#voltron cosplay tutorial

So, I wanted to be Lance. (He’s meh fave) I knew nothing about how clothing worked though, and even though I knew I’d be working with foam, it still needed to fit into the right shape and size. Now, I donno about you, but this was the hardest part for me. This was the part I wished someone could just give me and I could adjust, or something I could print out, idk. I didn’t have that, so I basically spent hours looking at different pictures of the armor and using trial and error to see what worked and what didn’t. I obviously ended up with templates, although I made them in a very particular way. This is a very effective way, in my opinion, to make particular shapes for YOUR body type. Looking into it, I found many templates changed size, but not necessarily SHAPE. Sometimes, someone needs that same length and width, but they may need more curve to the sides of the template. Or perhaps someone needs more width but not more height. See what I mean? Bodies are different, and need different templates. You can make them however you please, but I used this method:

1.) Wrap the part of your body the templates for in saran wrap (make sure to go a bit higher and lower than the actual piece needs to be!)

2.) Wrap that saran wrapped sweaty limb in thick tape (I found that blue tape is good because its easy to cut and light, but its also not that sticky)

3.) Eyeball the cuts the piece has to have. When it comes to Voltron armor, there’s lots of random cuts for design purposes, be careful not to accidentally put the shape in the wrong place. Once you understand what goes where, sharpie the lines of where you’d need to cut. (Do this WHILE ITS ON YOUR ARM. You need to know where cuts go in relation to other cuts!! If you move or twist the cast after already making a cut, you won’t know if you’re right about the next one. Generally, its good to have help with this part)

4.) GENTLY AND C A R E F U L L Y cut through the BACK of the cast, (the side not facing outward), and take it off. PLEASE ONLY MAKE ONE, CLEAN CUT ACROSS THE BACK. DO NOT CUT BOTH SIDES OR IN THE FRONT! After cutting and cleaning the edges, wrap it around that limb again to see if it fits nicely. (You’ll want some extra room) 5.) To complete your template, lay it FLAT against a sheet of cardboard. (I would not recommend paper, its too flimsy) It may look really weird, but remember, if you did it right, you already saw what shape it eventually becomes when put together. Make sure to pin it down to the cardboard so it doesn’t dance around, ruining your shape. Its very important to trace the EXACT SHAPE, so spend good time flattening your design best you can. This isn’t about cutting, you shouldn’t cut it more than you already did. After you’ve secured your cast, trace the shape carefully and cut out the cardboard shape.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU COMPLETED YOUR TEMPLATES!!!

I don’t have pictures of my templates as of now, but I could get some. If anyone actually wants the exact templates I used, I will give them to you. I could edit this post or just send them to you, if anyone wants them, that is. (I didn’t wanna go through the trouble if no one wanted them, remember: I’m lazy) Like I said, I’m no expert, but they made soMETHING. So if you do want them, shoot me a message!

After I went through that step, which took the longest despite just using cardboard, measurements, saran wrap, tape, and a sharpie, the next step was to hold down the cardboard onto the foam and trace and cut. It sounds simple, but its more time consuming than it sounds. Seriously. Be careful with your speed and where the knife is actually digging. I used an angular box cutter, which cuts a bit more off the trim than it may appear at first. Just in general, make sure you know what your tools do and make sure you cut ON THE LINES. If you for some reason can’t, always cut OUTSIDE the line. ALwaYs. You can always trim stuff down, but you can’t put it back. After you cut out the templates in foam, make sure to sand the edges. This step isn’t really necessary, though it improves the overall look of the completed project! Also, please REMEMBER TO MARK YOUR LEFTS, RIGHTS, FRONTS, BACKS, UPS, AND DOWNS!!! THIS IS SO IMPORTANT I CANT STRESS THAT ENOUGH!!!

I would like to give advice about the circles on the boots: CIRCLES ARE HARD. Too often, I think, people underestimate how hard it is to actually cut out a circle. I remember being so PiSsEd about the circles, I made a Special Guide™ to them. Because of the thickness they needed to be, I cut out 8 identical circles so that I could stack 4 as one, of course, you need 2. I used a cup for the measurements. I found a Starbucks cup works extremely well for this, because the top is nice and wide, and the bottom is smaller and oddly a perfect size ratio for the Voltron boot circle light thingys. Its also plastic, so damaging the cup, (you definitely will), isn’t that much of an issue. Basically, I placed the cup upside down, (top of cup on foam), and traced around the top with a sharpie. I then flipped the cup, (bottom of cup on foam), centered it best I could, and traced the bottom of the cup in the middle of the circle. Then I cut them out and tried to sand them to a smooth, even shape of equal size. Cutting out the middle was INFURIATING, though it got done. You will find your circle to be very rugged and uneven after being cut, which is why sanding the edges and inside is basically essential. A good system, I found, is to sand each circle individually, until its smooth and round, then to place all circles stacked upon each other, and sand those to about an even size and shape. This will probably never end up perfect, but its all the way on the bottom of the cosplay, so its not that noticeable.

