Need help/advice making foam template for bulky costume

[Riceball]

Hey all. My daughter has commissioned me to make her Halloween costume for this year, she wants to be Ochako from the anime, My Hero Academia.

Overall, it looks pretty straightforward and I'm pretty confident that I can make templates for everything to build in foam, except for the boots. The boots are kind of puffy and stick out on the outside and in back and I'm not sure how best to go about making a template for it. I've seen a video where one person used chicken wire to create a form that she then foiled and taped over to make a template in the usual way, but I'd rather not have to mess with chicken wire if I don't have to. Is there another way of making a template for the boots? I have some thin foam that I was thinking of wrapping around my daughter's leg to bulk it up and then use foil and tape over that, would that work or is there an easier or better method?

Thanks in advance.

 

[SMP Designs]

If you have a figure of it, you can make a template out of that with tape and then enlarge it. Otherwise, I'd say, take a block of floral foam, carve it out, cover it in plastic wrap and tape and use that. Then determine the enlargement needed and blow it up by whatever method you prefer.

 

[Riceball]

The floral foam is an idea but the problem with that is that I'd have no idea of how to sculpt it so that I'd know it would be to scale. But I'll definitely keep it in mind. Thanks for the advice though.

 

[JPH]

Do you have side and front views ?

 

[Riceball]

Do you have side and front views ?

Yes, I do. I gathered a bunch of pics for reference.

 

[Strikerkc]

I think you could just do ratios.

Looking at the first pic you posted, the boot shows up as "5cm" tall (including the knee) the knee is 1cm tall, and the boot is 2cm wide in the middle. assuming you want to sculpt it at about 24cm tall (seemed like a decent size for getting detailed shape, but small enough to not take forever, just eyeballing my ruler), that means the block needs to be 10cm+ wide and deep, so you can sculpt the 9.6cm wide boot, etc.

that way you can sculpt to what looks right, then double check dimensions, and either add some putty or something to fill back out, or sculpt it down some more.

 

[JPH]

get a bunch of aluminum foil. Fold it over until you have a piece slightly larger than you need. Then start bending the edges until you have a piece out of foil that you like. It is very maleable, and it holds it's shape.

 

[ShackMan]

Like StrikerKC said, get your sizing from ratios. Take the pictures and measure her leg (front/side) as well as the diameter of the boots. Then take measurements of your daughter's leg, and calculate the ratio between what you measured (daughter) and the image's leg. Then use that ratio to upscale the boot dimensions (from the pictures) into real life dimensions scaled to your daughter.