macaroniandshibe-blog

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Steampunk Navi Update!

The general shape of the skirt I really liked the lace over the shimmery blue.

Dusting off the sewing machine

Aww yeah close up action shot.

Testing the length and such

Sewing on some bits and such. The idea that I’m running with that Navi is a bit of a collector/klepto and takes random scraps of cloth and things she finds and incorporates them into her clothes. 

The front of the finished skirt! Here you can better see the collect random things.

The ragged edges because she does help an adventurer after all ;)

I’m totally putting glitter in the bottle! Thus the skirt is finished! I have a swishy shirt and gorgeous corset I’ll wear with this. I just have to put patches on it and feathers and such. I’ll update for that soon. 

I really really like the frame work on this artwork by MechanicalHyena over at deviant art. Just imagine dragonfly wings instead of feathers.

So onward to the wings. I’m using a covered wire for the wing’s framework. If someone bumps into me which is inevitable at a con I can just bend them back. Fingers crossed it turns out that easy!

I found this really beautiful iridescent fabric for the wings and I’m so excited about it. 

The gears! They are a little rough now but give it a chance.

After some dremeling, sandpapering, and plastidipping, those rough edges smoothed out rather well. 

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Steampunk Link - Bracer, Hat and Shoulder Guard Update

Making of the bracer! I realized halfway through making this one that I have a leather arm piece with a fancy steampunk thingamagig. So I only ended making the one. I still have more pleather and foam cut out if I change my mind.

I wrapped up the layers of foam in the leather and glued along the edges.

After some straps and painted googly eyes for rivets - Viola! One bracer. I’m going to get some fabric paint and put some shadows in the creases for added depth. 

I found a pattern for the shoulder guard online and I really didn’t want to cut out each individual squares so I augmented the pattern to make it a little easier for me.

After a base silver paint job. Note more googly eye rivets on the corners.

Some darker metallic paint in the creases and around the rivets make them pop. I was actually pleased about how this turned out. The shadowing made it look more real to me. Yay!

The back of the hat - unfortunately I completely forgot to take in progress pictures. 

Front - You can really see my terribly seams but it looks pretty decent unless you are on top of it. 

Might as well show the sword and shield I painted last year. There’s still a lot of work to do but I’m happy how its coming together so far! Cheers! - Macaroni

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Steampunk Link Update!

Okay so the foam cut outs for steampunk Link! I’ve got the shoulder guard on the left and the bracers on the right. For the bracers I’m working with the 1/4 inch foam and the 1/2 inch for the shoulder guard. 

Here’s the overlay for the the edge.

and the gluing 

after shaping and dremeling

And boom. Plastidipped and drying.

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Alphonse Update!

An afternoon’s worth of foam cutting and everything is cut out now! AAAAWWW YIIISSSSSSS! The only exception are the spikes for the shoulders and the helmet. I haven’t quite decided how I want to do those yet so I’m holding off on that.

Calves, shoulder cap, top arm bits. 

Lower arms, shoulder caps and elbow pieces.

THE HELMET!! Putting this together will be the largest struggle I feel. Some of the other pieces you can take artistic freedom with but this iconic helmet has to be perfect. I’m going for the 1/2 foam for the back of the helmet and the 1/4 for the front. Fingers crossed!

                                                              - Macaroni 

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Steampunk Link!

So far we have focused on our steampunk Ed and Al cosplays and its about time we paid attention to some of our other projects! So here is the run down on the beginnings of Macaroni’s steampunk Link

This wonderful concept art by Girl--Gaara at deviant art inspired me to rework my steampunk Link cosplay from last year!

I’m also going to be adding elements of the most recent incarnation of Link from Hyrule warriors - namely the blue scarf and gloves and the shoulder armor 

I do not have any strong ability in sewing but hopefully this will be one of the projects that changes that. I really love the jacket from the concept art and I plan on taking this jacket and morphing the two. 

This is the the back panel after I lengthened the proportions

And the front panel! I’m really pumped to see how this will come together. The fabric is on its way so fingers crossed!

I’m using file folders to sketch out the sections for Link’s bracers and. . . .

Tada! At the moment I’m thinking about cutting this out in 1/4 thick foam and covering it with faux leather but I may change my mind. Ta ta for now!

