Spyro the Dragon help!

Dessa

Sr Member
So, my mother has wanted to do this for a few years now, but she's put it off in favor of my roommate's and my costumes instead. She wants to do Spyro the Dragon. And actually Spyro, not a gijinka version (she doesn't even know what that is ^^;)

For the main body, I'm pretty sure Mom's planning on just doing purple pants and shirt, for ease of wear, so what we'd need help with would be the head, the wings, the tail, and feet.

The wings I don't suspect will be too hard, since I've done wings before (I helped my friend do Blue Fairy wings from Pinocchio), and the same basic premise should work.

The tail will probably be stuffed, but I don't know how to make it stick out from the back of the costume and not just hang down limply (or, worse, pull her pants down), and still let her sit down in chairs (she works office staff at the con we go to).

For the feet, I figure to do shaped boot covers for the back feet/her feet (we've done normal boot covers before, not shaped), and for the front feet/her hands do something that goes on top her hands, so she doesn't have to take them off to work.

And then there's the head. The only thing I've ever done for heads/masks before is either paper mache/plaster (for a Pikachu head) and craft foam (for a Journey mask). I'm not sure if Mom wants a full head, or more of a hat that you can see her face under, but the biggest problems are that a) we live in a small apartment and have unpredictable weather, and b) Mom has a very limited budget (luckily, she works at a craft store and gets discount.


Any suggestions/help anyone could give would be awesome. The con is the first weekend in April, 2015.
 
for the head, my biggest recommendation is looking up a fursuit tutorial, articulating masks. you can make it out of foam or out of resin or mesh. The one I'm making for my sons costume is resin. I sculpted the mask face I wanted out of clay onto a cast of his face I made using skin safe plaster bandages I had (you can use a foam mannequin head, they cost $6, find one close to her face proportion) I covered the sculpture in 6 layers of rubber latex (Cost $11 with coupon, still have half a bottle left, some people use silicone but its pricey) Once dried do not remove, coat it in a thin layer of vaseline. Then you take clay and make a bridge on the dried latex to make like a little damn across. I poured plaster on one side. Once it dried, I removed the clay bridge, added vaseline to the side of the plaster the bridge was on and added plaster on the other side. This will ensure two pieces that come apart to make a mother mould to give your mould support. I then made a slush cast with resin (look up slush cast on youtube) by leaving my latex mould inside my mother mould and slushing resin (cost me $16 with a coupon, have alot left over for future products) in at least 5 layers. This will basically give you a skeleton. You can leave it closed mouth, or make hinges for it to have a moving jaw. Cover it in your fabric and voila, beautiful mask :) I know it sounds like alot, but It worked the first time. And the fursuit people have lots of tips for trial and errors.
with a hat type, you can luckily cover any hat up pretty much with fabric and add foam for extra shape. I hope this helps and good luck!
 
I didn't know what a gijinka was until somone on AnimeCon told me what it was. But apparently, my Smaug would qualify as one.

The fursuit suggestion would be my guess too. I have a nice leg tutorial here

Matrices.net
 
I'd say your best bet would be to make a harness/backpack sort of rig that loops over her shoulders... with a semi-rigid back plate. That way you could attach the wings AND the tail without worrying about them sagging down her shirt or, even worse, pulling down her pants. You could cover the front straps with Spyro's yellow striped chest pattern (maybe velcroed on?) and she could still wear the purple shirt underneath.
 
I didn't even think about the harness idea, especially since I was already figuring on that for the wings themselves.

That leg tutorial is wonderful. We should be able to work with that to make boot covers for Mom's feet.

I've downloaded the Spyro pep files, so I'm gonna print it out and play with it, since I've never done any pep before, and we'll see where that goes.

Never even thought about using wig heads as bases for building things on... we have tons of them laying around (they're super-cheap around Halloween time here), so I can abuse a few and it's no big deal.
 
I didn't even think about the harness idea, especially since I was already figuring on that for the wings themselves.

That leg tutorial is wonderful. We should be able to work with that to make boot covers for Mom's feet.

I've downloaded the Spyro pep files, so I'm gonna print it out and play with it, since I've never done any pep before, and we'll see where that goes.

Never even thought about using wig heads as bases for building things on... we have tons of them laying around (they're super-cheap around Halloween time here), so I can abuse a few and it's no big deal.


ya wig bases are great, and to help make sure they are big enough you can build them up with crumbled paper or plastic bags and tape, that way its not too small. Good luck with whatever you go with!
 
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