Turians and Pretty Pictures

Our PAX East photos from Ian Travis Barnard are in! Anyone else want to Retake Omega?

Nyreen: Me
Aria: Tifaia
Shepard: Coles
Photos by Ian Travis Barnard

I just wrote up my Nyreen build materials list, but I also wanted to thank everyone who helped me out. This was very far from a one-man job, and my friends are the ones who helped me knock it out of the park.

Ritzy did all my sewing—the gloves, boot covers, and what we affectionately called “my butt cape”, and was my work buddy for MONTHS toiling over scale mail while I carved mandibles using nothing but negative space. Coles gave the initial idea to make the mask out of foam, as well as generally was my cosplay mentor and my favorite Shepard on the Citadel. Bill made my Carnifex. I also want to thank Jordyn for always knowing where I left my exacto knife and Geener for being my cosplay sister. OH AND CALLIE FOR BEING MY HUMAN PURSE SATURDAY ILU BB. (see I didn’t forget!)

Pictured above:
M!Shep: Coles
F!Shep: (if you know her let me know and I’ll add her s/n!)
Kaidan: usaginosenshi
Aria: TifaIA
Dalish!Warden: Ritzy

inuyasha1770:

Got these at the Lexington comic-con today

Thanks for shopping and having excellent taste. THE MOST EXCELLENT AND IMPECCABLE TASTE.

(Source: forwhenthestarsfall)

I’m cooking like it’s 20 days til the con as far as Nyreen progress goes. I’ve got Lexcon on the 16-17, too, and I leave for our Boston roadtrip on the 19th so I don’t have a whole lot of choice!

This past weekend I learned to put in contacts so I can have slitted pupils. They slide around a little, so unless you’re comfortable with fixing your contacts every 10-20 minutes I would opt for rounded pupil ones. I’m probably picking some up for D*C, but these will work for this weekend.

Under my mask I’m wearing a dive hood I picked up. I may try making my own for D*C, but again… it’s coming down to a time crunch for now.

The shoes are these Heel-less Booties from Amazon. I didn’t want to mess around with trying to build digitigrade feet that might fall apart on me, so I taped on toes made out of that poly-fill foam you can get from Jo-Ann’s. Ritzy made my boot covers, and all I’ve got left is 1) the foam armor pieces and 2) learning to walk in the damn things.

***SIDE NOTE: I was playing Dance Central in that gif. I’m better at walking in these than I used to be, but oh my god do not play dancing games in them what in the hell is wrong with me.

LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES.

(I was actually fine. I promise.)

As of right now the cowl is completed and primed. The fabric skirt is made, but the belt is not so I can’t show it. The only things I have left to build are the belt, gauntlets, pauldrons, and leg spurs. I’ve got two weeks. Let’s do this. :)

(Part 1 of this tutorial)

So this is it—Nyreen’s head is done! Or at least as done as it’s going to get by PAX East. I’d like to do more to the hood but since I’m already in rush mode to get this done by the end of March that’s been moved to the “if time presents itself” pile.

This has been heat formed since the last post which is why it now holds its shape. After I did that I put some bondo on so I could carve the nose out and fix the lines on the nose and upper lip (you can see this in the picture where Ritzy is so kindly modeling the mask for me). The bondo also had the added benefit of hardening the front of the mask quite a bit. You can wet sand EVA foam if you use a sandpaper with a fine enough grit, so I sanded the bondo down until it was flush with the foam.

The next step was mod podge. LOTS of mod podge. I applied about 4-5 coats to the face and mandibles, and a single coat on the “fringe”/part that goes over the ears. I don’t have pictures, but I coated the fringe in plastidip. This 1) sealed the foam and 2) allowed those flaps to remain flexible so that the mask can bend a bit when you put it on/take it off. It worked beautifully. :)

Then it was just priming, spray painting a white base, acrylic paint for the red markings a clear coat, and then weathering.

The hood is a scuba hood made of lycra with an open face. I smeared some black eyeshadow all over my eyes for this pictures, but I’m going to have to work on that so that I don’t look like the Nightman under there. Also I need to order some yellow contacts.

Again, if anyone has questions or wants help doing something like this, let me know either here or on Twitter and I’d be glad to help. I sort of made this up as I went along, but the final product is very solid and I’m pretty happy with it. Now onto the feet and ARMOR! \o/

If you follow my twitter feed you know, among other things, that I’m endeavoring to make a Nyreen costume this year. This is a huge leap out of my comfort zone. I don’t do masks, y’all. But turian ladies are apparently enough to make me go there.

I’m still very much a novice. I can build things and I can draw things, but I definitely cannot sew things. And I really cannot mold things. I’m going to try to do this thing with only my current skillset because I am fantastically insane.

So first thing’s first: The Mask. Without a mask, this costume doesn’t work. I can’t be a fabulous turian lady if I don’t have a fabulous turian face. I swung by Michaels to buy one of those cheap plastic masks so I could horrify Ritzy and/or have a base to build up a skeleton for my mask. This ultimately isn’t going to wind up being part of my mask, but it was an invaluable resource for figuring out where to hide my nose. I’d recommend getting one of these to help you scale your patterns.

Which brings me to what is probably the most important point I can make: Scale is EVERYTHING. I’m a good 6’5” when I’m wearing my shoes for this costume (which I’ll probably make another post about, once they’re a bit further along!), so I had to make the mask a bit bigger than my face to keep it in proportion with the rest of Nyreen’s armor. You can see the size difference between Picture #2 and #6—that was 2 weeks of nothing but playing with the scale of my patterns.

Originally I was considering building a thin foam base over the plastic mask, slathering that with bondo, and hoping for the best. A buddy suggested I make the whole thing out of EVA, and I’m seriously glad that happened because the first prototype desperately needed trashing. I’m actually pretty decent with a dremel after doing two sets of N7 armor, so keeping the foam relatively smooth was also easy.

I’m really happy with how this is coming out so far. I’m going to heat form it so it retains its shape (it’s just duct taped together & to this wig head for now—I’m still making minor adjustments to the mandibles and it needs a better chin) then seal it and paint it when I get time. But I thought as a proof of concept, this might give someone the push they need to make a turian costume. It’s only as impossible as you let it be*~*~*~ [/inspirational montage music]

I’ll try to get up another update as soon as I get a chance to work on this. Making posts might guilt me into actually working on it, who knows!