I initially wanted to make a silicon mold of the helmet, then cast it in plastic after making it all professional looking. But as a first timer at both mold making and casting, let it suffice to say that I was thoroughly disillusioned on making this happen with any semblance of speed and niceness in the confines of my dorm room. So I turned to the next best thing: Making the helmet as shiny and nice as possible, and simply hollow out the foam on the inside.
I started by getting a friend to help me trace the silhouette of my head, and translating the sections to 1" disks on the insulation foam.
All stacked up, it doesn't quite look like my head yet. I glued them together with more Super 77...let it be known that this winter was the year I learned of the importance of Gojo for getting glue off of everything I ever loved.
Starting to look a bit more human now, after some hard work with a rasp.
I started using a boxcutter and exacto knife to carve details and relief into the helmet. You can see the reference that I drew on the template model on the cardboard.
After gluing on some extra sections for the little horn on top, I cut them down into shape. Most of the defining features of the helmet are now visible.
A glamour shot from the back.
...and one more from three-quarters, for good measure.
(I was sweeping up foam shavings from my room for weeks after this...)
Time for the first coat of Bondo. This was my first time ever working with the stuff, and boy, was I glad I bought a respirator before starting this project.
Somebody stole my cache of sandpaper and sanding block from the basement over the summer (*cries*) so I substituted using the coarse sandpaper-like quality of some leftover longboard griptape I had lying around. Mmm, Jessup grip.
After another coat of Bondo, I applied some spot putty to smooth out some chunkiness around the horn due to the angle of attachment, and then resanded. I also applied some putty around the bottom of the rim, in hopes of adding some sharper angles, but then...
Oh no! Turns out, spot putty will dissolve any exposed insulation foam, so I was left with a disintegrating goopy mess down near the bottom rim. I did my best to glue back a piece of foam with some spray adhesive, and I re-Bondo-d (is that an acceptable verb now?), but it was never quite the same... (sniffles)
One thing I've learned by working on various...display projects...here at MIT that rely heavily on modifying insulation foam to do other things: it releases toxic fumes when melted, or when cut with a hot wire cutter, for instance. Again, it's super fortunate I bought a respirator. I'm also glad I realized that just because I couldn't smell it, didn't mean it wasn't in my room; about 2 minutes in, I facepalmed myself for my stupidity and took the heat gun and helmet outside into the courtyard to work on.
Pretty gross looking. I tore up an old t-shirt and adhered it to the inside of the helmet to act as padding. (The helmet still smelled like death on the inside, but I guess I got used to it...you can develop immunity to cancer, right? ...Right?)
I spray painted a base coat of gray first, and you can see where I've marked in chalk on the second picture, preparing to cut the visor slot with a dremel My initial plan was to build a vacuum former and form the entire visor, but time, energy, and budget constraints made me develop the ingenious plan below...
I initially wanted to cut apart an old motorcycle visor I had lying around, but as it turns out, polycarbonate neither takes well to being heated with a heatgun, nor cuts well with a battery operated dremel tool usually used for trimming dog nails.
I pinned the piece of plastic bottle down between two hefty textbooks and began heatgunning it. After it reached the relative shape I wanted, I stuck some car window tinting sheet on the backside, and inserted it into the slot cut out of the helmet, sealing the edges with epoxy.
Here, I've taped up the gray portions in preparation for spraying the "visor" part with glossy black paint. Note that I haven't put the actual visor in yet; I wouldn't have been able to see past the paint if that had been the case!
Halfway through spraying, need to do another coat...
Even if the finish on the helmet was a bit rough, the visor seemed to camouflage pretty well; several people at the convention asked me how I was able to see from inside my helmet.
The sword was, in retrospect, the easiest part of this entire cosplay, despite how well it turned out. Goes to show that working smart is sometimes better than working hard...
The sword was essentially several pieces of cardboard sandwiched and hot glued together. The handle encompassed the adapter for the electroluminescent (EL) tape that I used to simulate the glow from his sword, as well as the 9 volt battery needed to power the EL tape. I put the leads on the outside so that I was able to switch out the battery and turn the light off to conserve power easily.
I painted the sword silver and used sharpie to do some detailing and burnishing. There might be liberal amounts of duct tape and epoxy on this sucker. Here's it unlit, sprawled across the remains of my cardboard and with my foot making a guest appearance in the corner:
And lit! Turned out pretty reasonable, for something that took maybe 2 hours tops.
Here's the entire layout of my getup the night before PAX East on Friday: The finished helmet, sword, armored jacket with thermoformed foam shoulders and PETG plastic elbow thingimabobbers, combat boots, gloves, shin armor made from foam mat and those webbing strap and clip sets, binder to keep those pesky womanly parts from blowing my cover as a reverse trap, pants with saddlepockets (stuffed with foam mat to give them volume) and knee pads from more thermoformed PETG. The PETG was shockingly white, so I used the same spatter method with gray spray paint that I used to weather the fabric from earlier, making them look a little more dirty and battle-worn.
And the moment you've been reading for: Me wearing the costume at PAX East!
This shot was taken while waiting in line for the Gearbox panel. All of us who had cosplayed as Borderlands franchise characters got up to the front for some photo opportunities, and we ended up getting front row seats and special gifts from the Gearbox representatives! Super exciting stuff!
And here I am, next to a taller and definitely male Zer0. His costume is more robust than mine, and has the sort of detailing characteristic of Borderlands cosplays, with sharpied shading and battle scars. But I'm pretty pleased with how ninja-esque and well-fitted my cosplay is. I had several people come up to me and wonder how I was able to fit the physique for Zer0 so well, since he was such a lithe character. I think my favorite part of wearing this costume was getting in line for the Gearbox panel. The three boys in front of me whispered in awe, "Wow, it's Zer0!" I waved at them and let them take a picture with me, and as I sat down to wait (generally I get in line for panels at least 30 minutes before they start, lest they fill up), I took off my helmet to let it air out a bit, much to the surprise of the children, who exclaimed, "Zer0's a GIRL???"
And a random photo-op with Zed's Meds dispenser! Wasn't able to catch the midget psycho representative for a photo though.
Waiting in line for signatures after the panel was so worth it. I got the developers to sign the back of my jacket! We talked a bit about the character, and my choice to cosplay as him, and they were very sincere and not rushed at all. This was the hardest cosplay I'd done to date, but it was definitely also the most rewarding experience I've had in costume yet.
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