The moment you have been waiting for...

Yes I know, FINALLY FINISHED. Raarr. :)

Current Music: Show me Love by t.A.T.u

These last few weeks were a bit hectic (an understatement) as I scrambled to add the finishing touches to my costume. I think I can now appreciate what insomnia feels like because I got an average of only 32 hours of sleep a week for nearly the entire month of October. With some nights I would not get to bed until after 3:30 am.

Sort of like going to Times Square for New Years Eve, I am glad that I did it, but I do not know if I ever want to do it again. At least not in the same way. My memory was shot, I had a hard time focusing, and I felt achy and slightly sick all day. But I got numb to it and chugged through anyway. Kids, don’t try this at home!

I made a lot of progress over that time despite my sleep depravity.

I finished the hands. Those claws are nearly three inches long and make it nearly impossible to hold onto anything that is not round. I had to be careful when I was around people so I didn’t claw them on accident.

I scaled the mask over about three days. I attached the ears first so I could be sure they were in the right place and then started on the nose and eyebrow ridges.

I covered the eye holes with pantyhose fabric which allowed me to see without others seeing my eyes. In hind sight, after wearing the mask around for a few hours, I should have chosen a different fabric or at least stretched it more. I was very difficult to see when I was anywhere but in bright light.

Due to the nature of my character I was playing (namely, being of the female persuasion) I covered the cheeks of the mask with white scales painted with pearly paint. (Female dragons in my novel have patches of white scales on their face while males have white stripes). The slight orange cast you see to the scales is due to the orange sharpie I used to trace the scales before cutting them out. I was disappointed by the effect at first but now I think the orange adds a little warmth to the otherwise dark mask.
Here is the mask with the mane and horns attached (more or less) to give an idea of the complete look.
Scaling in progress.

With the face more or less finished from the eyes down.

And here is the mask finished. I think the eyes are the best part of the whole mask. They are kinda arresting and wild.

While scaling the mask I burned myself again. This time on my left hand (thankfully!). It was one of those burns that took the skin with it when I wiped the hot glue off, but unlike my first burn it did not hurt, at least after I got the glue off. Must have fried some nerves this time around.

Here are the wings with the cloth cut out for them. (Kinda looks like a Batman symbol.) When open they are nearly the length of my room. Due to the complexity of the rigging and my inexperience working with metal and hinges and such I had to make a rather sad compromise with the wings and how they would function in relation to the rest of the costume. The original plan was to be able to pull a tab at about my collarbone and have the wings open. I was forced to re-rig the wings to be a bit less technical and more hands on. I ended up with a partial rig for the wings so when I opened them with my hands from a handle on the wrists the fingers of the wings would open on their own. This worked and ultimately it made me much happier because if I had tried the more complex way I would no doubt have broken the wings or been so worried about them malfunctioning that I would not have been able to have fun.

Here are the wings half done. These took me most of the night to finish.

Here are the finished wings, looking nice and pretty hanging on the back of my closet door. The blue part is a bit of exercise tubing jerry-rigged into a figure eight to hold the wings closed and together. Without it the wings would flop open and drag on the ground.

I was able to finally finish the pants after they had sat cold and lonesome under my craft table for more than a month. Of all the multiple parts of this costume, the pants are the most comfortable.
The big black patch there right on the rump is Velcro for the tail. It is less the primary foundation for the tail but as a mode of extra support. Even still, I had to walk very carefully so as not to jostle the tail too much as it bounced off my heels.

I learned a great many lessons when constructing the vest portion of the top. One being never use a shirt that fits you to begin with because once everything is glued on it cannot stretch anymore and therefore does not fit anymore! I had to make some allowances in the straps that held the back closed so that the non-stretchy vest would stay around my waist.
These are the chest panel scales—it was quicker and simpler than covering that same area with my rapidly depleting stock of cut scales and they also hid the offset vest opening. The offset opening allowed me to hide the edges underneath the belly plates. The white portion there is the backside of the plates.

I made the top of the costume in two parts on purpose, and that purpose was the wings. I had mounted the wings on bright white wood blocks that would be best hidden. The arms of the top are a separate shirt and the vest went over it and covered the wing blocks, the raw edges of the wings, and the elastic rigging.


