seer hood tutorial (also modifiable for other god tier hoods)
hi-res here. this file is huge.
continuing on from the seer robe guide i posted a couple of days ago, here is a hood tutorial for the many of you that asked! this is written as though you are making a hood for the seer class, but it is easily modifiable for other classes like maid, thief, and heir with a few changes to the shape of the hood.
please be aware that this tutorial assumes that you already know the basics of sewing and have some experience with it, along with the ability to understand basic patterns and sewing terms. this is not a tutorial designed with beginners in mind; if you are new to sewing and you want to make a god tier hood, i don’t recommend my tutorial. it will probably just confuse you! ε-(´・｀) ﾌ
but if you do know your way around a sewing machine and you want a clean, professional-looking hood with no visible topstitching or hemming on the outside and a tail that stands up on its own, then this tutorial is for you, and i hope you find it to your liking.
if i’m asked to, i may eventually make an addition to this tutorial detailing how to add buttoned flaps for troll horns or jade’s dog ears, but it probably won’t happen for a little while, as i’m going to be pretty busy for a bit.
i hope this helps! as always, my ask box is open to any questions you may have. good luck on your cosplays!
THE ORIGINAL BEN NYE HOMESTUCK TROLL MAKEUP TUTORIAL
It’s the same tutorial you’ve seen in my Youtube video description and on the MSPA forums, but somehow I never got around to putting it on Tumblr!
Let’s fix that, shall we? Yay for recycled content! And I even went and updated the text a little bit to make more sense now. This was written about a year ago, after all, and Hamsteak cosplay has EXPLODED since then.
Click “Read More” for the full tutorial.
Vriska Arm Tutorial
So I’ve been getting a few asks on how I made my Vriska arm, seen here:
And so I decided to slap this post together until I can actually make a video or one jpeg. So here we go!
Materials:
So I basically used this tutorial’s technique http://entropyhouse.com/penwiper/costumes/helmsdeep.html
But I only used:
- Sheets of craft foam
- Cheese cloth
- Water
- Paper Towels
- Grey Spray Paint
- Mod Podge
- Metal brads
- Elastic
- Velcro
- Elmer’s Glue
- Acrylic paint, specifically metallic silver and black
- Black elbow length opera glove for underneath
Tools
- Heat Gun, or a hair dryer
- Glue gun
- Scissors
Procedure
Okay, so first step is getting the basic shape of the forearm and upper arm pieces. There’s no specific way I did it, but using newspaper to trace out your pattern saves you from wasting craft foam. Both sections are in two pieces, secured with velcro.
Once you have the basic shapes down, use your heat source to heat up the foam. This allows you to mold it to your arm. But don’t get it too hot or it’ll bubble or melt!
After this, you can start putting the details on. I used brads for the nail/screw heads, but I hear painted googly eyes also work! And hot glued strips on for the dimension/striations You can get creative with the details since there’s no specific way Vriska’s arm looks, other than striated.
Then comes the cheesecloth and glue! Paint a layer of glue onto the underside of the foam, and press the cheesecloth on top. After that’s dry, paint another layer of glue on top. This makes the foam rigid and not…foam-y.
ALSO To prime the foam before painting it, so instead of absorbing it it actually holds the colour, you’re going to want to “paint” on a water/glue mixture. Two parts water, one part glue. Brush a couple coats on, letting it dry in between.(no picture)
Then comes my favourite part, the painting! I used a grey spray paint as a base coat on the outside, and black on the inside to mask the cheesecloth.
Then for the weathering, I used black acrylic paint. I painted it in the crevices and wiped it away with a wet paper towel before it dried. This part takes a little bit of experimentation, so don’t get frustrated!
I don’t have a picture of this, but I cannot stress the importance of the METALLIC SILVER ACRYLIC PAINT when painting. It really gives it the metallic shine that makes the “metal” come to life. Especially on the brads.When using it though, do the same method with the wet paper towel and wipe it off, cause there is a thing as TOO much shine.
After you finish painting everything, DON’T FORGET TO SEAL IT WITH MOD PODGE OR YOU WILL BE SAD. VERY VERY SAD.
