It's time again to go over my lovely process of my Cassandra from Soul Calibur 4 cosplay. I worked on these pieces about the same time as doing the shield and sword. I like to do a lot of foam work at the same time, so while I'm waiting for one piece to dry, I am gluing something else. I just found it to be pretty efficient. Here's how it turned out.
- Reference-
As always, we start with reference! I used the trusty 3D model with XNALara. Took some nice screenshots of the armband, front view, and the hip emblem. This was really nice because very few images had a clear view of the underside of the armband which has this leaf design. The second image is with Cassandra's arm pointed straight up. I definitely would have flipped the design by accident if it wasn't for this image.
You know the drill: paper reference, Inkscape template, make, prime, paint, done!
- Shoulder Pauldrons -
As usual I started with a paper template to check for scale. I like using heavy cardstock since it holds its shape well. This is the side view of the pauldron and I cut two and taped together along the center to make a domed shape. It took a few at different scales to get it right.
I used 5 mm EVA foam for the base of both the arm band and the main pauldron. The edges of the pauldron and the arm band were some half round dowels from TNT cosplay supply.
When I cut out the base of the pauldron using my template, I added registration marks along the main edge so I knew where to glue them together using Barge.
Once the base was all glued together, I kept the arm band separate for now, since I needed to sculpt the leaf details. To do the sculpting, I used Apoxy Sculpt which acts just like a regular clay but air dries pretty hard. The tiny little "noodle" pieces were done using a clay extruder and a round end.
One thing that was important for this was that it needed to dry while being rounded, otherwise it would crack once bent. All I did was wrap it around my barge can and use tape to keep the ends curled. I had to wrap it as soon as I was done sculpting to make sure it wouldn't crack.
The most labor-intensive part of the pauldron was the decorative detail along the main body. I used my template and traced onto 5mm EVA foam. To get the shape I needed, I used my dremel to create indents on the black lines and make it come to a point on the green lines. This took some time. To add some extra dimension, I overlapped some of the pieces to make it appear more 3 dimensional.
Once the decorative piece was dremeled, I glued it onto the base carefully with Barge using the center line as my main guiding point. I glued on the armband and I closed up any seams I wanted to hide using Kwik Seal and heat sealed the entire thing. I primed using Rapid Fill and Fine Finish like I did on the sword and shield. Then gave it a gloss black base coat of spray paint.
Since I found out that the silver paint I had was garbage (Ace Hardware chrome/silver), I found my chrome airbrush paint that I used for my Hornet Needle and used that instead. I was much happier with the result! Did some shading with airbrush gunmetal gray and a quick acrylic wash with black paint. Sealed the whole thing with Alclad II gloss clear koat.
- Hip Emblem -
The hip emblem was actually pretty straight-forward but fun to make. I knew I was going to use Apoxy Sculpt for the details but it can start to weigh a lot. So to reduce the weight, I made a foam piece that would be the back of the emblem. I then bunched up some aluminum foil and created the rough shape of the emblem on top of the foam piece. Once I was happy with scale, I glued the foil onto the foam and spread a thin even layer of Apoxy Sculpt onto the foil. I sculpted the details of the emblem and waited 2 days for it to fully cure.
Once cured, I could sand it down to remove any fingerprints or brush marks. I normally use a little bit of alcohol when I am done sculpting to remove some of those imperfections before it cures, but the sanding really helps smooth it over. I then primed using rapid fill and fine finish like before. I sanded a few points to get it really smooth (middle). Paint was simply some gold spray paint and a quick black acrylic paint wash. I then sealed it with a satin clear coat.
- Final Thoughts -
You know, this part wasn't too bad. Once I knew not to use the bad silver paint, the painting for the pauldrons came out so much better. While I'm not an expert sculptor or anything, I'm still pretty pleased with how it came out. Also the last piece was hot gluing the ribbon onto the pauldron itself using some simple pink ribbon.
Next up, the boots and other accessories!
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