Newbie Creating Her First Costume with Foam...and Running into Issues

[darkaegis]

Hi guys!

A friend pointed me to these forums as a potential way to figure out what I can do to fix my foam armor. I am trying to replicate Frigga's chest piece from Thor: A Dark World (see my reference below).



My issue is that while I now have the armor shaping well around my waist, I'm losing my chest definition. I have no idea how to fix this. I tried re-heating the foam and using medicine balls (or Chi Balls) to re-create the breast plate, but it doesn't seem to be working. Any help anyone might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to take this to Dragon*Con and will be really sad if I have to abandon this at home because it doesn't work.

Pictures of what it looks like now on the dummy.



And on me.



The chest piece alone used to look like this before I assembled it with the other parts and started adding darts, etc to get it to fit better around my body.



So, dear people of the RPF, help?

 

[GasmanR]

Have a look on YouTube for The Evil Ted channel. Evil Ted Smith has a fantastic series of tutorials on working with foam and in your case has a tutorial on building female cosplay armour. Hope this helps.

Chris

 

[darkaegis]

Have a look on YouTube for The Evil Ted channel. Evil Ted Smith has a fantastic series of tutorials on working with foam and in your case has a tutorial on building female cosplay armour. Hope this helps.

Chris

Hey Chris,

Thank you. I am more concerned about time and material. I don't have enough material to remake the entire chest piece and I am running out of time. The tutorial is fantastic for building individual 'boob' armor but what I am attempting to replicate doesn't really have individual boob armor, but more of a uni-boob with some definition beneath and between that isn't as sharp as what is described in those videos. I may try with the material I do have to see if doing individual pieces helps I just am really worried that this won't work

 

[blue2k]

It could be that the material has reached its pliability limit. Making the chest one way, then adjusting the remaining material to reach around the waist, it has to distort to accomodate. There is only so much surface area to work with, unless you add more material. The only suggestion I can think of given your current limitations, is to re-adjust the chest, but after heating, add the ball buck to the sides of the breast area closer to the armpit rather than in the middle. This should pull material from the sides, rather than the gap between the breasts. If nothing else, it might solve the "uniboob" problem.

 

[WilsonUndead]

Since I haven't actually DONE any work in foam yet, but I have done tons of research on it, does anyone wi experience think that this could be fixed by doing the whole peaks and valleys type cuts in the back? I saw a tutorial on YouTube about doing details that way, I'm wondering if you make the cuts where the definition should be if it would make a subtle enough difference or even any difference really?
i was going to suggest Evil Ted too, but you already addressed that lol

 

[harrisonp]

I've achieved my best definition with foam by doing multiple cycles of heating the piece and then working it over my knee like an anvil, I guess, and sometimes an elbow for tighter shapes and curves, probably similar to what you tried with the medicine balls. Also I would suggest overdoing it a bit to account for it trying to return to its natural flat state.

 

[jellis359]

Make slits in the back of the foam and place straightened out clothes hanger wire in the slits, reseal with glue. Heat and rebend

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