#comics crafting

So most of this thing is craft foam. I started by drawing the shapes of the wings on paper to figure out how big it needed to be, how many pieces there were attached, etc. Lots of drawing, cutting out, holding up to face, redrawing, etc. This was basically me making a pattern. (Sorry, no pictures of this stage.)

Once I had my pattern I cut it out in craft foam and laid them all on top of each other to see how they’d work. I knew I was going to use layers and layers of paint, so I wasn’t too worried about imperfections.

Next I fired up my trusty glue gun and attached the pieces on the back with... let’s be real, far too much hot glue. I used so so much. My advice to myself for next time is definitely to chill out with the hot glue, especially because the tips of the wings are visible in back when it’s finished. But anyway, I glued the pieces together.

At this point I planned to wear it attached to a headband across my forehead. I wound up changing the plan because of the mask part and all the stuff I’d be adding to one half, but this very late night after work test run with just scotch tape was promising. If I were making just the wings part (Angela cosplay?) I might still do the headband.

I took a basic half face mask from the craft store and cut the right side of the face off, leaving a bit on the top and side. I did this rather than just use a proper Phantom mask because I wanted the extra stability for the weight of all the face appliances. On the left side of the mask I traced a circle from the frame of round sunglasses (more on those later) and cut that out where the biggest lens would be. I attached it with hot glue and used a bunch to fill the gaps and build the side up like it was goggles.

My cat supervised.

I attached the mask to the craft foam wings with tape and tested the fit. Once it was placed right I hot glued those suckers together. The pull of the elastic from the mask created a far better curve of the wings than the headband had.

It was at this point that I realized I was crafting a Woden cosplay while wearing a Valkyries shirt SMDH.

Next up I covered the whole thing with a couple layers of black acrylic paint as per the advice of many cosplayers on youtube.  The big things I would say about the black layer of paint is that a) it helps to seal the craft foam and create a semi-even texture to all the different materials (I should have used mod podge, but got lazy) and that b) it really makes the gold paint pop when there’s that layer of black underneath.

More on painting later.

The next step was getting the right lenses. Stephanie Hans colored the various lenses on Woden’s headpiece as essentially the same reflective surface, but Jamie McKelvie and Matt Wilson’s cover gives each lens its own tint. I really liked that look so I decided to lean hard into it. I bought two pairs of reflective circular sunglasses in different colors and took a picture like I was some kind of bug.

I ordered a double jeweler’s loupe (the two little lenses on sticks) and took out their original glass lenses. I also had to unscrew the whole thing and reverse their direction, take out the spring, and shorten the arm that’s supposed to attach to a pair of glasses, so it wouldn’t stick out so far from my face.

Yes, that is a reflection of me flipping the headpiece off. I’d just reread issue 14. Fuck you, 2014 Woden!

This is the part I was REALLY nervous about and also the part where you should probably not follow my example!

I traced the shape of the loupe’s original lens onto some paper. Then I traced the circle again and made it slightly bigger because Woden’s loupes are two different sizes. I used the paper as patterns and traced them onto the back of each of the green sunglasses lenses. I started to cut the circle shapes very slowly with a craft knife. Once I had scored the circle into the lenses I just broke them off with my hands. This made a kind of jagged shape and left me with many sharp edged shards all over my crafting space/bed. DO NOT DO AS I DO!

I cut most of the edges down with a pair of scissors. I unscrewed the loupes and popped the newly cut lenses in there. The metal of the loupes really hid most of those edges, but you can still see them in the picture there. I took some red cellophane and covered the smaller lens with it. When I screwed the loupe back together it held the cellophane taut and created the red mirror lens. I was able to trim all the excess cellophane away so it wouldn’t show up in profile. I covered the back of both loupes’ rings with hot glue to keep everything in place and reassembled the pieces.

First I glued the blue full lens into the mask, making sure to keep the gold metal clear on top.

Then I treated and painted the loupes (more on that below) and glued the double loupe to the mask in the position I wanted to keep it in. (I didn’t get a picture of it at this stage.) Jamie’s cover shows them relatively flat, but I like the aesthetic of the loupe with more dimension, so I built a hot glue base for it and let it stick out a bit.

I also watched all of American Horror Story Coven.

Okay, so the painting. I was super nervous about the painting part because I’d never done faux metal before and my usual source for metallic paint crafting conversations was being very purposefully kept in the dark. I watched about a million cosplay videos on youtube to figure out how to paint this sucker and just kind of went from there.

I used a sponge brush to put down the first layer of gold acrylic paint. Sponging it on left the black slightly visible in the creases and edges and under corners, which made the details of the shape stay visible. I did extra layers of paint with a brush over all the stuff I had build up with hot glue. The glue does hold paint, but not as well, so I layered extra.

The loupes I got weren’t gold, so I carefully covered the metal with mod podge and once that had dried it created a paintable surface. I painted the loupes gold before glueing them on to the mask.

Next I worked on some mask design details. I made the bottom strip with craft foam, added dots of hot glue to look like rivets, and painted it black. I used hot glue to create the metal attachments to the top of the lens and painted them black. I also built a line of hot glue on the surface of the mask (you can see it on the next picture), cut grooves into it to look a bit more linked metal, and painted it black. I glued the winding bit from an old pocket watch onto the bottom right of the lens to match Jamie’s cover and then I painted it black.

It’s like a Rolling Stones song here.

I covered all of this with more gold paint, using both sponge and brush, depending on the surface. The headpiece that Woden wears in the comic and on the cover also has a small chain connecting the blue lens somewhere under the wing, but I didn’t love how that looked with the proportions of my face, so I decided to forgo it.

As you can see in the reflections, Lying Cat oversaw the proceedings.

So, yeah. That’s basically it. If there were any more steps I don’t remember them and honestly I should stop typing now anyway. This post is very long, but I hope it answered the “how did you make it” question well enough.

I guess I’ll leave you with one last picture of the full look, partially because it’s the clearest picture of the whole cosplay and partially because I’m tickled by the idea of Woden recommending SEX CRIMINALS, particularly given SexCrims 9 and WicDiv 14.