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