Imp Mercy Cosplay Progress Post #5 - I Couldn’t Have Done It Alone!
Thank goodness for Stella Chuu’s Imp/Devil Mercy wing and horn pattern! It saved me so much headache and the results look great. Her patterns are totally worth the price you pay for them ($5!!!!) and I would recommend them to any future Mercy cosplayer. They’re to scale and super accurate. I don’t have much experience with foam crafting and I’ve deviated from design when gluing things together because I am a noob and wasn’t careful when planning things, but I’m happy with how everything came out. Next up to making the harness and getting this thing to stay on my body holy moly.
Material list for these doods
Traffic Master EVA foam mats
Worbla Clear for the feathers
Charlotte PVC Pipe 1/2″ precut into 2′ lengths x 3 because I can’t fit the 10ft pipe into my car for skelly
PVC Pipe 1/2″ fittings 45 degrees x 6
PVC Pipe 1/2″ fittings 90 degrees x 4
Plastidip Rubber Coating for sealing foam
Mod Podge for sealing foam when I ran out of Plastidip
Rust-oleum Metallic in Charcoal x 2 for bodies of horns and wings
Krylon Stained Glass Paint in Royal Purple for feathers
Folk Art Metallic Acrylic Paint in Amethyst for back of horns
Weld On 16 to glue joints together (ran out of E6000, which is basically the same thing)
Probably very obvious to experienced cosplayers but news to me! This is mostly for my own reference but hopefully they’ll help someone out, too.
Working with EVA foam mats
Cut out your pattern pieces and make the external hatch marks with someone so you know to cut it that way. Tracing your pattern onto EVA foam with sharpie and then cutting it out yields neater results than cutting the paper pattern and foam at the same time.
Draw pattern on wrong side of foam (the bumpy side) or the beveling will come out wonky business. All beveling hatch marks only work if you cut on the wrong side facing up.
Hatch mark on external surface means bevel goes outwards (convex) and internal surface means bevels goes inwards (concave). When you flip your foam over the right side, most of your pieces visible edges should look convex where you cut it concave on the wrong side. This was hard for me to understand at first because I don’t work much with thick materials and my explanation probably made no sense and I’m sorry.
Change the freaking blade for the utility knife if your EVA foam cutting is looking less than clean. You can turn the blade the other way around and use that cutting edge instead of getting a brand new blade.
Rotary tools spin spin spin
Rotary tools are cool and cheap and apartment friendly. I used mines to cut my PVC pipe into appropriate lengths easily without having to borrow a saw at Home Depot. My dad just gave me his and I think it’s the most useful gift I’ve gotten for a long time! It’s a Black and Decker RTX-B and it’s my new best cosplay friend.
Glasses are not sufficient safety protection for working with rotary tools. I lost my safety goggles and was too lazy, and PVC sand in your eyes hurts.
Working with rotary tools outside keeps your apartment tidy and your cat less scared.
Plastidip is the best way to seal anything because the results are nice and smooth, and there’s less 1000 coats of watered down Mod Podge/Flexbond/whatever to deal with. Also note that Plastidip isn’t water soluble, which can be a good or bad thing. You can’t just fix your mistakes with water and would have to use another solvent.
Soaking nozzle of spray paint/Plastidip bottle in alcohol for a few minutes before wiping helps declog it. :o
Make sure your trigger finger isn’t in the way of the spray or globbies will come out pfffftblllrrrpt like this.
There’s probably cheaper alternatives to Worbla Transpart that are sheets of clear plastic for the feathers. I thought about sneaking into a school/library and getting some laminate. Office supply stores sell some in a large enough continuous area for cutting.
I regret buying Worbla Black as I didn’t use it for the wings. I didn’t have enough to coat everything in the stuff and the wings are already pretty heavy. I think it would make everything a lot more sturdy though! As of right now, I’m not comfortable wearing the wings anywhere crowded. I also have a tough time getting Worbla to not look like a woogly melty mess. Again, I’m just a kid, okay.
Hot glue is good for foam to foam and stinks for foam to PVC pipe (it won’t adhere well).
I love Weld On 16 for acrylic to acrylic and nothing else.
Contact Cement melts the paint job. I only used it in less visible places, but you can use it on any surface to any surface.
Lay out how exactly you want to glue everything together before you do it omg. I had leftover pieces because I didn’t do this.
