Mathematics!

Pretty much. My room has APPARENTLY become a breeding ground for mosquitos, so if the buzzing doesn't keep me awake, the bites do. O.o


So, I'm a day late with this. sorry sorry!




Anyway, my next step was to figure out how to make my Big Sister outfit proportionately accurate to the big sister in the game. One major issue I've noticed in just about every Big Sister costume I've looked at has been the size of her helmet. Just about every Big Sister I've seen has had a helmet that's too big:

Even the guys over at Lab 604 seemed to fall to this slip-up:

My friend actually pointed out that the in-game version of the big sister's helmet doesn't even look like it would accomodate a human head.


Hm....


That observation had me somewhat worried that I wouldn't be able to make this costume without also making an awkwardly large helmet, so I began obsessively measuring photos of the Big Sister and comparing them to measurements on my body.


I printed out this photo:

and measured her head and the distance from her foot to her knee. then I measured my knee to foot length and did some cross multiplication and found that my helmet should have a Diameter of around 11 inches.

I did this with two other photos and found that I needed a helmet that was approximately  12 inches across and 37 inches around. I then measured my head and found that it should just barely fot in a helmet that size. sweet! as a bonus, it looks as though a helmet that size shouldn't be too difficult to move with my head, making it more comfortable and believable.

so I went ahead with this measurement and figured I would base all other proportions on this helmet size, and I should be golden.

I found a $2 bouncey ball at walmart that measured 27.25" around and started putting paper mache on it. next update will be some shots of the work that's been done. Thanks for reading all the pre-make crap! I'm gonna take a nap.

Down to business

I was just going to do this last night but then I thought sleep is really awesome so, whatever, we're going now.


to jump straight into it, I have never done a project this elaborate before. at least not a 3D project with this many processes involved. In an attempt to make the project scope easier to see I broke the Big Sister down to her basic elements. here's what I got:


-Helmet
-Brest Plate
-Tank and Cage
-White Shirt and Pants
-Leather Corset and Hotpants
-Shoulder Pads
-Right Arm Gauntlet and Wraps
-Left Arm Gauntlet and Wraps
-Leg Braces and Boots


and as a bonus I may make a couple of props for Sarah, my Little Sister friend:


-Big Daddy Doll
-Little Sister Hypo


at the very least I'll work with her on the hypo so there is consistency  between that and my costume.

Then, once the list-making was done I began looking at surface qualities and textures and deciding how I want to approach certain elements of the costume. One major consideration I had was the leatherwork. The three major elements on the Big Sister that incorporate leather are the corset, the shorts and the leg braces. with some investigation I have decided that I will ost likely need to find a way to make each of these items. the corset doesn't really function like a normal corset, as her hips are not super exaggerated. there are several desighns for corsets online, so I may be modifying one of those to make my own. 


for the pants, I would just try to find some booty shorts  and cover them with leather for the pants, however, other cosplayers who have done this seem to always have pants that are too long. These pants almost seem more like underwear in length, so I am contemplating taking a shot at making them myself.


And for the leg braces, I will definitely be making my own, as a single vintage, bare-metal leg brace would cost at least $500. I will likely be making my own belts as well, as there are 29 belt bucles in total on the Big Sister, and just buying 29 belts will cost around $100, and I would like to cut that cost down if I can.


In a perfect world ,I would just use leather, however I am assuming that the cost of that would be insane so I'm looking for a good fake leather substitute.


For the metal parts, I was a bit concerned about how I could make them LOOK like metal. Most folks just use paint, but even with a lot of work paint generally still looks like paint so I rooted around for a while before finding this:

This is a prop helmet made by a man named "Mr. Bird" with cold-cast metal. Cold-casting utilizes a process where you mix powdered metal with a resin, then when it's dry, it can be buffed, polished and tarnished like real metal. It's even cold to the touch. Best of all, you don't need to cast a mold (something I had hoped to avoid), you can just paint it on a surface.


Awesome!


I haven't checked prices yet, but I pretty well have my heart set on covering the helmet and breastplate with nickel silver then all the little brass bits with... brass.


the guys over at Lab 604 have some pretty detailed shots of the air tank and cage in process. I'm guessing it won't be too much trouble to reverse-engineer their process. It seems to be primarily a cardboard tube, aluminum, and some DOW board, so nothing too pricey.


Aside from that stuff, everything else seems doable with some model clay, cardboard and a little patience. 


that's it for this update, sorry for more boring pre-making stuff. Next I'll talk about all the proportions and mathstuff I've been doing to plan stuff out. Then, we build!

No Turning Back.

For those of you who don't already know, I am a huge nerd. to make a long story short I have spent the first weekend of june for the last two years at a little convention called OMG con. If you haven't heard of it, OMG con is a three day anime and gaming convention that is, quite simply, some of the most fun I have had in a long time.


One of the most enjoyable aspects of the con for me is cosplaying, and I have constructed a new outfit for each year. Both costumes were assembled from found clothing or from scratch and I haven't bought anything from a costume/cosplay website. I like doing that because it generally results in more organic looking outfits and less like stiff and scratchy polyester. 


In 2011 I went as Mugen from a show called "Samurai Champloo":

And this year I chose to be Vincent Brooks form an under appreciated videogame called "Catherine":

Toward the end of the second day of the con, a friend and I were talking about what we'd like to do for next year's cosplay. I had always thought it'd be fun to do a group cosplay, or at least do something with one other person but the group of friends we were attending with didn't have any strong ideas beyond "disney princesses" (I was going to be boy mulan and sing "be a man" everywhere I went). But then my friend expressed an interest in being a Little Sister from the videogame "Bioshock."

She enthused over the outfit because she wouldn't need to do anything more complicated then get dressed and put her hair in a ponytail. However the character isn't all that recognizable without her constant companion, the Big Daddy.  Big Daddy is a genetically modified monstrosity that stomps around the game world in a frankenstined-together diving suit.

As you can see from that picture to the left, it's entirely possible to make a convincing Big Daddy costume. however, at 5'8" tall and weighing in at a whopping 125lbs, that costume over there would likely be a bit on the, shall we say, baggy side if I were to wear it. But, as luck would have it, there is one other character from the Bioshock franchise that would add some context to my friends sure-to-be-awesome Little Sister cosplay. Enter the Big Sister:

She shows up in the second game and,according to the story, she is one of the Little Sisters who grew up and felt a need to protect the newest batch of Little Sisters running around the city of Rapture. She is also super lanky, Like me! So, almost jokingly I told my friend that I could make myself a Big Sister costume and she responded with a very serious "yes." So, jumping off from the confidence of my buddy I rooted around the web for some Big Sister cosplay. Most of what I found looked like this:

Decent, and even intricate, but objectively very, very inaccurate.  As I am very much a stickler for detail, some thing like this simply wouldn't fly for me.  I was a bit unsure of this project having any life, until I ran across this:

Built by a creative team calling themselves "Lab 604," this Big Sister absolutely blew me away. Save for a few VERY minor inconsistencies, this costume is dang close to what's in the game. Better yet, one of the guys who works at Lab 604 posted hundreds of pictures of the costume in progress on his Flickr account.

So, it's POSSIBLE. :)

I'll add a few more posts later this evening and over the next couple of days showing my plans and what work I've done so far. The project is getting pretty intricate and I thought it might be fun to share and document the process, as well as get some feedback from other people on my choices and ideas to solve some problems. enjoy, and I'll try to be less wordy from now on. :P