After your final foam pieces are cut out and sanded to be smooth, make sure you test how they all fit together and how they fit on your body. Skipping this step is just plain stupid, and let me tell you why. Even though you may have tried on the cast and cut the shape out correctly on the cardboard, remember, this final size has gone through 3 different cuts, every material likely to have a different thickness. There’s actually a VERY HIGH CHANCE it won’t be as comfortable or fitting as it was before, and that’s normal. To fix that, you can try to add more saran wrap and tape to the cast you had and remake the shape. I had to do this a few times, mainly with the thigh guards and upper arm guards. So, a good idea I think, could be to leave reasonable room in the cast when you first make it. Don’t make it as snug as you want it to feel in the end. Remember, saran wrap and tape is gonna be a HeCk toN thinner than 1 inch thick EVA foam. So yea, please piece it together and see how it all fits.

Once you’re completely happy with your pieces, its time to glue them together! Now, an important part of this would be how you plan to actually put the outfit on. In my cosplay, I just kinda wiggle in through the bottom, kinda putting it on like a dress. The rest of the parts slip on their respective limbs in their respective order. I wanted something easy and simple, so I went with it, though feel free to change how you choose to put it on! Remember though, if you change how its worn, chances are it’ll also change how you should glue it. I recommend using Barge Glue, because its the strongest thing out there, this stuff is Solid. Careful though, its extremely toxic, so please remember to only use it in a ventilated area. Glueing is pretty self explanatory, though the amount of time I had to press sides in on each other before letting it cure on it’s own was a bit longer than expected.

Glueing will take a while, since you need to wait for the glue to cure, which for Barge is about a full day. But once its done, its done, and that stuffs not coming apart anytime soon! After glueing is shaping, which was fun for me simply because it was a break from all the hard stuff. Heat shaping is kinda a thing you eyeball, I don’t think you can do much else to prepare for it. You do need a heat gun, which is basically a hairdryer on acid. You can get one on amazon for 30 bucks. Basically, whattcha do is hook up the heat gun and use back and forth motions over your pieces. Make sure not to get too close, cuz you can burn and/or melt the foam! Also make sure to do it evenly, sometimes there’s a really soft, bendy side with hard spots all around it. That’d be because you weren’t using the gun evenly. Remember, even if you’re not gonna actually SHAPE a piece, you still have to HEAT THE WHOLE PIECE, INCLUDING THE INSIDE. This is because heat, once cooled back down, causes the pores within the foam to seal, making the piece much more solid in its shape.

After heat shaping comes the dreaded yet important job of pAInTinG. There’s a reason they call it that, kids. It definitely brings on the pain. Now, being new to all this, I had no idea what paints were better, how to seal proficiently, which shades of colors to use, any of that stuff. So, naturally, I turn to my good friend, the Internet. There’s a ton of stuff on painting, but I was on a budget, (I’ve already spent over said budget), and I had only a week to finish before the con. So, I look for a quicker alternative to the water and glue stuff, which I find in Plastidip. When I read about this stuff, I thought it was a gift from the automotive gods to my undeserving soul, like, everyone was raving about how great it worked and how it was not only a paint found in multiple colors, but also a sealant and weather proofer. Personally, I do not recommend it. I wish it worked as good as people claimed, but unfortunately, that was not the case. I found Plastidip reacted chemically to the EVA foam, despite the many times I read it didn’t, and it was also splattery and goopy, dripping from the pieces I worked so hard on as it dried. In the end though, it did color my pieces a nice, thick white, and it did seal the foam in an almost elasticy casing. However, it also had small, black holes from where it reacted with the EVA, and bumpy, uneven layers of the stuff across every piece. Though that may have something to do with not having a room temperature environment to use it in. It was cold outside. Idk. After that disaster, I painted all the blue parts with acrylic paint, which I loved, careful to use tape along the edges so as not to get paint where I didn’t want it.