Here is the vest with on the body dummy with the undershirt also. The shirt I used for the vest is long so I had to extend the length of the double to accommodate.

This is the finished vest from the front and the back. The slits in the back of the vest are for the wings. I am rather proud how the scales on the shoulders look.

Once the vest was finished I worked on how the silver scales and blue crystals would attach around the neck. Just to get the configuration right I pinned the scales to the neck first before any gluing happened. It is a good thing I did because the collar snaps of the vest proved to be a challenge when they coincided rather unluckily with the silver scales.


But it ended up all right in the end and I think it looks pretty good. I attached the chains to rings I had pierced through four of the silver scales. Since the rings were silver like the scales you have to look pretty closely in order to see the lines.

And here I am with the vest and sleeves on:


The reason I look like a pear in this picture is that the back of the vest is gaping wide open. Forgetting to factor in the fact that the shirt will not stretch once it has the scales on it I made the securing straps too short and they didn't stay closed without me hiking the vest high and making it bunched up around my waist. In another word: ugly. I fixed the problem with a set of stretchy strap extenders that solved the gaping problem nicely.

And put it all together and ta daa!! Done!

I love this picture. (Mom, Glenn, and me in the middle.)

Current Music: Palladio by Silent Nick

Yet again...

Current Music: Never Knew I Needed by Ne-Yo

Progress. The word itself as well as the whole metaphysical collection of thoughts and feelings that it evokes is and always will be purely relative. In saying that I have made progress in my perpetual rhapsody of craft is a statement of both fact and abject futility. Yes, I am now closer to the end of this but there will never be a point where I can state beyond any doubt and against any and all future desires that I will be well and truly finished with this project. There will always be something that could be improved, something that could be changed for another. It is like writing. One can never be finished.

But that is a philosophical discussion for another day.

Since my last post I have finished several crucial pieces of the costume and laid the foundation for the next several layers. Perusing my other posts it seems that I have been very negligent over the past few weeks in keeping you informed.

Let’s start at the bottom this time and work up.

I finished scaling the feet. Previously all I had done was the foam work and the claws glued to one foot. But after weeks of sitting underneath my bed I have finished the scaling of them and I can say that I am quite pleased with their look. The only issue I ran into on these is the black vinyl I used as the “skin” for the feet does not like hot glue at all and goes through periods of misbehavior where the scales start to peel off. I have reached a point now, having devoted more time than should be allotted to something so minor in the whole scheme of things, that I am content to just ignore it.

I have made some small progress on the legs of the full body scale suit that I plan for this costume. What you see pictured is as far as I have gotten on the legs, a lack I intend to remedy sometime this week. While gluing theses scales on I realized rather quickly and unpleasantly that the collections of scales I had were used very quickly and the number I had already would be insufficient! 1200+ scales are insufficient!

I have glued the tail rings together with strips of elastic and vinyl. The tail looks dark due to the leg of pantyhose I have attached to it to act as a skin for the attachment of scales but later decided to forgo in favor of something more robust.

While gluing the last ring of the tail to the strip of vinyl (the white line in the picture) I burned myself when I fumbled a piece freshly slathered in hot glue. Yes, I know, not my most graceful moment. Though the blisters are small they hurt like the dickens unless I kept my hand wrapped in ice.

I had more luck in avoiding burns when I glued strips of the shiny green fabric over the gaps between the rings and stuffed the whole thing with plush to give it a more robust constitution. I also found, unfortunately, that the fabric and stuffing made the tail quite stiff and therefore not nearly as biologically accurate movement-wise as my tiger tail from last year. Oh well, you live and learn.

As you can see from the picture I painted the tail mace the same color as the horns and attached it to the tail. Here is the finished tail hanging again from my bookshelf. Yes, just in case you were wondering, I used the red cloth for the base intentionally.

