Dany Qarth costume process

So I made a costume for Dragon Con this year!
I did the last of Daenery's Qarth costumes, from the Game of Thrones show. It's actually the first costume I'm more or less making form scratch- I've put together a few costumes before, and though none were store-bought per se, I usually shopped for clothing that could be modified and slapped together to look like the outfit I wanted. :P

Here is the costume from the show for reference:

I only took pictures of my process for the vest, since it was the most complicated part. For the purple dress underneath, I found the cloth (while I was in Shanghai... that's another story) and enlisted the help of a tailor since I don't own a sewing machine now. The brown skirt under the dress was a maxi skirt I cut up and spray painted.

I started with the duct-tape-tshirt mannequin technique.
For those who don't know, it's just a cheap way to make a mannequin in your exact size.
First wear a t-shirt that you don't want anymore, and get someone to wrap duct tape all around you so it becomes a snug shell on your body. Cut it down the back to get yourself out and tape it back up for a mannequin (stuffing the inside is optional).

I marked the cuts I needed to make on the mannequin and proceeded to cut pieces of newspaper to fit the cuts. (I've also seen people cut up their mannequin for the pieces, but I wanted to reuse it.)

For the boobs part I figured it was just faster to cut up a bra I didn't want and sew it in, LOL.

Using the newspaper pieces as a templates, I cut the final plates out of craft foam (kid's craft stuff that you can get at any Michaels- fucking great for imitating leather!)

As for how I joined all the plates together, I started out sewing them. I would cut a strip of sturdy cloth to the shape of the seam, about a 0.5 inch wide, and sew both sides to the foam. I had to hand sew because a machine won't work on the thick foam.

Then I realized how needlessly time-consuming that was AND PULLED OUT A HOT GLUE GUN.

Tadaa, that went much faster.

(P.S Much thanks to my friend Andrea for the many pointers! ^u^)

When I got bored of gluing, I switched to scuffing up the foam surface with scissors. As I had hoped, this did wonders towards making the final painted surface look weathered.

In the show, the collar was higher and the cuts in the back were slightly different, but I went for easier cuts since hair would be covering it anyways.

I did the big fat stitches with old hair ties- yay creativity! And the picture on the right is after spay painting.

Then I hand painted the seams and some areas of the leather with deep brown acrylic.

Heres the final!! Yes I used my real hair, since I recently made it pretty light anyways.

That's the full costume. I'll definitely wear it again, and there are still improvements I'd like to make; such as the purple ribbon trim on her dress (I simply couldn't find the right ribbon to use), and sculpting dragons!

Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I hope I can improve it and get better pictures sometime. :)

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And I must re-post this photo form my Dragon Con entry, because it was perfect:

Heroes con report

I am back from Heroes Con!
The convention was a blast, and I am proud to say I felt like my shit was finally together this time (banner, products, prints, setup). I sold very few prints and stickers, even though there was plenty of traffic. The things that sell at conventions every year are always unpredictable. On the other hand the last two days just flew by because I was bent over my table constantly pumping out commissions! O_o So all worked out well in the end.

I also got some promo in for the webcomic that I am working on (see here ^_^), but seeing as I've only barely posted 9 pages, I wanted to ease into the marketing. I'll keep on updating once a week, and let everyone know when the story really gets going.

Thank you to everyone who made Heroes Con rock. I still feel like it's one of the few conventions that showcase artists over everything else, and gives artists both a chance to display their work and meet tons of fans. I met a few artists and writers that I admired, and got in quality partying time with fellow Studio Revolver members. That was a gooood convention!

Here are some of my convention sketches to wrap things up. :)