Since we always do at least a duo (when TheLittleSis or TheMom don’t join us), we needed to find a cosplay for Neevillia in the FullMetal Alchemist universe. And of course, what better duo with Alphonse Elric than… Barry the Chopper obviously!
Seriously, it happened exactly like that :
*watching FullMetal Alchemist Brotherhood*
Sheldora: It would be pretty cool to make Alphonse’s armor in cosplay.
Neevillia: And me, what character would I do? Barry?
And just like that, it was decided. Yes, Ed should have been the obvious choice, since he is the main character of the story. Without mentioning that it would have been far easier, even with the arm automail, or even eventually the leg one. But no, making the psychopath serial killer in a big complicate armor, had seemed more obvious to us. And after all, who can dislike Barry?
With the « Making-of » posts, I go over the whole conception of a character, including the mistakes sometimes made, and when possible the sewing part (for which I don’t always have pictures…).
1. Costume Choice
For Barry, like Alphonse, I based the armor on the manga version, but for the color on the Brotherhood anime. Yeah because in the beautiful 300 pages artbook FMA there are… 2 pictures of Barry, counting the one on the cover and a tiny one like a cameo on a corner.
2. Pieces list
Barry has fewer pieces than Alphonse but compensates for that with two big accessories. And the armor pieces are falsely simple.
For the armor: helmet, bust, collar, arms, forearms, gauntlets, shoulder pads, and legs. For the costume « non-armor » part: some sort of harness and a belt.
For the accessories: a knife and a chopper, and last but not least: the sewing part: a ripped tunic.
Like Alphonse’s, the making-of will be cut into several parts, probably three.
3. Crafting
If not otherwise specified, the whole armor is made with 5mm EVA foam.
- The helmet :
Like Alphonse, I started Barry’s costume with the helmet. And like Alphonse, it’s based on my The Mighty Thor helmet pattern. So here’s again the bowl-like base of Thor’s.
But because the original one was used as a scratching post (thanks cats…), I had to redo it. I used this opportunity to make it a bit longer at the neck by prolonging the pattern in the back.
The most difficult part of the helmet is of course the skeleton face of Barry.
I knew I would use foam clay to model the organic shapes, but I still needed to pattern the pieces for the base.
The eyes/eyebrows part was quite easy, but the nose and the jaw took a lot of adjustments. The cheekbones and the nose were too flat, then the nose was too prominent, the jaw too align with the nose, the mouth was too open… And so on.
To give you some ideas of the struggle, here are all the prototype patterns :
But finally, I landed on some shape that I thought was mainly ok :
We can see some prototypes and leftovers in the back of this picture... And the first helmet’s base with teeth and claw marks.
Because the jaw was a little too wide, I put some strips of foam inside. It will be useful later to help the helmet to sit correctly on Neevillia’s chin. I put one in the back of the eyes, but this one will be removed later.
Bonus, it made an awesome room decoration.
Note Alphonse’s cameo too!
After that, I did the back edge of the helmet, giving some Vador vibes (but cooler, because with a skull part, it looks like a biker helmet, and because: Star Wars... yikes, Team Star Trek here!)
I just needed to sculpt the skull part of the helmet. For that, I used foam clay. On the thickest part of the brows, I put aluminum foil, to use less clay, and help the shape dry faster (since like that there was less clay thickness)
At first, I also put aluminum foil under the nose, but there was not a lot of thickness here, so I removed it, explaining the ugly surface.
The teeth were sculpted beforehand. I did two types of teeth with polymer clay; a big one and a small one, I then made a mold, to have similar teeth. The fact that they were already hard when I sculpt the face helped to place them without smashing them.
The triangular teeth on the EVA base were just here to be a placement guide. I later cut them to avoid having too much thickness, as you can see in the picture :
The three decorative lines were engraved with the Dremel, like the screw near the eyes.
For the horns/ears, it’s too bad, I don’t have any picture of the progression… Because they needed to fit with the curve of the helmet, I sculpted one directly on the helmet with aluminum foil and plastiline, and then I patterned the shape obtained with masking tape. I got a front and a back pieces. After that, I just needed to glue it on the helmet. Ready to be painted :
Like Al, I forgot to take a picture before the first base coat...
To apologize: remember the eyebrow shape pieces for Alphonse’s helmet (Here)? I couldn’t help myself :
- The bust :
Even more than for Alphonse, for Barry I had to drastically change Neevillia’s silhouette. Let’s be honest: Barry is clearly on the plumpy side…
So like for Alphonse, I started the build with a general base at Neevillia’s size, it will be used later to hold the exterior layer and to prevent it to move around.
For Barry, my plan was to make a structure similar to the base and enlarge it with diamond shapes in the middle, a little like I did Palutena’s forearm. After that, all junctions would have been hidden with 2mm EVA foam covering the whole bust.
At first, it looked promising :
But I thought It looked too much like a swimming rubber ring. So I did some trials and errors, for example with bigger diamond shapes in the middle :
Clearly not very conclusive. I adjusted some more, here and there, till I finally found the good shape. But my pieces were in rough shape with all my tests. I choose to redo it, using my prototype as a pattern, slicing it into pieces. With the shapes reported on new foam, I had this :
and after assembly :
To have a homogeneous finish I still decided to cover the whole thing with 2mm foam. But it was a pain in the butt. At first, it was easy, the piece could lay flat :
But after the curve, the 2mm foam started to make pleats, so the goal was to push all the pleats after the piece, in the excess part, but it was easier to say than to do. I still got some pleats on the side, but for a first try, it’s not that bad, considering the volume of the pieces.
Since the front and the back had a hard time keeping the curved shape, I reinforced the inside with a foam stripe slightly shorter, forcing the foam into the right position :
On the left, the stripe is not glued yet, on the right it’s obvious that it’s holding the curve pretty well.
Finally, to fix the exterior on the interior base, I used, like Alphonse’s, spacers, at the shoulders, and at the sizes, made with 4cm insulation board (also known as « pink foam »). 6 spacers on each side, and 4 at each shoulder.
I numbered each spacer, to help me put them in place, but since they are all the same, it’s not very important.
The spacers glued to the base, I just had to glue the exterior bust.
Not gonna lie, the last spacers were kinda hard to get.
And finally, here it is :
- The collar :
Barry’s collar is in three parts: the main collar, a flat piece that lay on the shoulder, and a plate with rivets in the front.
I first thought I used Alphonse’s collar, with some changes, adjusting it to add the flat shoulder part, but it was not very promising :
The collar was too short and lay at a weird angle. I had to make the opening range larger while keeping a thigh base to fit on the bust. Again, after some adjustments here and there, I had something like that :
After being cut into a single piece :
Here it's just the collar part, I still had to do the flat parts. For that, I patterned it directly on the bust with some masking tape :
The piece is then glued on the collar at a 45° angle, like that, the collar is slightly tilted away and does not sit perfectly straight.
After some fighting to assemble it (I won!) :
Bonus, here is my best impression of a corpse.
And it’s on the very flattering picture that I ended this part 1, stay tuned for part 2...
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