Adventure Time Flame Princess Cosplay

So I made this Adventure Time Flame Princess cosplay for my daughter for Boston Comic Con 2013.  The debut of it was delayed by 3 months because of the Boston marathon bombing which postponed the convention.  I did not want to put it out until we could debut it in public.  Here it is.

 So I did not have a pattern for the dress so I winged it and it worked out pretty good.  When she tried it on we decided to go with a petticoat underneath to give it the poofiness that her dress has, pictured below

I'm a horrible photographer but it does have the train in the back of the dress.   I styled the wig as well, this was the first time I had styled a wig and I am very happy with how it turned out.  I added some of the tule fabric to the wig to give it a little more of the flame look.  The flame ball lights up as well but with the lighting in this picture you can't see it.  

 You can see the flame prince I made on the shelf behind her for her friends Fionna cosplay.  The flame prince gets turned into the little poof ball flame guy in the Fionna and cake comic.

 I told her to make an angry face and she laughed instead.  Finally got a smile though.

 Cake looking out of Fionna's backpack on the side.

 My daughter and her friend in all their adventure time awesomeness.  I made the crystal sword, backpack, cake, and hat as well.  The shirt, skirt and socks for Fionna were purchased.

 We saw an awesome Sloth from the movie the Goonies walking around so being huge fans we had to get a picture of the two of them.

 Plus they had a Jabba the hut can't pass that photo opportunity up.

 Boston.com asked to take a picture of my group of 3 kids to put on their site and this is it.  You can see it on Boston.com under scenes from Boston Comic Con 2013

Adventure Time Finn's Root Sword

So this is the Finn's Root Sword from Adventure Time.  I made this to give to the artists of the comic book Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb at this years Boston Comic Con. my Family loves adventure time in all it's forms and we were lucky enough to meet the artists last year.  So I wanted to give them this as a thank you for all the good reading we've had all year.

So here is an official picture of the sword from the adventure time wikiapedia.

 

So I started with a 2 1/2 thick pieces of MDF board and glued them together to give me a piece that was 1 inch thick.  I wanted to make sure I got the roots carved into the hilt properly and I needed the thickness to be at least 1 inch.  So I went ahead and cut out the sword and then sanded down the blade to be thinner then the hilt.  After I was happy with that I got the dremel out and started sanding the roots.  Once everything was done it was time to paint.  Now I wanted this to look like the cartoon version so I went ahead and did the blade in 2 different colors, aluminum, gun metal grey and then white.  Then I painted the roots brown of course.  Once it was done it still did not look right and then I realized I need to add the black borders to it.  and down the center of the blade and that Is what I did.  Looked much better after that. 

 

So here are some pics of it in finished form I hope they like it.

 

 Another view

 The other side.

 





 Close up of blade

Adventure Time Demon Sword

So this is Finn's demon sword from adventure time.  I made this because I want to give it to the artists of the adventure time comic shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb at Boston Comic Con.  I alos have some other goodies for them as well which I will add to the blog.  My whole family loves adventure time, in all it's forms.  We had the pleasure of meeting the artists last year at Boston Comic Con and this year I want to give them a thank you for all fun reading we've had this year.

Here is a official picture of the demon sword from the adventure time Wikipedia site. 

So I started with a 1/2 thick piece of MDF board and cut the basic shape out of it.  Once I was happy with it I added 1/4 inch thick MDF board to the hand guard and hilt on both sides.  this makes the hilt and hand guard thicker than the blade.  So once the glue dried I went ahead and finish sanded it and then went on to paint it.  Once it was painted I sealed it with acrylic sealer and then used some red vinyl fabric for the leather around the hilt.  Pretty fun little project and I hope the artists like it.

 

Here are some pics of it.

 

 

clap trap "bad hair day" Plush

So I made a claptrap plush for my 9 year old son to bring to PAXeast 2013.  My son has a mohawk and we both love seeing claptrap with his mohawk after "bad hair day". So I found a couple reference pics and made this guy the night before we went.  I think I was more excited about him than my son but oh well.  The wheel actually turns on him.  I wish I planned this ahead and got a sound chip to put in him, but he was last minute so.  Anyways here are a couple pics of him.

Marceline's Axe Guitar - Adventure Time

So I was asked to make Marceline's axe guitar from Adventure Time.  I went ahead and made it so you could play it, I'm pretty sure if I let my brother play it (he being a guitarist) he would have dope slapped me because I'm sure it did not sound great but sound did come out of it when you strummed the strings so I was happy.  Here is a reference picture of Marceline's Axe.

