Gwendolyn, with Pneumatic Wings [Odin Sphere]

[AndyDanger]

Quick warning - this is going to be a pic heavy half tutorial/half journaling of a tricky build. Bear with me, RPF.

One of my favorite games for the PS2 was Odin Sphere. There were some janky combat issues, but I always dig story heavy games and this one was just beautiful. Odin Sphere is being rereleased next month, so I feel like it’s the perfect time to put together a cosplay of my favorite character – Gwendolyn, the Valkyrie warrior princess.

I’ve seen a decent amount of costumes for Gwendolyn, but I’ve never found one where the wings actually open. Since the wings come from the hips and open out, gravity is going to be a bitch. Even better, this costume is sleeveless and I’ll need to find a way to mount a harness without using my shoulders. There are tons of tutorials and videos out there where back-mounted wings can be opened and closed with pneumatic cylinders and air pressure, so I found as many references as I could and started coming up with a plan.

First I planned how I wanted the wings to open. Even though it would look incredible, I don’t think I’ll be able to manage handling a 12-foot wingspan mounted at my hips. What I eventually came up with will only open about halfway, and I’ll focus more on getting the wings “up” than “out”. I built a mockup to be totally sure I liked how it felt, out of carboard and some random little garbage screws. Since I’m building this for Dragon Con too, having less than enormous wings will be a lot easier to handle. I am also really worried about how heavy this thing will be. I’ll have to design the harness to come off without taking off the whole costume, or else I will probably grind my hipbones in to dust. Even so, I need it to be sturdy and strong af so I bought two rods of square aluminum tubing, like this one.

I marked the pieces to cut and had all of an inch and a half to spare, so I’d better not mess up.

Aaaaand I messed up. This is why it’s so important to not do as I do, and use sharp, not garbage blades for your skill saw. I got so lucky, this blade flew off and embedded an inch in my basement wall. Fortunately my aluminum rod was fine, and I have learned a scary lesson.

Aluminum frame cut! It’s not 100% precise since I struggle a bit with a skill saw, but it’s pretty dang close. I marked up the pieces to correspond with my cardboard mockup, and drilled the connecting holes with my drill press. This is probably fine to do with a power drill, but a drill press really helps with this build.

I got stumped for a little while trying to decide how to mount the aluminum wing frames to the eventual harness. I needed to come up with a sort of “base” that I could put hinges on to allow it to open at least 90 degrees. Even though most people building back mounted wings use plywood, I was worried this wouldn’t be sturdy enough. I got pretty lucky when I went to my friend’s moped shop and came across an old super sturdy cutting board they used to use when grinding parts – perfect! It’s lightweight, drills through easily, and definitely won’t warp or splinter. I had a bit of trouble cutting it though. It got completely jammed in my scroll saw – the friction heated the plastic up so much it was melting back together as I cut it. Eventually I found the best way to cut pieces of the cutting board was with my jigsaw. It still fused together somewhat, but then I could throw it as hard as I could on my basement floor and it popped free. Cutting boards don’t like to be cut, who knew?

You can see how it fused back together. The pink is from the marker on the other side that bled through while I was cutting it.

Tada! Wings look great and open/close how I want them to. Next, figuring out the harness. Update coming asap.

 

[progolfercd]

Subscribed! I love Odin Sphere, it had such a rich story and visually appealing. Their weapons are on my list to make. I have rough design sketches on how to make them and potentially have them light up. I'm excited to see your progress.

 

[JPH]

Looks great!

I don't know how much you work with aluminum, but if you use 1/8 inch thick right angles, you probably have enough strength to make your wing frame. The square tubing is gonna get heavy fast.

 

[AndyDanger]

Here is the mostly finished harness. It might seem like I threw this together really quickly, but I was lazy about posting the first part. This was actually close to a 6 week process of trial and error. I wanted to go a little overboard with reinforcing this thing. It’s loosely modeled after a climbing harness, in how it wraps around the legs and stomach. I still need to add foam cushions to the hip pieces, but that will come later. It will sit on top of the corset for stability, and thick layers of fabric will go on top. The fabric will open from the front so I can take the harness off without removing the entire costume. It’s going to make me look a little fat, but I don’t think there’s any helping it.

You can see the two pieces of thick plastic I cut and attached hinges to, they open very smoothly and I cut the hex bolts flush so when the wings are closed the hinges will only be open about 25 degrees.