The wings have been a bit of a trial for me. It is becoming one of those things that don’t exactly fit with the image you have of it in your head. It is still good, but not quite there. I constructed the “bones” of the wings using a set of aluminum tubes I ordered from a hobby/craft shop online. I then cut them into pieces, drilled holes in the ends and bolted them together in the shape of a wing.
I have a plan to make the wings mobile rigging them in such a way that when you pull a cord the wings open. At this point I have only gotten to rigging one wing with eye screws while the other is still in its separate pieces waiting for the holes for the eye screws to be drilled.

The wings will be attached to a hinged block on my back that is attached to me with a series of straps: two over the shoulders, two from the bottom of the block around to the front of the belt, and one down the spine for the tail to attach to. Getting all the pieces together will probably be a weekend of work by themselves.

Next is the neck of my costume. As I am pulling a bit of personal cosplay here and going as my character Summerbreeze I recreated the necklace of silver scales that she wears. Originally the scales which look like a “three pointed flame” were in a shape kind of like a bird track with the three points all being about the same length. I re-imagined the concept and this is what I came up with:
Quite a bit more elegant than a collection of bird tracks, I think. In pairing with the necklace I have wrapped the Shi’thara’ben crystals with silver wire and they are ready to attach to the chain.
Moving forward to the part I am most excited about: the mask. While I had a good number of trepidations about building a mask in the way that Canine Hybrid’s YouTube videos show I can say that I am very happy with how it has come out so far. Unlike the masks of my previous two costumes this mask is soft and very light. Constructed mainly from foam and a balaclava (aka head sock) building the mask this way granted me a kind of freedom that I did not have before when working with plaster and cardboard. I can literally sculpt the pieces of foam to take on the shape that fits with the picture in my head. If only I had known about this technique before! This next series of pictures are my work over an all-nighter I pulled on the Friday of Conference weekend.
The black thing on my head is the balaclava and the white part is a strap of elastic to keep the chin tight against my face. It is important to making the moving jaw later.

Just so you know, I did not move the eyes to look at the camera. The eyes are made to track. They will seem to look at you no matter where you are standing.
After a lot of sculpting with scissors and a few bouts with an Exacto knife the mask is coming along great. Here I am gluing on the eyebrow ridges. Due to the insulating properties of the foam the hot glue takes a while to fully cool and set. I have found uses for these clamps everywhere. I love them! Over the course of this construct I am afraid that I began to get a bit delirious due to lack of sleep and more than once I found myself talking to the mask. In truth that is the only reason I have this picture. Because I looked at it and said “That must be painful” and decided to take a picture. To be honest I am not sure if I have even recovered fully from that night. Still a bit delirious.
With the horns.
With the jaw glued on.
The mask with the foam work more or less finished. Cool beans! At the bottom of the previous picture you can see parts of the finished ears. Here is a better picture:

I covered the back of the black blanks with a neat shimmery cloth I found at JoAnn’s that already has a scale pattern on it. I made the fringe by tying loops of white and green string through plastic mesh. The roots of the ears are springs so that when I attach them to the mask they will have a realistic movement. Yes, that’s right: moving ears. (I know, my dedication to something so ultimately frivolous sometimes scares me too.)

In addition to the ears I have also finished the horn rings and medallions to hang from them. In my book the medallions hanging from the horn rings display the dragon’s clan. In Summerbreeze’s case it is the Fire clan.

The horn rings have a fun spiral pattern on them that you can’t really appreciate from the pictures.

The last part I want to show is the one that has been giving me the most frustration. Not because of any real difficulties figuring it out, just that it is taking so stinking long to get it finished. Holding to the look of my character, the mask will have a mane. I have devoted more than 24 hours to JUST the mane and it is still not completely finished. But I have resigned myself to put it aside for the time being in order to get other more important parts finished first. It is passable as it is and thus the freedom to set it aside.
You can see from the picture the pattern of dots on the underside of the strip. Each of those dots is a separate knot and each knot is four strands. There are fifteen different colors of string in the mane and two separate lengths of string. It is thick enough to stand up on its own. (I wish my own hair was like that!) My hand is there for scale.

So now that I have devoted nearly three hours to writing this I will bid you adieu. Until next time.

Current music: The Promise by When in Rome