Also, your hands will get really messy~
OH I ALMOST FORGOT. For the hand, there was a pattern I did follow actually. It was for a Edward Elric arm, but I unfortunately don’t know where that link is. ; n ;
But here are close up pictures. The fingers are connected with tiny 1/4” black elastic~
And that’s about it! This was my first prop making adventure, so it was highly experimental, so like I said before, don’t get discouraged!
I’m also in the process of adding wires to make it look cooler, so you can do that too!
But yup, that’s it. Thanks for reading! You guys are fabulous. c:
If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an ask or leave a comment!
Simple Model Magic Homestuck troll horns tutorial
I’ve gotten a lot of people telling me that they like my horns, so apparently I’m not a total failure to the fandom after all. So since someone wanted to know, I figured I would share just how simple horns are to make. I’m making a pair of Vriska horns, since that’s what was asked for.
First the materials
Pretty simple, right? All you need is Model magic, and paint. The cut off part of the box of snacks is just a stiff mobile thing to use so the model magic doesn’t get dirty.
I turned it over for contrast, since white on white isn’t the best. You start by taking a blob of model magic, simple.
Slipt it up into two roughly even balls, one a little smaller than the other, then use a bit more to roll against the board, making the tips gradually thinner until they end as points. With that, just bend it unto a u shape like the top of Vriska’s horn.
Roll the two balls in such a way that they end up, the larger ball ends in a point, and the smaller one does not, and make sure you keep the lengths of both not the same, the smaller one should be shorter by about three inches maybe?
Take the longer one, and bend it about how I did there.
The next picture for currupted or something, I’m not even sure, but it’s pretty simple. Take the bent horn, and roll the new tip so it comes to a new point, but be careful not to let the bent over part touch the base of the horn, it could stick, and while some people may be fine with that, I’m more picky about that.
Then attach the u shape to the blunt tipped horn, if the model magic is sticky enough, it should stay with no help, but if it falls off, a little glue will work.
Next thing to do is wait and paint. Waiting is important, and I didn’t do that for these horns since I wanted to get this tutorial done as soon as I could. For the first few hours of waiting for them to dry, you want to flip them over regularly, or else the bottom side will flatten, or worse, crack. I actually don’t have many problems with my horns cracking any more, if you wait a tiny bit before you make the horns for the model magic to dry out a tiny bit, then cracking is less likely. Of course by doing this, you’re making ti a bit harder to work with, so try to find a good balance of the two. Once your horns are dry enough to not deform (or if you’re lazy, as soon as you want, although, for these, since i didn’t want to wait for them to dry, I took them outside and sprayed them with some clear fast drying spray can lacquer. I’m not sure if that helped, since I’ve never tried painting not dry horns except today, and they were sprayed, so if you can wait, I suggest you do, it’s easier.)
Now for painting, you can go about this a few ways, but what I’ve found to work best is painting each side, so the bottom is always dry. Also, just like me, your first instinct might be to paint only the part visibly lightest the lightest color, and that could work depending on the paint. I personally use paint probably intended for walls, but I got it mixed custom for the colors of troll horns, which is something you don’t have to do, you can probably eyeball it pretty well, plus, this paint streaks if you’re not careful. Anyway, paint the whole horn, that way there’s no place that is clearly overlapping, it makes it looks weird.
Then last you paint the other layers as shown.
I don’t have pictures for this last part since there are so many different ways, but to attach them to your head, you have options.
With smaller horns, some people like to use clips attached to the horns, I’ve seen this done for Karkat horns a lot, as well as sometimes Terezi or Nepeta.
I’ve also seen some people using a spiral cone of stiff wire that they screw into their wig, I’ve never tried it though.
I’ve seen magnets used, with one of the strong magnets attached to the inside of the wig, and the other the bottom of the horn, but make sure the magnets are strong enough, and also don’t make the mistake of trying to have the magnets work when they’re both north or south, make sure you’re sure they are in right. I would not recommend this method for large horns like Tavros or Gamzee.
You could go the way a lot of people do, and use headbands. I use headbands sometimes, but I don’t like how they look, so I try to avoid them, but they do work well for most horns.