After painting would be lighting, which I actually have yet to do. I couldn’t really finish that before the con, (I was actually still glueing stuff together the DAY OF), so I’m gonna get to figuring all that out for Halloween. Because of the amount of effort, time, and money I spent on this cosplay, its gonna be worked on and constantly improved as time goes on. I never really could finish the whole thing in 3 weeks, so its got a ways to go. And don’t worry, I’ll update it here!

So that’s about it! I had a blast at the con, although it did do an insane number on my cosplay… And I look forward to working on lights and Lance’s gun!! Thanks for sticking with me, feel free to share this information with anyone, as its here to help. I’m also totally up for questions or just long discussions about this if you want to know anything from my experience that wasn’t here, so hit me up!!

Materials:

a pencil

a marker

rulers (1 ft and 1m)

brown drafting paper

sewing pins

grid paper (5mm)

xacto knife

cutting board (not pictured)

stiff insulation foam (not pictured)

 Issue #1: Scale

One of the very first decisions that I made was that – for the sake of my mobility and sanity – I’d be making the cosplay to fit a 5”3 person. This becomes a bit more significant when considering the armor pieces, but in terms of the shield and sword that meant that I’d have to scale them to be appropriate to my height.

For the Shield:

For the most part, my references of Voltron’s shield never really gave me the greatest idea about its size. Since the main part of Voltron’s shield is made up of the Black Lion’s wings, what I did was compare the size of the wings to Voltron’s height. (For this part I used this promotional image that compares Voltron’s height to other landmarks since it was one of the only images I could find that showed Voltron perfectly from the front).

Please excuse the messy writing and other annotations As you can see in the above image, the wing (equivalent to the green blob) basically ends up being the length of my arm. Taking that into account meant (for me) that the inner section of the shield would be 33 inches/ 84ish cm in length.

For the Sword:

I was kinda…significantly less ‘professional’ about it? You know how Voltron does the thing when it summons the sword? The ‘bring my hands together, pull them apart and then suddenly I’m holding a sword???’

Yeah, I basically did that with a meter stick.

 And it actually worked surprisingly well? The visible section of the blade ended up being 30in/76cm long. Adding that to the length of the hilt, the blade in total was 43in/109 cm.With regards to the hilt, the thing that was most concerning to me was how much room I would need to grip it. The main point is to ensure that there is enough space for your gloved hand   to grip the hilt without the bottom section accidentally hitting your hand. For me that meant a 4in/10cm gap though I have a sneaking suspicion I might have overestimated how much space I’d need, we’ll find out if that’s the case later whelp

Issue to Tackle #2: Drawing it Out [Grid Paper]

Armed with those numbers and my grid paper, I then drew out the shield and sword. The reason why I decided/was able to do it on the grid paper is because of how geometric the props are, and because life would be (relatively) less painful in the long run since you can consider it as 1 grid square = 1 inch, meaning you can draw a grid onto the draft paper for quick and easy straight lines that are to scale 

When drawing on the grid, I made sure to include all the relevant lines. For me, I’m not planning to either one of the pieces in a lot of layers, instead, I’m going to use a dremel to include details.  This means that I’ll have to add the details now so that I can transfer them onto the brown draft paper.

Shield Specifics:One thing you do have to make sure you consider is layers of the shield. You can kinda see it in my reference photos that there are areas of the shield that are raised (most notably the top 1/4th of the shield). What that meant for me is that in addition to creating a stencil for the body of the shield, I’d have to create a second one specifically for that section.

Sword Specifics: As with the shield, there are going to be 2 sections that need to be stenciled out: the hilt and the blade. When creating the stencil for the blade, you must draw it so that it encompasses the inner section of the hilt.  You don’t have to draw it separately onto the grid paper, but it will be important to remember for later. In addition to that, keep in mind that you don’t have to draw it all in one image. Sometimes it’s easier to break the drawing apart so that you can actually figure out where all the details fall.

Issue to Tackle #3: Drawing it out [Draft Paper]

For this step, you ideally have your draft paper rolled out completely. For me, this meant using my bedroom floor.

If you feel confident in your straight line drawing skills, you can definitely just transfer your drafted images onto the brown paper. However, because I personally have 0 confidence in myself to do that without assistance, I decided to draw a grid onto the draft paper, then redraw the sword and shield to scale.

When drawing the grid onto the paper, it’s important to make a couple sets of marks to indicate where to draw the lines. This way, even if you make a couple errors in the way you mark where the lines should be, you don’t have to worry about the lines being wonky.

