The name of the game this weekend was small detail that I know is there but is likely that nobody else will notice. Yay cosplay! For now though I'll just be posting Snowquill Headdress details since some of the stuff worked on falls under that redacted section of the build outline. You get to see the secret stuff after I go on stage just like everyone else!
The Snowquill Headdress is probably one of the more simple looking helmet slot armour pieces in Breath of the Wild but there's nothing but small detail everywhere. Luckily I got to do modelling and printing for the majority of it and then got to learn a couple cool tricks from a good friend. Everything is broken down easily into sections for your reading pleasure, I'm trying to fiddle around with HTML markup so that I can section link but I haven't yet gotten that down on the forums so for now, bulleted list as a mini table of contents type deal.
- Wig
- Ear Cuff
- Earrings
- Sideburn Anchors
- Half-ponytail Circlet
Wig
The wig is an
Arda Inigo Classic in Ginger Blonde and is a fairly close match to Link's hairstyle already, it just needed a bit of styling and a slight trim in spots. That on it's own is a terrifying sentence to me. My experience with hair is "oh, the tops of my ears are hidden, time to go to the barber" and putting a straightening iron, blow dryer and various hair products in my hands basically turned my brain off and was a sure way to watch me flounder but
Julie Hoso is an awesome cosplayer local to me that has a massive well of maker knowledge and made it so that I went from the neglected wig in the bottom of the left thumbnail to the right image that I'm actually happy to show.
I didn't get many in progress photos because like I said, I was in over my head and my hands were coated in glue for the most part. The process to get it to where it is isn't too taxing but it's just methodical and pretty similar to heating and forming foam. Like floormats you prep the wig by removing texture but in this case it's brushing out and straightening the wig fibres. Then you divide up the sections that you need using clips and ties much like the patterning stage of an armour piece. On each individual spike you heat the fibres with a blow dryer and then press them into place as you would for heat forming a complex curve and then glue the tips to hold the shape of the spike. See! It's easy if you just think of it as fluffy armour!
Ear Cuff
Challenging modelling! Easy painting!
The measurements in scaling everything were based on the size of Link's head in comparison to mine overall, ear size was not a thing that I paid huge attention to because cartoony anime styling makes for non-human proportions. After a few hokey measurements with a combination of digital calipers and feeler gauges I managed to get a decent estimate for the ear cuff fit and then the feathers were just a piece of cake from there. A bit of printing, a bit of sanding and then several revisions on paint and here we are. Somehow it fit perfectly first time, yay measuring twice and cutting once!
The paints were some of the ol' reliables hanging around in the various paint bins around the house. The cuff and feathers were a Bright Aluminum (can't find a link, might be discontinued), the crescent pin is
Vallejo Model Colour 70.801 Brass highlighted with
P3 Solid Gold and the gems are
P3 Sanguine Base,
P3 Khador Red Base and
Vallejo Game Colour Transparent Red.
Earrings
I am very much not a Hylian and have decidedly round ears. Or so I've been told, I can't see them on the sides of my head. To fix that I ordered a pair of
Nomad Elf ears from Aradani Costumes to slip over the tips of my ears and glue down. It's as fun as it sounds.
As well as things getting glued to my ears, I get to have them pinched by some clip-on earrings since I wasn't feeling like getting both ears pierced for the sake of the costume. Maybe later, but I don't know, I'm a Zelda fan but I'd rather show my fanboy nature with tattoos instead of piercings. I mixed up a base tone for my airbrush using a 3:1 mix of
Vallejo Mecha Colour Metallic Green and
Vallejo Model Air Arctic Blue Metallic which I could get behind as a colour for my next car, it's damn nice. I sprayed past the edges with just the green to highlight and blend with a smooth transition. Since I'm super clumsy and will drop and dent these I used
Krylon ColorMaster Clear Gloss to seal everything and prevent any scratches showing through the original parent metal.
Sideburn Anchors
These things... I honestly don't understand them but they're cool. I went through like three revisions of paint schemes on these so they've been painted, sanded and painted several times because I just wasn't getting the right red or texture. This one is one of the random details that won't be seen past 5 feet but it's just a little something extra for people that know the game. The Snowquill outfit grants cold protection and the anchors and earcuff have rubies that emit a soft glow which I'm pretty sure are the source of heat. To give the stone texture that it's emanating some sort of energy I went back to my Warhammer painting days of energy weapons by doing a metallic base, adding cracks in a pseudo-random pattern in a thin line and a brighter non-metallic of the same shade in the thin line to add a bit of contrast. At arms length it you can see individual lines, at five feet everything blends together, or that could be my eyesight, I don't know. I like it overall, I may do a fine pass over everything with the metallic airbrush paint to blend everything together but then I might lose some detail, help me out 405th.
Half-ponytail Circlet
A quick donut model with a raised section,
Rustoleum Universal Hammered Antique Pewter for the base coat and then drybrushed with P3 Pig Iron and shaded with Citadel Color Black Ink.
All these parts plus a bit of hot glue (not on my ears) and it's another tick in the box. I need to do a quick heat on the sideburns to adjust how they lay but everything is awesome.