Once again for smaller horns, you can attach them to a string or something, preferably the color of your hair or the wig, whichever the horns are on. I also tired the string to an elasticy string so they stay on my head. I didn’t bother making the string black or brown because I was lazy, although even with a white string, it doesn’t show all that much.
And last, the method I used for a while was one I thought of on my own. I took a headband that was about an inch thick, and drilled some holes into it at points where I would want horns on my head, then I screwed some screws into the holes so they come out the top. I then would put that in the wig to the screws poke through the wig, then I would screw the horns into that, since I had pre-screwed the horns when they were relatively soft so that they would be able to be put on, and I could expect them to stay on. This worked nicely for stability, although I wouldn’t suggest it for Tavros horns, and I don’t think I have any idea if Aradia horns can be screwed on for this, because of their shape.
I only added this part about how to attach your horns to your head because it was the only problem I had when I wanted to first make my horns, so I figured other people would be similar in that. Anyway, I hope this helped, and thanks to this, I now have my fourth set of Scorpio horns! (I actually had a fifth pair a while back, but I threw them out, so this is my fifth pair, wow, obsession maybe?)
Custom Cosplay Book / Paint and Stencil Tutorial! Making dumb things look cool.
So, weeks after anyone could possibly give a shit, I’m here with my painting tutorial. This is the methodology I used for my Signless Gospels, as well as this sweet new Mindfang Journal in the cover picture. This is REALLY LONG and I took a metric butt ton of pictures so it’s all under the cut:
God Tier Bloomer Tutorial!
Or really, any basic bloomers with smooth cuffs!
I got a few asks wondering about my GT Dirk bloomers so here’s a basic tutorial. Bloomers are fun and super simple if you just pay attention to measurements! If you aren’t certain about the fit you should leave extra seam allowance you can always take the pants in while fitting!
First thing to note is I made my bloomers out of Cotton Sateen. It has a slight stretch but is still a woven. Mine has a nice finish to the face of the fabric but is not “shiny” like an actual satin. It is just a nice, medium weight, cotton…Just to be clear.
Second thing is, I wanted the cuffs on these bloomers to not be gathered with the pant itself. Dirk’s seemed like a nicely pressed cuff/hem rather than an elastic band in the cuff. But that’s just my perspective. If you don’t get what I mean exactly look at the pictures included of my cuffs and how they don’t wrinkle up even though the hem is gathered.
((As a side note I redid my cuffs since my first photoshoot because I swapped the color choice but it is sewn exactly the same so ignore the color changes between pictures!))
Here is the basic patterns/ measurements:
Sewing:
It is hard to explain sewing instructions if you don’t understand the basic principals but I will try my best!
Sew the pant like normal. Back side seams to front side seams, back inseams to front inseams, sew crotch. If you have not sewn pants before: (from noodle-head.com off of google)
Hem waist folding over fabric 1 1/2”*, leave opening to slip in elastic, hand sew shut when elastic connected.
For hem, this method gathers the fabric using elastic sewn directly ONTO the pant. On the wrong side of the hem sew 1/4” elastic on to fabric, you will have to stretch the elastic while sewing to fit, thus, creating gathers. Try to pull evenly throughout sewing to create equal gathers throughout!
Sew cuff ends together(see orange notches) creating a circle of fabric. Fold fabric in half on fold line so seam is hidden inside folded fabric. Sew cuff raw edges to elastic hem, right side to right side, try to sew directly on top of previous stitch line so that no thread shows on the right side of pant. Do NOT stretch elastic hem like you did before while sewing, you need to fit it into the already finished cuff.
^^ See how you don’t see the thread from gathering the elastic. You want to try and get the gathers to just poke out of the clean cuff.
Close up of finished gathered hem worn. My cuff is EXACTLY the size of my mid thigh but since it has a slight stretch from cotton sateen it is able to pull over my mid thigh and hug it tightly while not hurting.
TADA! Bloomers done! My seams were finished with a serger to prevent fraying but you could either leave them, since it is clean finsihed on the outside hems, or use a variety of other methods such as zip zag stitch, pinking shears, ect.
Worn:
Hope this helps! Feel free to contact me if you have a specific question or you feel I left out something! =) And sorry for the lengthiness…
"Please God, not another troll horn tutorial!" you beg. Your cries fall on deaf ears. It is another troll horn tutorial.
Okay so I have like ONE THING I do differently than everyone else (that I’ve seen) and after that it’s pretty much the same as everyone else. If you want to go to some other tutorial after that, go ahead. This is probably going to be pretty wordy so I wouldn’t blame you. Seriously it’s like one of Hussie’s recaps.
STEP 1: This is it. This is the thing I do differently from everyone else. DOWELS. I got a .75” diameter dowel (It was like 2 feet long, I cut these) from Home Depot for like $0.70 and cut them like this. I figured this would make it a lot easier to screw the horns onto a headband and have the clay not crack or anything. That’s the only reason, really. Since the horns are all different shapes, and dowels don’t come in those shapes, you wouldn’t try to make the dowel be the center for the whole horn. These are for Ampora horns and I only made them like 1.5” long. For small horns like Karkat’s, you might get a .5” diameter dowel, or sand the edges to make them more cone-like, or just make them really short (but if you do that you might as well just not use dowels, I think). Use your best judgment.
[If you don’t want to read the rest of my wordy (but chock-full of advice!) tutorial then this is my only big trick. Otherwise, the rest is under the cut.]
Dirk's God Tier Hood/Cape Tutorial
I just got an ask about my Dirk God Tier hood pattern so did a small write up explaining it and then I replied private by accident haha whoops ;;;;
So in case anyone else is curious at all here is some help!
Here is the basic pattern I drafted. The pattern lines are in black, measurement lines in orange, and notches color coordinated.
There are 3 different pieces: Hood, front capelet, back capelet. To clean finish it you need to double all pieces.
This is a basic outline so I didn’t go into too much depth about the actual sewing process.
My hood laying flat:
Worn:
As a finishing touch, depending on the fabric you choose and how it fits you, you could add stuffing into the tail of the hood to make it more “bouncy and magical”. You can also add a horsehair hem to the hood opening to make it lay more open and round. For my Dirk hood I didn’t add these, because of how it looked on me, but I’ve added both to other God Tier hoods and it looked great. For reference my fabric is a Cotton sateen, which I choose because it was the same as my pants and I wanted some body/stiffness for my hoods shape.
This is a basic outline, if you have any specific questions about the construction feel free to message me!
Hope this makes sense and can possibly be useful!
Painting HS shirts, the tutorial as requested.
Okay, so like I bet there are easier ways than how I paint my shirts, but it was requested by what-zahhak-is-going-on so I’m gonna show you how I do it.
Dave's Timetables tutorial
OKAY I had a bit of trouble trying to make mine since I didn’t have any sources that would be able to help so I’d like to make one myself? I don’t have many pictures but shh that’s okay
I made this a while back and let me tell you all now that insulation foam is much better to work with and much cheaper than styrofoam. So if you’d rather work with that, please do
What you will need:
- Two styrofoam circles with diameters of 12 inches
- One piece of styrofoam about one inch thick for the teeth
- Bright red and white paint
- Black paint (Optional if you can’t or don’t want to find a couple of records)
- Two records (Optional if you don’t want to you can always paint it on but it’s cool to have records)
- Hot glue gun
- Stuff to paper mache (Newspapers, glue, ecttt)
- Fishing wire
- Clay (Optional for rings to keep from hurting your fingers and makes it easier to carry)
First of all! What you want to do is cut the rectangular piece of styrofoam like this:
Shh this is the best I can do since I didn’t take a picture when doing this part. But What you want to do is cut out 18 2x1x.5 rectangles (feel free to cut out more!) and once you’ve done that, cut the round part into it and make sure it’ll line up with the circle pieces or you might have trouble later.
You can set that aside for a while unless you don’t feel like it. The next thing you do is paper mache the stuff. It’s not exactly the funnest thing to do but hey! It’s cheap. You just take glue mix it with water and dip newspaper or whatever you’re using and place it on the styrofoam. It may be helpful to paint one layer of gesso on it if you’d like to make paper mache-ing it easier. For the circles, you do not need to paper mache both sides unless you’re planning on painting the record on top
Easy peasy! I don’t have a picture of the circles after doing that but you get the idea.
