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wildcard Mar 15 2009, 10:44 AM
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The one... the amazing... the powerful... ME!
[ * * * * ]
 So now here is the second series of pictures and description how I did it.

I've started on the robe at least, using a chinese-top pattern as base to create it. I left the entire right side "open" as on the reference pictures it is shown that he has buttons aaaaaaaaaall the way from top to bottom.

First I grabbed my reference pictures and zoomed in very close on the ornament, while at the same time I opened it again and let it stay in the normal zoom, so I wouldn't get confused by all those pixels.

I drew it on the back side of some cheap bonding sheet I bought, before copying it mirror inverted on another piece. Then I carefully cut out the parts I wanted to paint later on.
This is a lot of detail work, so I suggest you really plan about 2-4 hours of time to work on this. If you are in a hurry you might want to do something else instead.

So once you have all your pieces assembled, grab the robe, lay it out on the floor - make certain it is clean and put old newspaper underneat it. Then take your time to put all the pieces in the correct order. To make certain the ornament looks alike always keep up your reference pictures and if you can try to put the two sides of the robe next to each other as shown in the following picturs:

The robe as a whole
A close-up of the ornament

You can't really see much on it yet, BUT the work pays off if done properly :)
Once everything sticked in place, I laid it out normaly in the floor - again making sure there was newspaper beneath it.
The work right now is pretty easy. Simply grab your purple fabric-color and paint over the pattern. The only thing you need to watch for is not to take to much color and not to accidentally 'loosen' one of the 'stickers' you put so much efford in creating.
Once you are done, simply let it air-dry.
An hour or two later you'll see how the color turned out. In my case the darkest purple I was able to find was - as expected - not dark enough. Thus I grabbed a texture color spray of black and put a few layers over it. Be careful if you are forced to do the same, it can quickly become rather black then purple.

Again the robe as a whole
and in detail

As you can see, I had no hesitation to paint over the bonding sheet itself.
Once my black layer was dry as well, I slowly and carefully pulled the bonding sheet pieces off it.

The finished pattern! - Neat, ne? ;)

Then I grabbed two larger pieces of backing paper, my ironing board and of course my flat iron. One of the backing paper went on top of the board, then the part of the robe with the ornament was put on it, before the second layer of backing paper was put on top of it.
You might need a second person or something heavy to put on the rest of the robe, so it's weight will not pull it down.
Set your flat iron on a setting according to the fabric (in my case synthetic, since I chose satin as texture for the robe) and then 'iron the color in'.
This is to keep it in the fabric when you wash your outfit and also to keep it from smearing should you encounter rain.


Now an entirely different matter.

I started on the rod. It's not much, only the base, but I thought I might as well show it off.

Materials:
1 insulation tube
foam
a roll of some sort of broad duct tape (it's not really duct tape, but usally can be found in the area)

I simply put the tube on the foam, rolled it around once, before cutting the estimated proper lenght out, then I put the tube on the cut-out piece and fixed it on top and bottom wit the tape.
Like this

As the foam resisted as I tried to wrap the duct tape from top to bottom I fixed it in several places. As shown here

Now I slowly worked the tape all around it from top to bottom. Click her for the finished result so far

Due to this the base is still pretty flexible, yet it is soft to touch and will hopefully allow me to take the rod into the conventions. (Most large weapons aren't allowed in larger cons in europe unless they are made like LARP weapons => Soft)


I'm sorry some of the pictures are such a bad quality, but as I mentioned before, I only got my mobile to take pictures with ^^°

More should follow sometime soon.

If you got specific questions, go ahead and ask :)
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My Taigong Wang Cosplay Diary/Manual · Cosplay
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