Ok, so I'm a long time lurker, and this is my first thread here, so try to be easy on me, haha
For Dragon*Con this year, a friend and I wanted to do something that was both Doctor Who and awesome, so we decided on being the Weeping Angels.
(I'm on the right, and the user Ktar on here is the one on the left)
Of course we've seen Penwiper's thread and borrowed a few techniques, such as the pantyhose for the skin parts and the hula hoop for the hem. We got to meet up and take some fantastic photos with her as well!
The main differences with ours were that we had completely different ways of doing the masks/hair and the wings.
We looked into a lot of different materials for the wings, and decided to use 1/4" EVA foam for it's weight and the heavy look it would give. After a lot of deliberation, we ended up using PVC as the "bones" of the wing, with hex wire to fill out the form of the wing, attaching the hex wire to the PVC with some random wire I had. Using the patterns I drafted, we used contact cement to glue everything together. The fronts and backs of the wings are different, and we sandwiched the hex wire and PVC skeleton between the pieced together layers.
The harnesses were kind of like backpacks in the end, using Lexan as a base, and slightly larger PVC pipe as a sleeve for the bones of the wing to hold it all together. I don't have any good photos of the harness, but I'll take some soon and post them ASAP.
The "wig" was made by covering our heads with plastic wrap, then paper mache-ing our heads to get it exactly fitted to each of us. After the paper mache dried, we sculpted the hair out of Model Magic. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that material, but it was on sale for about 1/4 of the normal price, so I bought all Michael's had, haha
For the masks, we bought Rigid Wrap, and simply followed the instructions on making a mask which came with the Wrap. After it had set up, we sculpted on top of it with more Model Magic. After we finished sculpting it all, I coated the insides of the masks with Mod Podge Hardcoat to stiffen it. They ended up stiff, but still kind of smushy, so it's not a hard awkward thing on your face. For the eyes, I dyed some scraps of silk organza and sinply glued it in. At first we had parts of a milkshake dome to make the eyes rounder, but I ended up picking it out midway through the con, so I could breathe through the eyes as well as the mask's nostrils.
The dress was made mainly by having a semi-fitted under layer, and a draped outer layer. The harness went on underneath the dress, with the PVC pipes sticking out through holes in the back, so we could take off the wings if we needed to. ( I forgot to take process photos of the dress :/ )
For the paint, I wanted to make this as low-cost as possible, so I planned on scoring some mistinted latex house paint in the correct color, and I guess the paint gods were with me that day at the hardware store, because the perfect shade of grey was there, and only $10 for a gallon! I also scored a gallon of nearly neutral white for the same price! The black ended up being acrylic paint, and $12 for less than half a gallon, which stinks. As it stands I have nearly a total of a gallon of extra paint...
Painting it, we used the normal method of highlights and lowlights, as well as using light splattering to get that "stony" look. On the wig/hat, mask and wings, we also used a textured spray paint before we started painting the greys, to help them look more rough and stony.
We didn't use a fabric medium on anything but the skin parts. As the fabric we used on the dresses wasn't stretchy, I didn't feel the need to break the bank on fabric medium for the dress.
All in all, it was great fun to wear, and wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined, or what you would think, with all the things going into it, and how cumbersome they are.
Meeting up with Penwiper and the rest of the Doctor Who costumers were definitely some of the highlights of this convention! I can't wait for next year!
Here are some of my favorite shots of the weekend:
I also have a lot of reference screen caps that I can post if anyone wants them. It was a lot of googling and looking at the Confidential episodes to see the hair and exactly how the effects team on the show actually created these... did you know the whole costume was pretty much latex (or some other rubbery material)? Crazy.
(There are much, much more detailed posts on how we made all of this on my (new) blog... I didn't want to make this as detailed, it would be pages and pages of just me posting large blocks of text, haha... If it's not ok to link from here to there, I'll gladly remove it )
Thanks for checking it out!
For Dragon*Con this year, a friend and I wanted to do something that was both Doctor Who and awesome, so we decided on being the Weeping Angels.
Of course we've seen Penwiper's thread and borrowed a few techniques, such as the pantyhose for the skin parts and the hula hoop for the hem. We got to meet up and take some fantastic photos with her as well!
The main differences with ours were that we had completely different ways of doing the masks/hair and the wings.
We looked into a lot of different materials for the wings, and decided to use 1/4" EVA foam for it's weight and the heavy look it would give. After a lot of deliberation, we ended up using PVC as the "bones" of the wing, with hex wire to fill out the form of the wing, attaching the hex wire to the PVC with some random wire I had. Using the patterns I drafted, we used contact cement to glue everything together. The fronts and backs of the wings are different, and we sandwiched the hex wire and PVC skeleton between the pieced together layers.
The harnesses were kind of like backpacks in the end, using Lexan as a base, and slightly larger PVC pipe as a sleeve for the bones of the wing to hold it all together. I don't have any good photos of the harness, but I'll take some soon and post them ASAP.
The "wig" was made by covering our heads with plastic wrap, then paper mache-ing our heads to get it exactly fitted to each of us. After the paper mache dried, we sculpted the hair out of Model Magic. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that material, but it was on sale for about 1/4 of the normal price, so I bought all Michael's had, haha
For the masks, we bought Rigid Wrap, and simply followed the instructions on making a mask which came with the Wrap. After it had set up, we sculpted on top of it with more Model Magic. After we finished sculpting it all, I coated the insides of the masks with Mod Podge Hardcoat to stiffen it. They ended up stiff, but still kind of smushy, so it's not a hard awkward thing on your face. For the eyes, I dyed some scraps of silk organza and sinply glued it in. At first we had parts of a milkshake dome to make the eyes rounder, but I ended up picking it out midway through the con, so I could breathe through the eyes as well as the mask's nostrils.
The dress was made mainly by having a semi-fitted under layer, and a draped outer layer. The harness went on underneath the dress, with the PVC pipes sticking out through holes in the back, so we could take off the wings if we needed to. ( I forgot to take process photos of the dress :/ )
For the paint, I wanted to make this as low-cost as possible, so I planned on scoring some mistinted latex house paint in the correct color, and I guess the paint gods were with me that day at the hardware store, because the perfect shade of grey was there, and only $10 for a gallon! I also scored a gallon of nearly neutral white for the same price! The black ended up being acrylic paint, and $12 for less than half a gallon, which stinks. As it stands I have nearly a total of a gallon of extra paint...
Painting it, we used the normal method of highlights and lowlights, as well as using light splattering to get that "stony" look. On the wig/hat, mask and wings, we also used a textured spray paint before we started painting the greys, to help them look more rough and stony.
We didn't use a fabric medium on anything but the skin parts. As the fabric we used on the dresses wasn't stretchy, I didn't feel the need to break the bank on fabric medium for the dress.
All in all, it was great fun to wear, and wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined, or what you would think, with all the things going into it, and how cumbersome they are.
Meeting up with Penwiper and the rest of the Doctor Who costumers were definitely some of the highlights of this convention! I can't wait for next year!
Here are some of my favorite shots of the weekend:
I also have a lot of reference screen caps that I can post if anyone wants them. It was a lot of googling and looking at the Confidential episodes to see the hair and exactly how the effects team on the show actually created these... did you know the whole costume was pretty much latex (or some other rubbery material)? Crazy.
(There are much, much more detailed posts on how we made all of this on my (new) blog... I didn't want to make this as detailed, it would be pages and pages of just me posting large blocks of text, haha... If it's not ok to link from here to there, I'll gladly remove it
)Thanks for checking it out!
Last edited:
