Pink Sister of Battle Seraphim Project

[voxbellin]

Around two weeks ago, when I found out that plastic sisters were really coming out, and when I saw the pictures of the new Seraphim, I finally got motivated to make my Sisters cosplay.

I'm Voxie, originally from the NYC and Boston area (I used to play some pink sisters with thigh high decaled fishnets at Pandemonium and the NYC Games Workshop store), but now in the St. Louis area. My husband has been kind enough to lend me his help making my backpack, while I've been working on the other pieces.

The inspiration for this outfit will be a combination of sisters pictures and the mini itself:





So first thing we did was pattern out the corset for the bodice, the shoulder pads and the neck piece. I used duct tape, Saran wrap, sharpie and poster paper to make out the original patterns as you can see below. I do have some experience sewing and making my own patterns from years making historically accurate gowns from either museum pieces, draping method, or 19th century patterns re-edited to fit my body. However, I am in no way professional and this will be my first attempt with foam.



After which, I fabricated the pieces with foam and Barge glue, as per the Evil Ted videos. If you are at all interested in learning foam fabrication, I cannot recommend his videos more.

As you can see, I used a LOT of EVA foam.



Here are the pattern pieces laid out:



The pattern pieces were made of poster paper, and labeled very carefully.



I then started glueing it with Barge contact cement.





The original iteration of my bodice was covered with worbla, as I find worbla has a great ability to smoothen out the edges. While I liked the Worbla for my shoulders (see below), and I liked the appearance of the corset, I found it was way too stiff when I wore it, and even breathing normally, I found the corset extremely uncomfortable. Furthermore, the small bit of flesh wiggling even for a trial run started bending and breaking my Worbla; I will be remaking the corset out of just foam.





More coming up on my next post including pictures of my Seraphim backpack!

[voxbellin]

Here's how we're making the backpack...

I initially started by making a 1:2 scale image of the backpack I wanted.



Again, the pattern was made out of poster paper first, taped together, and then labeled carefully.



This was eventually cut out of EVA foam and Barg'd together.



Deciding on the placement of these pipes was one of the hardest parts of this; my husband and I discussed endlessly how to best approximate the curvature of the pipes on the mini. You'll notice that different seraphim have VERY different pipes. Even on the same mini, the pipes on the left and right will vary to an unbelievable degree.

We did finally decide on a placement, and attached it to a foam topper made of aluminum wire, 1" foam, with a 1/2" foam curvature. (Almost everything else so far has been made of 3/8" foam).

The center of the backpack was Worbla'd and then decorated with a pretty Fleur de Lis!



Meanwhile, the pattern of the topper was made of poster paper and we tried it out on top.

This is me trying on the backpack for size.



Here it is with the toppers made of foam!



The spherical globes are not yet in, but one they're in, they'll be ready to really put together!

FOR THE EMPEROR!

Next time: Weapons, pins, decorations, and other 3D printed goodies.

[Lamia]

What a fantastic build so far, I loved reading this thread!

[vonjankmon]

Looking great!

[Tiberius]

Looks awesome so far, can't wait for more pictures!

[voxbellin]

Detail Work continues:

After sewing a lining for my worbla'd bodice, spending hours glueing it, I finally tried it on. I won't be sharing pictures; it was AWFUL! I guess it looked alright but every time time I took a breath, I could feel my chest pressing up against the worbla, and it had no give! That's the thing; I wear a ton of corsets for my historical costuming but the thing about metal, synthetic whalebone, and reeds, they all have give to it. This had none, and after five minutes of wear, I decided to remake it.



Here it is on the dummy. I used some cotton broadcloth to make the pattern for the skirt. It will eventually be made out of black wool and hot pink silk charameuse (or taffeta - still debating here. The only thing I'm sure of is that it'll be HOT pink.).

Anways, so that corset is in the garbage now (bye bye 6 hours of work!); and I'm redoing it. I'm making it out of 3/8" EVA foam again, with 1/2 for the breasts. The plan is to leave them as foam with no worbla on top.

You can see it here, foam with foam cording to add some detail.




I got sick of worbla-ing fleur de lises so I went ahead and 3D printed some fleur de lis. With a heat gun, I got it to bend a little, so I was able to shape it to the breasts.

You can see it here:



and here:



You'll notice the right breast (the one on the left), is quite light. It's because I ended up coating it with 4 coats of wood glue to take away the lines from the 3D printer. I am learning that wood glue dries very slowly! (Albeit, that may be the snow outside causing it to do so...)

You'll notice that I added the spikes! YES! SPIKES! I initially wanted to put six full rows of spiky-awesomeness, but after trying it on with two, I came to realization that adding spikes along the sides would mean that it would hurt to put my arms down. So alas, no spikes along all the sides.

Meanwhile, I'm working on my twin bolt pistols. My 3D printer is hard at work printing! I'm using a wonderful file I found on thingiverse. I sized it down to be more lady sized, so it fits comfortably into my tiny hands. (I use a Makergear M2 - called the workhorse tank of 3D printers. Hehe)



Meanwhile, here is a picture of my neckpiece, post detail work and a few coats of plastidip. I'm using my respirator while I plastidip since that stuff smells SOOO toxic!



I think it's a little plain right now; I'm hoping that once the respirator pieces are added, it'll look less plain but I may end up decorating it more later. We'll see when we get there. XD

Meanwhile, also printer is hard at work printing my center piece.



As you can see - as much as I've finished, I have a LONG way to go!



- Voxie

[voxbellin]

Oof! It's crazy how much you can get done in two days.

Anyways, at this rate, I hope to have this all done by Adepticon 2017!

Corset:

I finally finished adding all the details, so I went and plastidip'd the whole thing. Took a whole can to get 3 coats but I LOVE how it looks and feels now! It's amazing how much better things look without registration marks, and without all my lines and doodles on it.



I added leather to the back to allow myself to lace it up. I tried it out and did a trial wear; it's actually very comfortable! So now that I know it's wearable, I went ahead and started painting it. I'm using Testor's gold enamel as well as OPI nail polish for the pink. No one ever seems to get pink right except for nail polish companies.

Here it is painted; I'd love to try it on again but I think the enamel will need approximately 24 hours to dry.



For the neckpiece, I added a 3D printed baroque swirl to add some visual interest, my respirator piece. I used some extension tubing from an anesthesia machine for the breathing tubes. (Our hospital had accidentally ordered a MOUNTAIN of excess extension tubing, and there were literal piles of it in the garbage.) It worked out beautifully since it's very flexible, light, and is designed to be easy to cut. Here is the finished respirator and neck piece pre-plastidip.



Meanwhile, the globes for the backpack came, so here is the backpack with the globes in place. I used googly eyes with the pupils removed for the rivets. A few more details and I think this backpack will be ready for plastidip!





Finally, here is my shoulder pad, worbla'd and wood glue'd. Four thin layers of watered down wood glue did the trick to cleaning off the worbla. Now it's sitting in my garage dripping with plastidip. Pictures to come soon. For now, here is how it looks with the wood glue, worbla and foam. Part of me wants to redo it with a 3D printed fleur de lis, but I do think I should finish the rest of the armor first before I start remaking pieces.

[Lamia]

Just spectacular so far.

[voxbellin]

So for every step forward, I feel like I have another step back.

After 4 layers of wood glue on my worbla'd shoulder, it looked fairly smooth so I went ahead and plastidip'd it. Shocking - It's just awful! I absolutely hate the way it looks. For some reason, even though the wood glue'd version looked smooth and even, the plastidip just came out awful. This is actually with four layers of plastidip, each worse than the last.




See? Ugh. Just awful. Into the garbage can it goes.

So after all that, I went ahead and restarted the shoulder pads. This will be draft... 4?

So cut out my foam pieces, sanded it with 80, 150 and 220 sand paper. Then heat gun'd the whole thing to smooth it out, barged it together. I decided to try a change of pace and did the left shoulder (the one with the inquisatorial wings on it) first. I 3D printed the parts for this (the wings are from cgtrader.com, the inquisatorial cross was from thingiverse). I bent it to shape and here you see it:



Here you can see the shoulder pad on my dress form. I need to pick up some grey stuff/green stuff this weekend to finish it off before I start wood gluing the whole thing again.



Meanwhile, my 2 bolters have finished printing, and are starting to get wood glued. The gun on the left is the one with the wood glue; you can see the print lines starting to fade. This is on layer 4 of what I anticipate to be 7 layers of wood glue.



Meanwhile, since I have decided to swear off worbla forever after my shoulder fiasco, I redid the center of the backpack. Here it is with a brand new 3D printed fleur de lis.




The corset is basically all done, and is just waiting for all the other parts to finish as well. The respirator and center piece has been plastidip'd, wood glued on top, and I'm starting to paint it. Still a long way to go with the paint. I'm pleased to say that the whole costume so far is insanely light.



I included this image so you can see the top of the respirator/center piece. I ended up putting 4-5 layers of wood glue on top to even out the top; still a little wrinkly but definitely usable.



Leg armor is next. As you can see, my fleur de lis and skull have been put on it.

[Lamia]

Those wings are jaw dropping.

