How to create your own Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear

I was asked to translate this guide by awesome Japanese cosplayer and designer Reika (麗華さん).

Major disclaimer: The original post is just a copypasted collection of tweets. Reika didn’t write down every single step of the process, there are some repetitions and overall a lot of mentions of the Japanese 100-Yen supermarket chain Daiso. You can find several Daiso Internationals in America (mostly in Northern California) but for those who don’t have access to those handy stores, try Walmart or general hobby stores!

And here we have the fronds that came by the table and let me get a photo. Sorry I didn’t get one of your outfit, Rox, my phone was dead by that point. :c

you can see how derp I am in real life according to these photos of me in my Mabel costume, hahahaaaaa

Look for me at Animazement today!

I’ve always hated doing shoe and boot covers until my friend introduced me to this method. Turns out it’s not very well known how to do it! So I decided to take some photos while I did my most recent ones and make a tutorial for others to use. This tutorial can be used for socks, shoe covers, spats, custom boots, and anything else you can think of!

I’m only covering how to make the pattern, not how to sew it because I feel like that part is pretty straight forward.

Here we go~

Skill level required: beginner Time: ~1hr Materials: -shoes -saran wrap - tape -pen -paper scissors -ruler -butcher paper - a body - a friend!(not required, but VERY helpful!)

Here are your supplies! I used blue tape because it’s what I had lying around, but I would suggest packers tape. It’s a lot easier.

Ok, step  1! Put on your shoe and start wrapping your leg with the saran wrap. It sticks to itself, so this step is pretty easy. I am making suuuper high boots, so I have the wrap pretty high up. Only go as high as what you’re making to cut down on time& supplies. Also, be sure to get all around your shoe(and underneath if you’re making a custom sole).

 It is very important that you are keeping your leg straight from here on out. If you bend it, the tape and everything will move around and your pattern won’t fit as well as you’d like. So keep your leg straight!

Step 2, tape bracers. I suggest putting long strips down the center front, center back, and perpendicular in key spots(top, mid thigh, above/below knee, mid calf, ankle, foot arch, toes) these strips will act as support for the rest of the tape and prevent you from taping too tight.

Step 3, the fun has begun! Tape, tape, tape!! Looks good, right??

 WRONG! Here’s where it’s important to have a friend helping. It’s hard to reach everywhere unless you are very flexible.

Step 4,Be sure you have everything covered in tape before moving on to the next step. 

Step 5, mark your seams. I suggest doing a front and back seam, if not more.  Did some dashes up the front of my leg for where I wanted the seam, and then used a flexible quilting ruler to make it a straight line. Since I was doing this on my own, I couldn’t draw the back seam. I’ll show you how to do that in a few steps!

Step 6, cut it off. BE CAREFUL, PLEASE. Especially around your knees and ankles.

Step 7, you are now free from your sweaty leg prison!

Take your cast off your leg, but leave your shoe in.

Step 8, Now that it’s off, tape up any spots you may have missed, including the bottom of the shoe if you’re making the bottoms as well. Mark around the bottom edge of the shoe to get the correct shape, and cut it out.

Step 9, this is for if you didn’t draw& cut your back seam. Lay out your cast and fold it as closely in half as you can. I have the legs of a 6th grader, so mine folds very nicely without many bulges. If yours doesn’t, fear not! Just get it as close as you can to in half and we’ll flatten it out in a bit.

Step 10, cut it in half! Looking good so far! This is also where you can add extra seams and style lines if your character calls for it.

Step 11, we’re now going to transfer your pattern to butcher paper! If your pattern isn’t laying flat, here’s what you do…

*snip* that’s it! When you’re tracing your pattern, you just sketch between the opening to make it a smooth line.

Step 12, Finish tracing it out, and your pattern is done! Yaaaay we made it! Haha Mark the outside/inside in a way that you can tell them apart(I used O and I). Don’t mix them up!

From here, you need to add seam allowance before cutting it out otherwise it’ll be too tight!

That’s it! After that, the sewing part is pretty straight forward. I would suggest knit fabrics and maybe a short zipper at the ankle, but if you want to use a woven that’s fine; just add a bit more ease and include a zipper up the back from top to bottom.