So I had to figure out the length of the neck.  34-36 inches seems to be the norm so I went with 36 because the neck of the guitar looks pretty long in most of the reference picture I found.  So I made the neck out of pine (yes I know pine is not a good choice for guitar necks.)  I had 1 48 inch long piece and one 36 inch long piece it went from 3.5 inches width at the base to 4 inches at the neck.  So I did insert a metal rod into the neck piece.  Basically I routed out a path to put the metal rod in and when I glued it together all was well.  I glued the shorter with 2 inches into the longer one and then it ended 10 inches before the top.  Sorry I don't have pictures of this.  So after it dried I cut out the coffin looking part of the neck where the hardware to tighten the strings is going to go.   I then useds some 1/8 thin hardwood strip for where the frets go.  I then found out a scale marker for a bass guitar and made the lines where the frets are going to go on the neck.  I went ahead and used a file to file the slots that the  frets will go.

Next the body of the guitar.  I made the curves of the axe were the neck and the back piec go out of 1/2 inch thick mdf board.  I cut 4 pieces total and glued 2 pieces together to give me 1 inch thickness.

Sorry I did not take many pictures of the progress of this.  

I went on to cut out 2 pieces of 1/8 inch hardwood plywood with a plastic coating  on one side to make the face of the guitar.  So I glued the back side together with the spacers at the edge.  Once it was dried I  started on the face of the guitar but I went ahead and drilled 2 holes for the knobs and marked where the back piece where the strings go.  After that some gorilla glue  and some clamps and it was one piece.  Last part was the neck of the guitar which I had to do some sanding to make the piece of the neck that as going to attach to the guitar a little bit round so it would make a tight fit.   I glued that and then I drilled a hole in the neck and used a screw to fasten it to the body.  

This picture is with it primered.

So now it was some final sanding and little cosmetic things I wanted to fix and it was final paint and attach hardware to it.

So was the first version I made.  I went ahead and made a fully electric one that my brother tried tuning for me and when he was done he told me not to quit my day job.  I'm currently in the process of finishing up a third version of the guitar that is similar to this one.  When I'm done I'll post pics of it.

Black Rock Shooter TV Version Rock Cannon

The title says it all.

So this is my attempt to make this cannon.  I started with the figma figure and then to get the proper LED placement I got some pictures of the anime.

So with that I decided let's do this thing.  Now I wanted this to be around 4 feet long.  So I started my blueprints with that length in mind.  Problems I found is that the barrel of the gun has 3 different widths to it and I like to use cardboard concrete tubes to use in this construction.  but with that I would go from 8 inches to 10 thenn 12 inch diameter this thing would be huge and would not look right.  So after some digging around I made the front part of the barrel out of 7 inch diameter stove pipe.  I cut it down to 24 inches and then got it set up

Next I added some foam sheets that I had cut out the pattern in.

Now I doubled up some 1 inch hard pink insulation foam and made the front part of the cannon.

Now to make the wider part of the cannon I went back to my old standby cardboard concrete tube.  i added some cardboard to each end and then marked off and cut out each slot.  Then I added a layer of foam sheets with the slats cut out.

Now a test run fit.

Now on to next section more concrete tube a make shift template and fresh exacto blade and here is the result.

Dry fit test.

Now the arms.  So I'm trying to make this as lightweight as possible and I just picked up a handy dandy hot foam cutter so I figured let's try this bad boy out.  here are the 3 arms in rough cut.

So I sanded those bad boys down and added some thin plastic to the sides and top.  unfortunately I have no pictures of that.

So The back piece is made out of double cardboard and craft foam. 

Now for the handle and the insides.  I used a 4 inch pvc pipe for the back part of the handle because whoever designed this didn't think of real world practicality, (crazy an anime that is not grounded in reality)  so where the person holds the gun it needs to be at the tail end and the only way I could get it stable enough was to run a smaller pipe down the center of it and have it attach to the front metal part of the barrel.  So this way when you hold  it from the back it will stay straight and it will be sturdy.  So for the insides I cut 2 round MDF discs that would slide down the gun and fit perfectly into the front part and the back part would be wider since the tail end of the gun is more wide.  I'm so glad I figured that out before construction because I might have lost the rest of my hair on having that fail. Also for the 2 light up parts I drilled a total of 8 holes in the long pvc tube 4 in each section that light up so I could place the led's there.  I used a total of 12 leds 4 for the front 4 for the first light up part and 4 more for the final light up part.  i also had a on/off switch located at the back of the gun and I placed the battery holder near the the grip and out of site.  Phew here are some pics of it.

Ok after that I gave it several coats of primer paint and then I went with a flat black and then a spray of textured black paint before I sealed it with a satin acryllic sealer.  After that I added a thin piece of translucent plastic to the inside of each light up section to help diffuse the light and give it a nice glow instead of individual lights look.  I also crafted a front translucent piece with ridges and a pattern to give it a little better look.

Here is the final product she stands at 50 inches tall and weighs in under 5 lbs.  I'm pretty happy with it.  This one took a couple weeks to build but it did involve a lot of head scratching.

So there it is.  This is a fun project and I think I have made up to 4 of them now.