Please note: Because the shield is symmetrical, you only have to draw 1 set of pieces for it! This is a good way to save your paper ^ ^)b

Once your grid is done, you have the simple and easy job of transferring what you drew on the graph paper onto the draft paper, easy peasy! Try your best to keep everything as close together as possible so that you don’t waste as much paper. (see below)

Issue to Tackle #1: A Quick Set Up

Before you start doing anything, there are a couple things that you need to make sure of: 1. that your xacto knife is sharp, and 2. that you aren’t accidentally cutting into anything you don’t want to, be it your desk or the floor.

Both these things are easy to deal with: you can either break off the top piece of your xacto blade, or replace it, and make sure that you place your cutting board underneath the brown draft paper before you make any cuts. If you don’t have access to a cutting board, any type of flat surface you don’t care about accidentally getting cut into will work.

At this point, you want to be using your metal ruler, especially for the longer sections. This way you don’t accidentally cut into it while you work  damaging it and the pattern you are trying to cut out.

Issue to Tackle #2: Cutting it Out [Draft Paper]

When you’re doing this, it’s easiest when you have enough light so that you can clearly see the markings you’ve made on the paper. If you still feel like the lines aren’t visible enough, feel free to go over your design with a thin tipped marker (I used a marker with a 0.5 tip).

Please take caution when using your xacto knife. Work slowly and safely; the last thing you need is to get cut while doing this. You want to have the blade aligned straight against the ruler the entire time you cut.

Be careful not to accidentally cut over the edge of your cutting board. This might end with you either getting cut accidentally, or you might make a weird cut into your paper. The cutting board I used is just over a foot in length, meaning I did have to pause and shift the board downward while I was cutting the longer edges.

In addition to cutting out the main pattern, I decided to cut out little ‘windows’ so that I’d also be able to place guides where I wanted to dremel in details. (See below)

When doing this, you don’t want to cut out the entire section – just enough so that you can give yourself a guide. Later you can see how I extended the lines based on the guides. These windows don’t have to be very large at all, in fact, I probably did go a little overboard with the first couple I cut out. However, since I’ll be covering it up later, it’s not too much of a big deal.

Once again, please be careful. By the end of this particular endeavor, I ended up with 4 patterns: the base of the shield, the raised area of the shield, the guard and handle piece and the blade.

For the next part, you will only be needing the first three pieces. The Blade will be a separate thing to tackle.

Issue to Tackle #3: Transferring the Pattern to Foam

BUT FIRST A MESSAGE FROM CAPTAIN HINDSIGHT

Part 1:

I used a random felt tip marker to do the outlining for this part and well…

Yeah, there was a reason why i chose to use a marker, but the ink got everywhere, even when I was working with the foam a day after. Luckily the marker I used had water based ink and it washed off very easily, but if you want to avoid this, you can just use a pencil.

That being said: If you are using a pencil, please be careful not to press too hard into the foam. you don’t accidentally want to make grooves or puncture it by accident.

Part 2:

When cutting out the base of the shield, what you’re supposed to do is use the stencil to create one solid piece by flipping it over and tracing the opposite side. But for whatever reason I just??? Didn’t do that??? I think I was so desperate to maximize the use of the foam that I completely forgot that I should’ve done that. Oh well…Learn from my mistakes.

ANYWAYS, BACK TO THE TASK AT HAND

By the end of this section, I ended up having 6 pieces in total: two halves of the shield, two pieces for the raised section of the shield, and two pieces for both sides of the sword guard/hilt.

When you are placing your stencils down, you want to make sure that you give yourself some space to cut the foam, while doing your best to maximize the space you have available to you.

Pin down your stencils using the sewing pins (see below). The major points you want to focus on are the corners of the stencil. Make sure that the stencil is completely flat so that when you trace it it’s the exact size needed.This sometimes means that you’ll need to add extra pins in some areas.

Once your stencils pinned down, you’ll want to outline it. What I did to ensure that I’d have a crisp clean line to work with is I traced the stencil so that part of the marker was making contact with the foam and part of it was making contact with the stencil (see below)

What this does is it ensures that once the stencil is pulled away the line is perfectly straight.

Once you’ve done the outline of the stencil, you can now use the windows you cut out as a rough guide to place your detail lines. Once you take the stencil off of the insulation foam, you can extend and connect the lines as needed.

It can also be helpful to label certain pieces with key words (ex. Left vs Right or top vs bottom). For this particular build it’s pretty obvious which side is which but regardless, it’s a good habit to get into.

Once  is completed you should hopefully have something like this (see below)! Yay!!