Witchblade
I've been looking for a cosplay to wear while guesting at convention that; while impressive technically, wouldn't impede me in my duties. The Witchblade seemed to fit everything I needed.
I started out my finding a free model of a hand online and cleaning it up and resizing it to fit my hand's dimensions. I also sliced it into sections that would allow the hand to separate after the glove was cast and allow for easy removal. After printing on my polyprinter in ABS, tiny magnets were glued in to keep it pieces attached.
The gauntlet was sculpted from a chevant clay. Looking back, it might have been too soft as it made claying it up for molding difficult and I had to buy a freezing spray to use on the edges to help them stay hard.
Each side of the mold was made from 2 layers of Shell Shock, reinforced with a layer of Plasti Paste II. Gems were added as "keys". The finished mold was cleaned out sculpting tools and given a final scrub with an old tooth brush and some dish cleaner.
When it came to casting the gauntlet, I mixed aluminum powder into Dragonskin 10NM, along with some black and green pigment. This gave the unpainted cast a wonderful silver look; which was a good and bad thing. Good as a base, but hard to paint over. Now, the only thing that sticks to silicone, is more silicone. So I had to paint the glove with a mixture of Psycho Paint and Silc Pig pigments, thinned down with Novocs gloss solvent. I first airbrushed over the 'skin'. The solvent gave it a nice shine, but not much in the way of coloring. I ended up just using a brush to add weathering and ambient occlusion to the recesses.
Painting the gems was scary. I needed to have the paint mixture opaque enough to look good, but not so much that it would impede it from curing. I learned that oil paint can be mixed into Psych Paint as a colorant, but didn't get to use it this time.
I plan on recasting it in the future, but tinting certain sections (like the gems and skin) for better color.
I started out my finding a free model of a hand online and cleaning it up and resizing it to fit my hand's dimensions. I also sliced it into sections that would allow the hand to separate after the glove was cast and allow for easy removal. After printing on my polyprinter in ABS, tiny magnets were glued in to keep it pieces attached.
The gauntlet was sculpted from a chevant clay. Looking back, it might have been too soft as it made claying it up for molding difficult and I had to buy a freezing spray to use on the edges to help them stay hard.
Each side of the mold was made from 2 layers of Shell Shock, reinforced with a layer of Plasti Paste II. Gems were added as "keys". The finished mold was cleaned out sculpting tools and given a final scrub with an old tooth brush and some dish cleaner.
When it came to casting the gauntlet, I mixed aluminum powder into Dragonskin 10NM, along with some black and green pigment. This gave the unpainted cast a wonderful silver look; which was a good and bad thing. Good as a base, but hard to paint over. Now, the only thing that sticks to silicone, is more silicone. So I had to paint the glove with a mixture of Psycho Paint and Silc Pig pigments, thinned down with Novocs gloss solvent. I first airbrushed over the 'skin'. The solvent gave it a nice shine, but not much in the way of coloring. I ended up just using a brush to add weathering and ambient occlusion to the recesses.
Painting the gems was scary. I needed to have the paint mixture opaque enough to look good, but not so much that it would impede it from curing. I learned that oil paint can be mixed into Psych Paint as a colorant, but didn't get to use it this time.
I plan on recasting it in the future, but tinting certain sections (like the gems and skin) for better color.