Let me know if you have any questions, and hopefully you won’t hate doing shoe covers as much now! haha

Sailor Senshi Leotard Tutorial “Breast Plate” C: For your cosplayer-fancies, don’t let this tutorial skip past you ~ [here] -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLhl8Gg-Uyw&feature=plcp

Muscle suits

Made rebloggable by request damn u

Let me help, my dear Mr. Spock

(and hopefully some other people by answering this public????)

This is how my sister & I do it, but I’m sure there’s other methods if you googled or something I dunno.

NUMBER 1.

You need a stretchy base. Sew your own leotard or shirt or whatever, or buy one. Doesn’t matter. Just has to be very stretchy. 4-way stretch. If you manage to find that in breathable fabric? EXCELLENT. Because of all the extra padding and layers, you will sweat. A lot. Once you’ve got your base then you can move on to unleashing the pythons that always lived beneath your skin.

TWO! This is a pic I drew of the muscles I usually put into a suit. Note that the circle and oval shapes drawn are pretty much the actual shapes I carve out. Sometimes, like for Captain Kirk, I just need a muscle shirt because my upper body only needs padding. Sometimes, like for THOR GOD OF THUNDAAHHHRGH you need legs and torso! 

You can use this method to pad other areas not indicated, BUTTTT I already have a huge ass so I don’t really bother with that.

(Note that for the Kirk shirt I still extended it into a leotard that had a crotch like a swimsuit because stretch fabric RIDES UP like crazy and since your muscles have to be tight tight and stay in the right place, you don’t want any hems wandering.)

Ok, I mean, obviously these are very simplified groupings compared to reality…

But most of this stuff will be getting covered by clothing anyway (or a flesh toned layer with airbrushed detail)

So basically, the “muscles” are made out of filterfoam. I don’t have a pic of it actually… It’s kinda like polyfill except hardened into a block of fiber layers. Anyway, it BREATHES unlike regular upholstery foam, which is very helpful. And doesn’t yellow over time. But it’s more expensive than upholstery foam so yeah, pick whichever. DON”T use loose polyfill because (from experience) it just balls up and your muscles look like tumors instead. =\

So here’s a pic of some of my muscles all carved up. I used a scissors and snipped away insanely and for long hours to get the shapes I wanted. It hurt. I gotta find a better tool for working with this stuff. Anyway…

You should know the approx. scale of the muscles you want. Like, how buff do you wanna be? There’s only so big you can go before it starts to look bad. 

Carrying on…

THREE ===> After you’ve carved all your muscles, you have to attach them to the suit. I cut out stretch fabric and hand sew it to each piece of foam so that it’s capped off and smoother (since there’s no way you can carve this stuff to be super smooth). Then I throw on my base suit, and hold the muscles to myself to see where they go. Mark it off by drawing around the entire muscle with chalk or whatever so when you take the suit off you know how much to stretch the fabric.

Now hand sew all those muscles onto your base suit following your guidelines. You MUST hand sew it. This allows for stretch. Technically you could probably stretch stitch on patches of fabric to your suit before and then cut a hole in the base suit below the patch and stuff your muscle in after… but I honestly don’t get perfect fits that way so yah. 

You should be done now, but try it on with clothing on top to make sure you’ve got the shape you want. If you don’t, take muscles off and move em or add more!

REMEMBER!!! If you’re making your actual cosplay at the same time, or buying it, or anything. MAKE SURE IT’LL FIT UR NEW BOD. This was the crappiest part of the costume making process for me, because I needed to always put on my new muscles in order to pattern and fit. Your measurements totally change depending on what padding you do so you gotta be careful you don’t bust out of your costume like the animal you are

EASY AS 1, 2, 3…

Tame and caged without my muscles

CAPTAIN HUSKY

RAW AND UNLEASHEDDD THUNDER

I think that’s it, I don’t know what else I could say.

Hope that helped Jelly!!!!! <3333

So this happened at Megacon… I’m the Mabel, and Dipper is my boyfriend :)

(please view on our page for full size, or check it out on deviantart!)

I’ve finally started putting together the series of screen printing tutorials I’ve written up and photographed! Sorry it’s mega long, I tried to be really descriptive. I’d love some feedback if this is clear enough to follow, please let me know what you think!

This was written up since June and photographed since July… I’m more than a little behind on getting my butt in gear and doing this, haha