Starcraft: Nova

[JazionKeera]

First costume post on this forum and it's for my most ambitious costume yet. Anyone familiar with Starcraft 2 should know of Nova, who's also the protagonist of the cancelled Starcraft Ghost. So with the HotS launch impending, I decided to make the costume with some help from friends (as a birthday present).

There aren't very many WIPs since it was built in about 2 days. There's one attached at the bottom of the thread. >.> Unglam face cropped out.

Reference picture used was from a wonderful fan concept art by Paul Kwon, AKA Zeronis on Deviantart.

This is pretty much the costume after I'd just completed it before the shoot on 3rd March. I'm improving it at the moment, redoing parts and reshaping things. Also adding lights (LED strips and EL wire) as well as updating the paint job for the HotS launch.

As mentioned, I did a shoot with Angelus's Kerrigan. So here're pictures.

And my favourite photo of the lot.

For more of the pictures, head over to the Facebook page. The Neo Tokyo Project

Thanks for reading my post, hoping to post more updates once I'm done with my upgrades!

 

[Sheol]

Welcome to the RPF, and let me say this is awesome. Built in 2 days? Congratulations, you have skills there...
What is made of? I'm interested specially in the middle section, chest, abdomen and below. Is this a catsuit with latex or something? What are the legs pads made of?

It's very interesting how you put this suit toghether. Congrats again!

 

[JazionKeera]

@Sheol:
I originally wanted to build it off a zentai suit/catsuit. However, the sizing for it made it difficult to move in so I ended up sewing two pieces of compression wear together and adding a zipper. It's basically the same thing either way.

After that, added pieces of black foam. I'm not sure what it's called exactly and I was too busy building to really find out, haha. It's extremely flexible and is very nice to work with for form-fitting armour like this. Part of the backpack is made of EVA foam (the yoga mat type) because it needed to be a bit stiffer structurally. That's what the entirety of the costume is made of, just the base suit and armour pieces that were glued directly on.

 

[JazionKeera]

Updates!

Took a break for about a week and then spent a couple of days upgrading my suit with a new paint job (that I still want to touch up because I love weathering and having the chance to play with my airbrush) as well as lighting! Will find more WIP pictures and either edit them in or post again.

The lighting still needs to be improved and repaired but I have to say, it was very useful being a walking torchlight. My friends had no issues finding me at the Singapore launch of Heart of the Swarm.

But pictures say a thousand words so here we go.

Angelus as Kerrigan and that's the two of us with Kaeo Milker, senior producer for HotS.

As for improvements, there are a ton more that I'd like to make. Diffusing the lights better so that the points of light aren't obvious is one, as well as adding more lights to the back of the suit. Adjusting my wig as well. If there are any suggestions, I'd be more than glad to hear them out.

Including the lighting and batteries (of which I had a ton), total build cost is still under $200 Singapore dollars or about $160 USD. I do wish I had more WIP pictures but it was such a quick build that there wasn't much time.

 

[Ruddigger]

Wow, that's incredible, especially for a speed build.

 

[Sheol]

Really outstanding. Nice going with the compressive gear, it fits way better than a zentai catsuit, I'm going the same way with mine.
As for the rest, simply amazing. No need to say more. Absolutely great job!

 

[XenXen]

I think you would suit Bunny Riven from League of Legends well :x. Just a suggestion maybe you should wear a pair of socks to cover the flesh at your ankle to prevent the shoe from looking like slippers. Nice and pretty cosplay i would say. Though i-its not like i am praising you or anything >.>. Would love to see the paint job and lighting improved.

 

[J326]

built over 2 days?! I bow to a goddess of cosplay!

 

[JazionKeera]

@Ruddigger and @J326: Thanks for the compliments, I had help though. So I'm not sure if it counts? All I know was that it was a blast working on a costume with everyone, though I don't feel like repeating that rush! ... but know I'm likely to because what costumer doesn't rush costumes before an event?

@Sheol: I think it would work pretty well, the main issue I had with it was seam lines. If you can sew well, then a fitted zentai suit is the way to go but simply sewing together compression gear is the easy way out when you just need the base.

@Xenxen: ... -Smacks- Yeah, I forgot to grab another pair of black socks when I had to run back for my shoes. Good thing my feet aren't really visible from the front and the LEDs are distracting. :x We can try to fix the lighting another time after I touch up the paint job. Got to work on my next costume first though.

 

[JazionKeera]

I'm on the Starcraft Global Invasion album on Facebook, woot! Singapore represent. You'll have to excuse me for being excited, it's my first full suit of armour so this is a pretty new thing for me. >.<

Managed to scrounge up some WIP pictures so here goes. Noting that the suit was entirely freehanded and drawn on using tailoring chalk, before cutting pieces to size and pasting them on. The mannequin that I was using gave me some problems because of its annoyingly awkward pose so it isn't as symmetrical as I would like, but fixed some of them using a dress form.

Since most of these pictures were taken with a definite lack of sleep, you're going to have to excuse the extremely unglamorous shots. ._. Thanks to the lack of chronological shots, I'm going to have to try to arrange them as best as I can.

This is what the front looked like after the first few hours of work, I was still learning at this point so the speed was extremely slow.

This was when I removed the paint and started revising the paint job, so you'll notice that it's a lot darker in colour than the original photoshoot pictures that I posted.

Suit finished but without lighting, still missing some details and needing touch-ups. You may notice some details that I ended up revising to look better. Also, cute dogs are cute.

Back of the suit, including spinal cord detail and backpack.

Suit with revised paint job (still going to work on it more but I love the blue). I know I have a shot of the painted suit before I started cutting it open to place lighting inside on my DSLR somewhere but I need to scrounge it up. I'll edit it into this post once I track it down.

Lighting test!

And me wearing it... excuse the messy hair. This was taken with like... 12 hours left to the launch. I have to say my favourite part of the suit is still the EL wire, it's so gorgeous. Having it a slightly different colour really brought out the contrast from the rest of it a bit more. /artistic interpretation /excuses

Suit was painted using a mixture of rattle cans, hand painting and airbrushing. It was my first time using my airbrush, I'm now officially in love with it and am looking for an excuse to use it for all my projects.

That's about it for my work in progress post. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I'm pretty sure either me or Xenxen can answer them, since he was nice enough to stay up very late with me on a lot of days working on the suit. Thanks, man. :x

 

[XenXen]

Next time if you need help, gotta let me know early >.< rushing like that isn't good for the mind, body and wallet. ^^ but looking at the last picture made it really worthwhile. It really shows the fruits of our labour and i get to see your weird face XD. My regret was not being able to do a better job on the lighting, painting and detailing due to the lack of time and planning. Also should've took more unglam photos of you.

 

[kwalsh0000]

Cracking work! You both really look the part and ready to kill some protoss!

 

[JazionKeera]

@Xen: Didn't want to have to ask for help but ended up being super distracted and stressed out by school. >.< ... And what's that about my weird face? >.> Blah, anyway, I'll let you know when I want to work on the lights... need to finish my next costume and update the paint job first.

@Kwalsh: Thank you! Nova's one of my all-time favourite characters so it's heartening to hear that. Definitely think there's a lot more to work on in terms of my portrayal but I'm pretty happy with the results.

 

[JazionKeera]

Thought I'd update with a quick photo of what the back of the costume looks like. The lights are a little messed up in this shot though, but it's still my favourite. After this, I remade the back light and added weathering but I don't have any of what it looks like when worn yet. Soon. :x