I used regular craft glue for this, but you could try hot glue if you're in a hurry. Just make sure it doesn't ooze out of the seams too much.

All right, it's looking like an ear! If you want things to look a little less boxy, you can take a pair of scissors and round out the edges of the ears. 

Now, here comes the hard part. In order to get these things to stay on, we're going to use clip-on earring backs, two for each ear. The first will clip onto the earlobe, in the same place as most vanilla ear piercings are. The second will clip to the very top of the ear (this is why it's important that your foam ear is the same height as your actual ear). Put a dab of hot glue onto the back of the foam ear and place your earring backs and the bottom and top of the ear, orienting them so that they will clip over both the foam ear and your actual ear, sandwiching them between the two pars of the earring. Look at the pictures for help. Once the glue is dry, check to see that the earring backs are actually in the right position to clip onto your ear. It may take several tries. Fortunately, you can easily pop the earring backs out of the glue, re-melt it with the nozzle of the glue gun, and try again. When you're satisfied with the positioning, put another dab of hot glue onto the earring back to keep it from coming off. (Please ignore that I already painted these, you're going to want to save the painting until the end. I just forgot to photograph the next few steps before painting.)

(This view is of the back of the ear. Note the hot glue keeping the earring back in place)

(And here's a front view. The earring back clips over the edge of the ear.)

(When worn, the earring backs clip over both the foam ear and your real ear, pinning the two together. If you spend time positioning them right, this can be quite a sturdy arrangement!)

The ears are now perfectly functional. But if you're like me, you couldn't find any foam that really matched your skin tone. Fortunately, foam is paintable! Grab one or more acrylic paints that match your skin, mix them together if needed, and give your foam ears a few coats of paint! Since the foam is porous, you'll need multiple coats: 3 should do the trick. Then let them dry completely (unless you want paint in your hair), and you're done!

I have to say, I'm pretty proud of these. For a first time prosthetic-maker, I think they turned out well! They're not the most comfortable things in the world to wear (if you've ever worn clip-on earrings, you know the feeling), and they're not quite sturdy enough to survive something like a LARP session, but they certainly stay on well enough to walk around a convention! And if you have a wig or long hair to hide the hardware, they actually look pretty convincing from a distance! I'm seriously considering getting another sheet of foam and making myself a whole set of wacky-shaped ears. Who knows, maybe I'll use them for next Halloween!

With this project in the bag, I inch ever closer to the completing of the Taako look. If you're interested in seeing more of that, stay tuned, and stay crafty!