Doing things that you love is really fun! It's my first time doing armor cosplay and I'm happy that it turns out well! Honestly, I really don't have any basic sewing or crafting but thanks to Mr. Google, I manage to do it (somehow). I've been so long dreaming of doing my own armor for cosplay but only now I have the courage to do it.
I'll be happy to share with you on how I make my Erza Scarlet's armor. I hope it can be a little help to you.
P.s. Do ask me further should you need more information.
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| Me cosplaying as Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail |
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Erza Scarlet (Fairy Tail) - The character am cosplaying as.
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A lot tutorial you can find on the web i.e. Youtube on how to make the chest plate pattern. You just have to diligently searching out for the one that suits your cosplay. After you have decided on the pattern, do the measurement on your shoulder and body length, chest and neck opening. As mentioned earlier, I don't have any basic sewing so I just made an approximation measurement by using my own cloths that fits me well and trace it on top of the brown paper before transferring onto the foam.
So, assuming now you have your own body pattern, cut and divide it by parts. I have divided few parts of my body pattern that will be shown step by step as per below pictures:
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| This is my front chest side (from shoulder to chest part). The opening below the chest (as seen above) is to create the "boob-effect". I'm sorry I do not know the correct term. |
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| The transferred pattern. Label your pattern to avoid confusing in gluing process. |
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| Front chest plate. Now you have both left and right side. |
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| Gluing process. The 'boob' opening is glued and this is how it looks like. |
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| Glued both side and now you have this! |
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| This is the below part of the chest plate. that to be attached to the chest plate. Just use it as it is, you can make adjustment later XD |
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| Glued (carefully) the parts. Now, you have complete front side of the chest plate. Do not worry about the extra side foam. It served as seam allowance when you gluing the front and back pattern later. |
Move on to the back side of the chest plate pattern. I'm sorry I don't have the details picture T.T but the making process is the same with the front side. Use the same shirt and trace the back pattern on top of the brown paper and transfer it onto the foam. Get a zip (approx. 50 cm length) to be used for gluing both side of the back pattern. Make sure to have extra length of zip at the top for the collar.
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| Glued the zip onto the foam. I do not sew the zip to the foam as EVA foam has thin and soft texture. It will easily be ruined if you sew it. |
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| Now that you have both front and back side pattern, just glue both part. Do make sure that it fits you well. You need to wear the chest plate design on your body first to adjust your measurement. Do some mark before gluing the pieces together. It looks messy, I know XD |
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| The back side. |
Now, the detailing parts. Make sure that you have the characters' costume design in front of you while making the details. You wouldn't want to make some errors.
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| Finish detailing! |
You will need to get two pieces of rectangular foam shape in order to make the collar part. One for the front side, and the other for the back side. Do self-adjustment on the length and wide of the collar.
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| This is how it should looks like. |
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| The back side. |
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| Adjust the length and width of the collar. And now lets move on to the detailing parts. |
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| Collar detailing. |
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| Here's the finished collar part. |
I made a few mistakes on the pauldrons part. It really hard for me to mould the pieces and I almost gave up T.T but thank goodness, I managed to attached it together XD
What you do is that take the measurement of you shoulder, and attach the pieces together. Here's where your creativity will shine. You're gonna need a few pieces to create the dimensional looks.
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The pauldrons. Before (right) and After (left) the pieces is moulded.
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| Tada! The attached pieces! :D |
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| This is how the back side looks like. Do not worry about the different foam color as we're gonna spray paint it later XD |
Move on to painting process!
One advise: Any foam color is OK but it would be good to have a white-based foam color as it has better absorption quality during the painting process and you don't have to spend more on the spray paint (like I did -.-).
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| Find an open space for the painting process. Beware of the strong spray odor. Do not spray inside your room. |
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| After spraying, now we can add more details to the chest plate. I used black pen marker to make it looks more cartoon-ish. |
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| I used acrylic color to do the Fairy Tail emblem. Now, you're done! XD |
Other tutorials:
Thanks for reading.