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Steampunk Alphonse Elric Update

When we last updated we had a good bit of Alphone’s armor cut out in the 1/2 inch eva foam. From here I beveled the edges and started plastidipping finished pieces 

Here are the thigh, chest and back pieces plastidipped and ready for painting! As well as the forearm piece. We put in a huge order of stuff - googly eyes for rivets, the morph suit I’ll wear underneath and more foam for the the other arm, bottom legs pieces, shoulder bits and the helmet. Things are starting to become more tangible and we are super excited!!

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Macaroni and Shibe Broadcast - Videos that have helped us

We just wanted to share all these awesome videos that have helped us greatly in our Ed and Al Elric project so far. Thanks!

MangoSirene has an amazing channel that she updates often with some really diverse and crazy cool cosplay projects. SO GO CHECK IT OUT!

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Edward and Alphonse Update from All Nighter

While I cut out the thick EVA foam, Shibe found some patterns for Ed’s arm online.

Cutting out said patterns

More cutting

and look more cutting

Shibe had to re-scale a few of the pieces

Forgive our late night/early morning shenanigans 

All the bits for Ed’s Arm

A piece of Al’s chest cut out and beveled on the edges with the dremel. 

Inside of the chest piece glued

Waiting to be beveled

Thighs and part of the arm glued together and drying. 

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Video clips from our first all night cosplay session! It was very productive and great getting so much done. More to come soon!

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Phase Three - Full Fitting of Alphonse's Armor

I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER! 

Keep in mind viewers these are just thin foam templates and this is a work in progress. That being said the proportions are looking great and the shapes are good. Next step is to finish the helmet and the shoulders and order the EVA foam! 

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Phase Three of Alphonse's Armor - Fitting

After getting everything cut out in poster foam we could see how things were supposed to fit together and we also realized how large the limbs are. So in this section we scaled everything down to make it more manageable.

I ended up taking a couple inches off the bottom of the thigh. 

Labeling - you can never label too much

I had to take a lot of the arms

So going back to the chest piece which had been taped earlier in the week. This is what happened when we tried to take the duct tape off to re-position the bottom part. Here is our word of warning: duct tape is fine for a few hours on the poster foam but anything longer than that is not advisable. (another reason to keep your paper templates safe) 

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Phase two of Alphonse’s Armor – Poster Foam Templates

Now that most of the paper templates are cut out (except for the helmet) we decided to transfer the paper template to poster foam. Just cause I am such a visual person – the idea is that we can fold the pieces and tape them together to see how they fit and to get an idea of what we need out of the frame and so on. We used rolls of thin, super flexible foam from Michael’s.  About 7 bucks a pop.

The first piece I cut out – so it’s pretty rough. I’m leveling up as we go. We are keeping the paper templates in case something goes wrong. Fingers crossed that it doesn’t but you know how it goes.

We've got all the other pieces cut out but we did not document them. 

Cutting out the front of the helmet

Taped and ready for foam cut outs

The work space thus far

"Shibe look productive, but natural"

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Here is the first sketch attempt at Edward Elric's steampunk automail- just a rough idea of what the final product will look like.

 -shibe

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Phase One of Alphonse's Armor- Paper Templates

  Huge thank you to TheFullMetalAlchemist at instructables. He took the time to make these wonderful to scale templates that we will be using. Sauce-> http://www.instructables.com/id/Alphonse-Elric-Armour-in-Aluminium/

Two options, print the pdf file as a ‘poster’ in adobe or take the file to a printing shop. To save on money I opted for printing at home the drawback to that is...

  This – you have to cut out the template in sections and line them up. Inevitably this is going to mess up your measurements. We are banking on that they won’t be so dramatically off to upset the seams of the armor

LABEL EVERYTHING

Leave edges on some of your pieces to tape them together 

 I found it easier to do tape the pieces together in a systematic clockwise kinda way

TAPED! For all pieces this took me about 12 hours total – and at this point I still haven’t done the helmet – I’m leaving that for last methinks. After all the hours and many hand cramps if you have the money to spend to print the files off at a professional place it might be something looking in to is all I’m saying.  

All the leg templates – I’m not sure how they fit together for sure at this point. The instructable only covered the template and not the puzzling together part.