Left Arm: Foam

I figured I'd start off with the easiest part, which in my mind is the left (non-blaster) arm.  Using the basic sketch from the last post, I scaled it up to full size on paper.

My original plan was to glue the styrofoam sheets into one large block and then carve down from there, but it made more sense to cut each individual slice from the plans and then glue those slices together.  The wire knife worked decently, but sometimes it would get gummed up with melted foam residue.  Here are the rough results so far for the single slice and the entire pancake stack.  Next steps will be to glue them together and then smooth everything out.

Research

Since I wanted the smooth "authentic" plastic/metal look of MegaMan, I originally thought about either using vacuum forming or thermoplastics.  Since I don't have access to a vacuum forming machine, I'd have to go with thermoplastics.  A recent trip to The Engineeer Guy really opened my eyes to the possibilities.

With either route though, I'd have to create a basic mold for the forms to go over.  I didn't want to deal with a ton of clay, so that left styrofoam.  It's a lot more challenging / expensive to find a big block of styrofoam, so I ended up going to HomeDepot for a few sheets of foam board insulation.  Then I stopped by Michaels to get some glue to layer them together, as well as a hot wire knife to slice through the styrofoam easily.

I pulled up my target image and found a basic human diagram.  I overlaid some simple lines just to give me a better idea of size and proportion.  I think the results below do a good job of preserving the larger-than-life anime style.  Tomorrow I start gluing and slicing the pieces.  Thanks to the hot knife, there shouldn't be any mess, but I'll probably have to keep the windows ventilated to avoid breathing in toxic gases.

Introduction

Greetings all

I started this blog to detail and share my experiences as I undertake my first (very ambitious) cosplay.  I've been a longtime nerd, but ever since high school I just haven't had as much time to indulge.  And despite living in ATL for 15 years, I've never been to DragonCon even once.  My buddies at The Big Bang Life convinced me to attend, but I would definitely need a kickass cosplay to go.

I initially thought about going as Rufio or MegaMan.  There were plenty of good Rufio costumes I saw on the internet, but very few really good MegaMan costumes.  The best one was the example below.  The costume is sleek and looks plastic and shiny like it should.  Many of the bad costumes I saw were fabric or just looked like some guy wearing blue spandex.

My big innovative idea was to do a classic MegaMan 2 costume in plastic, WITH a skateboard modded into a RushJet.  Very ambitious, but I think it could definitely win a Best in Show if I pull it off.  With about 2 months left until DragonCon, it's very ambitious but we'll see how it goes.  I am modelling my build off the new SmashBros MegaMan since it's classic, rounded, but also proportioned with the distinct shape of MegaMan.  Wish me luck!