Hey everyone! Happy New Year and welcome back to Theorycrafting: Cosplay Edition! I took some time off at the end of 2012 to spend the holidays with family, but now I’m back and will resume weekly updates.
This series features my ideas for how to potentially bring a specific character to life for cosplay. My hope is to give people a quick look into my design process and what materials I like to use use when considering building a character.
As always, discussion and recommendations of which characters (from any series/game, etc) you would like to see theorycrafted in future are more than welcome. ^_^
This week’s character is: Veigar (Classic Skin, League of Legends)
Veigar is a creature whose diminutive stature belies his vast magical power. As a young yordle he was imprisoned for years by the Noxians, whose torments slowly drove him mad. Finally he escaped and fled to the far reaches of Valoran, where he began to study dark magic under any who would accept him as a student. Now he seeks to bring the entire world beneath the heel of his size 2 boot.
The most important aspect of this costume is maintaining the sense of scale about Veigar. He’s a tiny character, so this costume would be perfect for a child or someone who’s naturally very short, but if someone taller wanted to make this costume I would suggest that they pay special attention to keeping the costume properly proportioned.
Main Body:
The main body will probably take the semblance of a robe with a short hoop skirt. First off, for the hoop, if you wanted, you could just use a hula hoop, but I think I would make a custom hoop out of pvc, since the hem of his robe isn’t quite circular.
You can create the custom bends in the pvc with fittings and bending with heat (heat gun or open flame).
Once the hoop is created, you can sew together the rest of the robe. I would consider using a dark blue velvet and then weathering it a bit.
After the fabric is all put together, I would use EVA foam for the metal detailing/trim, since it’s a thicker material, light, and will give a pretty good finish.
For the spikes, you could make them out of foam, thermoplastics, sculpy, casting, other clays, etc. Whatever method works for you! ^_^
You will probably want to use interfacing to stiffen the collar.
Hat:
I think I would use Fosshape to make the base form of the hat since it is a unique shape. Fosshape can also become quite stiff after shaping, so I think it will hold the shape quite well. (Fosshape Tutorial [Note: you can also use a heat gun if you don’t have a steamer]) You can then cover it over with the blue velvet and do the same kind of detailing for the metal portions as you did for the robe.
Face:
I think I would create a black hood, kind of like a ski mask out of a stretch material (probably spandex). I would also have yellow tinted goggles (probably with yellow LEDs on the inside of them as well) underneath the spandex so that once the hood is on, they poke out.
Shoes:
I would start with a flat shoe and then build up the rest of the armor over the base shoe. I think I would consider using wonderflex or fosshape for the shoe since you want some flexibility, but also strength so that they don’t break.
Weapon:
For Veigar’s staff, you would probably use either a wooden rod or pvc pipe as a base. PVC will be lighter, but it will be easier to carve/shape the taper with wood. For the bulkier portions, I would use sheet insulation foam (tutorial) as the base material. I would attach the spikes afterward or have the spikes attached before putting the foam on for a sturdier end product.
I would probably use clear plastic, much like the way I used it for the horn on Sejuani’s helmet, for the yellow crystal. Here is another tutorial for making hollow, glowing crystals by Kohalu Cosplay.
To make the yellow crystal float, you can have it attached to the main handle with a clear rod to make it look like it floats.
The Gloves:
The larger of the two gloves will be the most difficult part of this costume to build, I think, because the awesome part would be to make it so that you can articulate the fingers!
To start, I would probably make an inner frame for the glove with pulley articulation, much like the one in this video. You will have to modify the design for 3 fingers instead of 4, but this gives a very base idea. It is a simple pulley system hooked up to your own fingers.
The next step will be to create an exoskeleton for the hand/fingers and make it big enough for your own hand to fit and move around in the palm area. You can probably use wonderflex or insulation foam for the exoskeleton.
Once the exoskeleton is built, you can finish it with paint, fabric, and thicker foam/spike detailing.
For the smaller glove, I would start with a black or blue velvet glove that fits your hand and then build the armor plates over it. You may not want to build armor pieces over the pads of your fingers so that you can still grip your staff, but it’s up to you.
That pretty much sums up how I would take a crack at creating a Veigar cosplay. If you have any questions or would like anything clarified, feel free to ask me, or if you have any requests for characters you would like to see, just let me know in the comments!
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