Next is painting which is super duper easy. I suggest taping part of it when painting the white and then the red, vice versa same for the black of the records.
Bootiful
When you’re done painting the circles and teeth if you want to, place the record on top, lined up with the circle and poke a hole where the hole is on the record. This is for the fishing wire. Cut it to however long you want it to be from yourself and a a few centimeters or so longer so you can glue it/duct tape it and tie it to the rings you might make later on or later if you’d like. I didn’t do this and had a bunch of trouble and had to pull the record off. Life is hard. BUT once you do that, hot glue the records onto the circles
You may have a few teeny mess ups but you can fix those later.
The next part? Just glue the teeth onto the circles very evenly or it might not look to well. What I did was glue them about two inches apart
Mhmm
The only thing you have to do left is make the rings out of clay and make sure it’s stable so it doesn’t break and tie them to the fishing wire!
Beautiful
Feferi Trident Tutorial!!! :] :] :]
Hai! So uhh I’m just gonna jump right into it then A trident tutorial!!! for Feferi Peixes
Preview of your goal:
I’ve been thinking of posting this for a while now I hope you find it helpful at least a little! Sorry it’s a little patchy I wasn’t to aware that I would make a tutorial when I made the trident so I just added in a lot of new photos and gifs XD
Now click the link and go farther into the world of Trident making!
Dirk Strider; Glasses Mach Two
The first pair of glasses I made for my Dirk Strider cosplay looked fantastic. Unfortunately, they only survived about four days before snapping perfectly in half.
I know I’m not any kind of expert on making cosplay props or anything, but I figured I’d put this out there, as an option for other people.
Semi Tutorial -- Meenah Wig
I’ve gotten a few questions about how I curled Meenah’s wig.
This is the wig I started with:
^stock photo from Sepia’s website. This is NOT the color of the wig I ordered, the one I ordered was black.
It’s the Jinx by Sepia in 001. I often go through the supplier Amphigory. They have some other wigs that might work too that are precurled but I prefer to do things myself whenever I can to get it perfect. Any choppy layered wig would work great for this style including cosplay.com’s Scruffy though really the Jinx is much softer and easier to style (I’ve bought both). If you want any advice about if another wig might work just ask me, I’d be happy to lend a helping hand.
Keep in mind this is NOT the method to curl most wigs. Usually a hair roller like this:
Is your best friend for hot air techniques (easy flow of the air, no bristles) but there’s really a lot of ways to create a curl in wig but the above is most standard and was the first method I tried. Sadly, even though my rollers are super small, the wig is also really short so instead of curling the fiber it more just bubbled it and didn’t create the texture I wanted. So instead I used a pin curl. This type of curl creates a tight and kinky curl and on a longer wig you’ll twist the fiber and wrap it around a skewer or a dowel and use hot water to curl it but again, this wig is really short. So I took small sections of fiber, twisted them gently (too tightly or too big of sections and the heat can’t penetrate the fiber), wraped them around a finger, and then pinned the circle to the wig in a spiral with 2 bobby pins per curl making sure the end was not sticking out at an odd direction and was part of the curl (if you google ‘how to pin curl’ you’ll see what I mean). When using a curl this tight the hot water method is usually a good idea because it can penetrate more deeply than hot air with minimal heat damage but I was afraid it would leave pin marks in the curl like it does in my hair so I just used hot air.
Note: When putting the pin curls in, do NOT put them all in the same direction. You want a really random messy texture so make sure to vary it up! Also, don’t overlap your curls or the fiber won’t heat evenly.
Here’s what half the head looks like in pins:
I used a hair dryer on medium heat at low speed about 5 inches away from the wig and steadily moved the hair dryer around to heat the curl. Test the fiber often to make sure it’s warm but not hot/melting. I did this process about three times before I finally let it cool completely before taking out the pins. To make sure it was ready I took out one of the larger curls first. If it unwound or sprung away from the head, none of the curls were ready, if it stayed flat and tight against the scalp even without pins then they were ready to go.