[vonjankmon]

It is really coming together now, still jaw droppingly awesome.

And I never knew about cgtrader.com, will have to check it out later to see if there is anything that I could use for my space marine build.

Thanks!

[voxbellin]

Thanks everyone, for all encouragement!

I had a few post call days this week to continue work on my Pink Seraphim project!

So let's start with the most exciting part of all this... I finally patterned my leg and shoe patterns!

I bought a pair of used Cole Haan Nike Air pumps. In my opinion, as high heels go, these are the most comfortable high heeled shoes on the market! If I can round for 5 hours in an ICU in these heels, I'm fairly sure I will be able to walk around a convention for a few hours. I mean, granted, wedges are way more comfy but I wanted stilettos for my Sister costume.



So I started modifying the whole thing with foam. It killed me a little to cover up the pretty black alligator print leather with foam, but seeing the final effect, I felt less bad.



Since I can't seem to get into the shoe if all the foam pieces were added, I elected to not add foam in the back, and add velcro to the top foam piece so I could get my feet in and out easily.



After seeing how these high heels worked, I realized I needed a little bit of gold edging at the bottom of the leg armor as well. I added the necessary foam. I'll paint this accordingly when it dries in a day or so. Also, the storm in STL needs to blow over so I can drop by my local gaming store and pick up more black primer. After the leg armor and the first bolter, I'm totes out, man.

Here's one of the leg armor pieces painted. Once the enamel dries tomorrow, I'll go back and clean up the black a little.



Meanwhile, I went ahead and painted the respirator bits. Still need to finish up the silver, but the center piece has been patinted in gold and copper. I think a little bit of brown wash will totally make this shine, but I'm going to wait a day or two for the enamel to set first, as per instructions on my Testors bottle.



As for my shoulder pads, I grey-stuffed the wings to the inquisitor sign, and am starting my layers of wood glue to clean up the print lines.



The right shoulder (fleur de lis) shoulder is printed, bent, glued, and now getting covered in wood glue as well.



Both bolters are printed, wood glued. One was primed black (the other is awaiting on more primer, see above).



It's AMAZING how much better the second bolter I printed (above) looks, compared to the first bolter (below), thanks to some help I got from some kindly people on facebook. Look at how great the cartridge above looks compared to the one below!



I added a girl with wings shouting. In my head, I see this girl and I'm thinking she's screaming "For the Emperor!" at the top of her lungs. It seemed fitting for a Sisters bolt pistol.

Sisters backpack center has been de-worbla'd and redone! Still need to add the panel between the top and the centerpiece; not sure what I'm talking about? You'll see next post.



Meanwhile, here is my spreadsheet editted:



EEE!!! I'm going to be a Sister!!!!

- Voxie

[Lamia]

I am really amazed at the difficulty you have had with worbla, and impressed as hell with your sculpting and printing. This build is amaaaaazing.

[voxbellin]

I am really amazed at the difficulty you have had with worbla, and impressed as hell with your sculpting and printing. This build is amaaaaazing.

Thank you Lamia!

As an experienced costumer, how do you normally smooth worbla? I thought between wood glue and sanding it should work but it still looked awful and was ridiculously heavy. I still have a sheet left and am wondering if I should experiment with it more.

[voxbellin]

IT IS PAINTED!!!



And cleaned!! And glued together (using 1" nylon tapes. The shape of the shoulder pads is really what keeps the whole thing up)

Well, part of it is anyway. You can see me wearing part of it here:



And here:



I can't tell you how happy this makes me to finally get to try it on as a total piece!

One limitation of this costume is that I can't seem to move my arm greater than 90 degrees away from my body. I don't know why this comes as a surprise to me; it should have been pretty obvious from the start. XD Oh well! It's the same problem I had with my wedding dress and I lived through that.

Anyways, fabric for the skirt has been ordered: silk charmeuse for the pink lining, black wool broadcloth for the exterior, gold galoons for the trim. I'll shoot some photos when that comes in.

Meanwhile, as a girl - nay, a woman - I am SOOO excited about my awesome sexy sisters heels! Here you can see it in all it's glory. All it's missing is the pink bottom. (Yes! I will paint the bottoms pink, kind of like a Adepta Sororita version of Louboutins.) Here are three, nay four photos of it.








The leg piece has been cleaned and painted and finished. It's ready for it's gloss coat.



Vambraces have been patterned, foam'd, and the plastic pieces attached. Time to wood glue!



Covering the backpacks with a thin layer of wood glue in order to protect the barge from the plastidip (who knew that plastidip dissolved barge and vice versa!? Woah). Not the world's most interesting photo but here you go:



Anyways, time to gloss coat all my finished black pieces!