I threw together a quick corset covering template and used muslin to sew the pattern together for a fit test. Had to make a few small adjustments, but I think this could work. I will sew snaps in to the final top to attach it to cover the belt, and it will unzip in the front so I can take off the wings without taking off the top completely. Also featured is my very needy but very adorable corgi, Slick

Slick looks so concerned! She can't understand why I would do this to myself, haha! Sorry for this weird picture of my butt, but I wanted to show how much reinforcement I have in the back. Originally I just had the black elastic bands for some flexible reinforcement, but I started measuring how far the cylinder would need to throw the wings upward and I realized I needed to mount more plastic right in the middle of my bum. I’ll have the base of the pneumatic cylinder there, and when it opens it will throw the wings 4 inches straight up. Hopefully. The peplum skirt thing will cover this part of the costume, so I can hide a lot on my lower back and bum, hopefully. We’ll see!

 

[Keycube]

Did you come up with this design, or is it typical for a wing/appendage-mount system? This looks like a pretty impressive bit of engineering!

 

[GoblinCityCosplay]

OMG I'm so excited to see how this turns out. How are you planning on doing the feathers? I've seen really good actual feathers, sintra, and craft foam used for Gwendolyn, but those were stationary wings, not expanding ones.

 

[AndyDanger]

OMG I'm so excited to see how this turns out. How are you planning on doing the feathers? I've seen really good actual feathers, sintra, and craft foam used for Gwendolyn, but those were stationary wings, not expanding ones.

I'm planning on using craft foam. I might cover the top layer with actual feathers, but I haven't gotten that far. I bought this lovely thick 9 gauge spool of gardening wire, and I plan on sandwiching 2 layers of foam in that and attaching the wire to the actual frame. Ideally the feathers would be taut enough to articulate with the wing when it opens.

Did you come up with this design, or is it typical for a wing/appendage-mount system? This looks like a pretty impressive bit of engineering!

Thank you! I did look at a lot of tutorials before concepting, and took a lot of my materials from that research. The actual design is just me winging it. (Winging it? GET IT?!) A friend of mine joked that I was just trying to come up with an excuse to use as many tools as possible. I have a lot of tools. I love them.

 

[AndyDanger]

Minor update, but I learned a lot from assembling the initial frame, and I realized I could have done a few things a lot better... so, I scrapped almost the whole thing and rebuilt it. Instead of using hollow aluminum square tubes, I found I could use 1/4inch aluminum flat bars that were almost as sturdy and a LOT lighter. I also rebuilt the spring mechanism with spring loaded cabinet hinges, which should reduce the weight of the wing on the pistons. I'm still waiting on the switch to control the air, but the pistons have been individually tested and it looks like everything will work out the way I have it.

Here’s the plastic piece with the single acting piston in action. There are two pistons on each side – one attached to the plastic anchoring the wings to the harness and pushing up, and one attached to the wing itself to push out. The piston pushing up is single acting while the piston pushing out is double acting, so air pressure will actually hold the wings closed instead of letting them hang loose like they are right now just sitting on my dress form.

The double acting cylinder doesn’t have a spring in it, but will actually be pushed in each direction separately with air pressure. I still need to cut off that excess aluminum piece, I just rigged it on there with a piece of scrap to make sure it would work.

There is probably a better way to attach this but I’m in that cosplay time crunch and have decided that my new slogan is – if it looks stupid but it works, it’s not stupid.

 

[Keycube]

Glad to see this again. Cool thing is, it's versatile in that it has cool steampunk opportunities if the framework were left bare. Very neat!

 

[AlphaTech686]

This is all pretty damn cool. My question is this. What is your air supply?

 

[AndyDanger]

I've been rushing to get this build done for a costume contest at Dragon Con, blah blah excuses. It's probably 90% done, I remade the wing feathers probably half a dozen times before I got something that worked, so most everything else was done in the mean time. I'll take photos of everything else later, but for now I can show you the armor. All of the armor is made from worbla, with some details in craft foam.

The boots are attached with black twine wrapped under the shoe attached to the worbla with d-rings. So I actually don't have to ruin a pair of shoes I like with this build.

The thigh armor attaches to the shin armor with a piece of elastic for flexibility, and the straps velcro around the leg. Here's a photo of how all the strapping attaches.

Fit test, everything looks pretty good. I ended up deciding to scrap the heel piece, it impaired movement too much. The knee bends enough to walk around comfortably, but kneeling down is probably not an option.

The armor was sealed and primed with gesso, sanded, spray painted and detail painted with acrylics before sealing with crystal clear. The silver part of the lower leg armor I wanted to look more like hammered metal, so I layered several coats of wood filler to give it a smooth texture before priming and painting. I painted a strong white highlight on the armor in order to emulate that anime/cartoony style.

The headpiece is my favorite part. I will probably go back and put clips on the crown and wig to make sure it stays put.