It’ll look like this without the pins at first:
Then go back and separate each individual curl with your fingers or the long end of a rat rail comb. Do not brush the curls and do not use a fine toothed comb on the curls. Instead, separate each individual curl on its own and THEN muss around with it to give it more randomness and cover any mesh that shows.. It’ll look wonky at first and the mesh will show a lot so you have to be careful and move curls around as you separate them so it’s got a more even texture. Then I use light coats of AquaNet hairspray (but any cheap hairspray will work, Rave and White Rain are good ones in the cans), let it dry, do another coat, let dry, do another coat. Make sure your coats are light and even. if you notice the hairspray is white and bubbley on the fiber that is not going to dry clear and often means you’re spraying too close or too thickly. It’s very important to let each layer completely dry before spraying another layer. You can hairsrpay it as much or as little as you like, if you heated it well the curls will take a long time to succumb to gravity but hairspray really helps the wig be able to take more damage.
Here’s half the wig curled:
And here’s the final curl:
On the wig head it looks big but the wig head is MUCH smaller than a human head. On your own head it will look much closer to the scalp and shorter. But if worried, just trim the curls more.
Hope that helps! After that you can just sew the braids inot the back and style the bangs however you want (you can pin them back which is more accurate but I’m self conscious about my forehead so I’m leaving the bangs in.
There are a lot of good resources out there for making the braids especially on homestuckcosplayhelp.tumblr.com if you check the Meenah tag. For attaching the braids to the wig I recommend wrapping fabric around the top of the braid and sewing of caulking the braid into the fabric tube and sewing the tube inside of the wig along an elastic band or two running parallel to evenly distribute the weight. Depending on how thick your braids are you won’t want the braid to be inside the wig as it’ll push it off your head, so instead just line the fabric edges up right so the braid bulk starts immediately where the fabric just starts to come out from under the wig. I used pink vinyl for my fabric since I also used pink accent pieces on the braids:
but if you want a more inconspicuous look just use a black fabric that won’t snag the hair. If using a longer braid like mine (these are 5’8” each) you REALLY want them secure in the wig so be sure to use a longer connector strip. I plan to go back and add on to my connector strip to distribute the weight more.
When pinning this to your head/wig cap be sure to use hair pins and not bobby pins because bobby pins can and will distort the style and ruin the curls.
Good luck! If you have any questions just leave them in my ask box. Reblogging this with a question won’t allow me to answer the question. If I think it’s a question worth answering publicly I will so check the blog or the tag of your name for answers if you don’t hear from me in 48 hours.
Entirely too much information about PAX for Homestuck cosplayers (Or I guess Adventure Time or anything else requiring copious amount of gray body paint) (Or any other color)
I wrote this like a million years ago for someone and I keep having to copy pasta it to people who ask so I’m just gonna publish it so I can just pass out the link from now on. Sorry for the length and sort of confuseyness of it.
Real quick breakdown on PAX!
- It is a mix of Pros-Aide skin adhesive and acrylic paint
- It is the movie industry standard for long wearing bodypaint
- does not rub off like AT ALL EVER
- Totally water-proof. You can swim in this stuff for realz
- PAX is not very recommendable for your face, mostly because it just looks bad and makes you look bad (highlights wrinkles like a mother******)
Here is a really good review of PAX paint for cosplay:
http://ffcosplay.livejournal.com/232131.html
And here are my personal notes about working with PAX for troll cosplay and for being a lazy cheapskate:
Antonymmouse's Homestuck Shirt Tutorial Part 1
Hello everyone. I recently cosplayed for the first time and I had little resources available so I had to be creative. I’ve seen some vague shirt tutorials and this is a great alternative to freezer paper, which can be more of a pain than anything, and not very good for complex designs like Dave’s.This tutorial can be used for any kid, troll, or god tier shirt, gamzee’s pants, dreamer pajamas or ancestor designs. It’s more difficult than transfer paper, sure, but you have all the control here: colors, brightness, size. You’re not limited! This tutorial uses transfer paper for stenciling and hand painting. But don’t be scared, it’s fun and easy!
