#The right image was actually a redraw of myself in cosplay

[jmeldog]

cat shitposting

[moonycosplays]

Voltron Cosplay: Sword and Shield [P1 - Base]

I decided to start off with the sword and shield together for a couple of reasons. 1. Because they’d be made of pretty similar materials and 2. Because out of all the other things I need to make, these seemed the least overwhelming.

PLEASE NOTE: As indicated in the title, this is just the first part of how I made the suckers. Not all the materials listed are used right away.

K, let’s do this.

Materials:

a pencil

a marker

rulers (1 ft and 1m)

brown drafting paper

sewing pins

grid paper (5mm)

xacto knife

cutting board (not pictured)

stiff insulation foam (not pictured)

 Issue #1: Scale

One of the very first decisions that I made was that – for the sake of my mobility and sanity – I’d be making the cosplay to fit a 5”3 person. This becomes a bit more significant when considering the armor pieces, but in terms of the shield and sword that meant that I’d have to scale them to be appropriate to my height.

For the Shield:

For the most part, my references of Voltron’s shield never really gave me the greatest idea about its size. Since the main part of Voltron’s shield is made up of the Black Lion’s wings, what I did was compare the size of the wings to Voltron’s height. (For this part I used this promotional image that compares Voltron’s height to other landmarks since it was one of the only images I could find that showed Voltron perfectly from the front).

Please excuse the messy writing and other annotations As you can see in the above image, the wing (equivalent to the green blob) basically ends up being the length of my arm. Taking that into account meant (for me) that the inner section of the shield would be 33 inches/ 84ish cm in length.

For the Sword:

I was kinda…significantly less ‘professional’ about it? You know how Voltron does the thing when it summons the sword? The ‘bring my hands together, pull them apart and then suddenly I’m holding a sword???’

Yeah, I basically did that with a meter stick.

 And it actually worked surprisingly well? The visible section of the blade ended up being 30in/76cm long. Adding that to the length of the hilt, the blade in total was 43in/109 cm.With regards to the hilt, the thing that was most concerning to me was how much room I would need to grip it. The main point is to ensure that there is enough space for your gloved hand   to grip the hilt without the bottom section accidentally hitting your hand. For me that meant a 4in/10cm gap though I have a sneaking suspicion I might have overestimated how much space I’d need, we’ll find out if that’s the case later whelp

Issue to Tackle #2: Drawing it Out [Grid Paper]

Armed with those numbers and my grid paper, I then drew out the shield and sword. The reason why I decided/was able to do it on the grid paper is because of how geometric the props are, and because life would be (relatively) less painful in the long run since you can consider it as 1 grid square = 1 inch, meaning you can draw a grid onto the draft paper for quick and easy straight lines that are to scale 

When drawing on the grid, I made sure to include all the relevant lines. For me, I’m not planning to either one of the pieces in a lot of layers, instead, I’m going to use a dremel to include details.  This means that I’ll have to add the details now so that I can transfer them onto the brown draft paper.

Shield Specifics:One thing you do have to make sure you consider is layers of the shield. You can kinda see it in my reference photos that there are areas of the shield that are raised (most notably the top 1/4th of the shield). What that meant for me is that in addition to creating a stencil for the body of the shield, I’d have to create a second one specifically for that section.

Sword Specifics: As with the shield, there are going to be 2 sections that need to be stenciled out: the hilt and the blade. When creating the stencil for the blade, you must draw it so that it encompasses the inner section of the hilt.  You don’t have to draw it separately onto the grid paper, but it will be important to remember for later. In addition to that, keep in mind that you don’t have to draw it all in one image. Sometimes it’s easier to break the drawing apart so that you can actually figure out where all the details fall.

Issue to Tackle #3: Drawing it out [Draft Paper]

For this step, you ideally have your draft paper rolled out completely. For me, this meant using my bedroom floor.

If you feel confident in your straight line drawing skills, you can definitely just transfer your drafted images onto the brown paper. However, because I personally have 0 confidence in myself to do that without assistance, I decided to draw a grid onto the draft paper, then redraw the sword and shield to scale.

When drawing the grid onto the paper, it’s important to make a couple sets of marks to indicate where to draw the lines. This way, even if you make a couple errors in the way you mark where the lines should be, you don’t have to worry about the lines being wonky.

Please note: Because the shield is symmetrical, you only have to draw 1 set of pieces for it! This is a good way to save your paper ^ ^)b

Once your grid is done, you have the simple and easy job of transferring what you drew on the graph paper onto the draft paper, easy peasy! Try your best to keep everything as close together as possible so that you don’t waste as much paper. (see below)

Tadaa! And now you have your stencils drawn out! One last thing to keep in mind when doing this is that you should label your stencils appropriately. For instance, with regards to the shield, I made sure to label them based on what side they were for (left or right) so that when I use them, I’ll be able to make sure I don’t accidentally make 2 of one side.