As I have often said on this blog, the “Fantastic Beasts” cosplay group is a cosplay project that I really like. And that’s why I come back to it often. After having made Pickett in 2017 then more recently the niffler. I wanted to create another emblematic animal from the film: the occamy!
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
To be honest I had already made, in 2018, an Occamy, in the form of a fixed figurine in a teapot. But as I said in this article, even if I still love this accessory very much, it is difficult to transport it, because it is fragile and bulky, so I keep it as a shelf decoration (It collects dust wonderfully well, by the way...).
Here, as with the niffler, I choose a concept of an articulated bi-material artdoll, partly sculpted and partly sewn. All of course based on the appearance of the occamy as we can see in the Fantastic Beasts film:
2. Pieces list
If we decompose the occamy (this phrase is strange...), we have: a vaguely birdlike head, a serpentine body but covered in feathers, and finally wings. To this, we will of course have to add an internal structure to articulate everything.
Fun fact, in Newt Scamander's description of the occamy in his book (published before the film), it says that the occamy also has a pair of legs. This element not having been kept in the cinematographic version, I would do without it.
Which, by the way, suits me, the legs are quite boring to make, you have to do a lot of baking, and you obviously have to do several, and symmetrical ones. (Again, to find out more about making the legs I refer you to the making-of of the niffler).
3. Sewing
- The Body: preparatory work
Making an occamy to accompany my Newt cosplay had been in my plans for a while since after the niffler, it didn't seem insurmountable. The problem was the feather body. The fur of the niffler had been extremely easy to find, but a fabric giving the idea of feathers, moreover in shades of blue/green/purple, was immediately much more complicated...
I finally had a revelation: using knitting thread that is supposed to imitate feathers or fur!
With that all I had to do was knit it into a tube, reducing the diameter to form the tail. Or even simpler, crochet the body, by crocheting an increasingly wide spiral, like an amigurumi.
First problem: I don’t know how to crochet.
But like not at all. I have never managed to get past the chain step (which is, for those who don't know it, the extreme basis of crochet). So I can crochet a very long line of single stitches but that's it. And already I couldn't do it with a simple thread, so with a thread which (because of the hair) prevents me from easily distinguishing the stitches, there was no way. So only the solution of circular knitting remained.
Second problem: I don't know how to knit in a circle either.
Yes, the idea of the knitted body was a good idea... But as I already knew how to knit (in garter stitch, basically). I wasn't starting from nothing.
For those new to knitting, knitting in a circle is quite simple, using circular needles, basically, needles tied together with a cable. Like this :
There are quite a few tutorials on the internet for knitting snoods, for example. These needles are also used for flat knitting when you have a lot of stitches.
Except that these needles are made to make large circles, like for a snood, so impossible for a small diameter like mine. You can possibly (and still very difficult) find some for a small circle, like socks, so these are small needles of 2/3 mm in diameter, and my wool requires size 6...
Solution: Knit with five needles!
These are double-pointed needles, four of which will each hold a quarter of the stitches in your left hand, and a fifth empty one, in your right hand, which you will use for knitting.
Of course, at this stage, I don't know how to knit with five needles either. But that I can learn. So I started by doing a test. Obviously, I didn't have five double-pointed needles of the same size, I used skewers. Which is far from ideal but it works. The first try gave this:
Which, honestly isn't too bad for a first try, apart from the stitches used to change needles which were much too loose. To make it easier, I cast on 12 stitches per needle (i.e. a circle of 48 stitches) and made no increase or decrease.
For those wondering how to knit with five needles, it’s actually very simple. It's actually knitted with two needles, but you change needles every quarter of a row. Basically, if we number the hands from 1 to 5 like this:
5 being the empty needle not present in the photo.
You knit the 12 stitches of 1 with 5, which empties 1 of its stitches, then we knit 2 with 1, 3 with 2, and 4 with 3. At the end of the row, 4 becomes the new empty needle.
Third problem: (The last one promised). Since the thread was supposed to have the appearance of feathers or fur, it risked having a direction, the direction of the fur.
So I couldn't start from the larger diameter to finally reduce the number of stitches to form the tail. It was necessary to do the opposite. However, it is easier to start knitting in a circle with a large number of stitches to reduce it.
I therefore did a second test to establish a knitting plan, noting at which row I increased:
(Yes, because of a questionable color choice, it looks like a big wool carrot)
The holes at regular intervals are simply my stitch increases, later I used another stitch-increasing technique which avoids making a hole. Yes I didn't know how to increase/reduce stitches either, I knit scarves (badly), that's all.
Once the knitting plan was estimated, I did a final test with a thread of the same type as the one I planned to use. Incidentally, it was this thread that gave me the idea for the body.
As this type of thread is knitted with needles much larger than skewers, this time I used pencils. (Who said “McGuyver”?) This allowed me, among other things, to see that I planned too wide for the final diameter of the body.
In the meantime, I ordered blue/green “feather” thread and (finally) double needles. When I started knitting it, I realized that the color was not suitable at all and was much too dull, too gray. Fortunately, I found someone on eBay who was selling a lot of balls that were much more suitable. On the other hand, no reference to the thread, so I couldn't buy more of it if I felt like it.
- The inner body:
The serpentoid body of the occamy had to be articulated. I simply used the same technique as for the niffler with an aluminum wire structure. As the body is only a long rod, I choose a slightly larger diameter, with 4mm. I first bought 4mm for the niffler before switching to 3mm. So obviously I had a small stock of 4mm aluminum wire.
For the wings, which I will come back to in detail a little later, I wanted something that was both thin but a little resistant, so that they would not sag. Except that I only had 1.5 or 3mm, the first too weak, the second too thick. So in the end, I simply doubled the 1.5 by twisting it around itself. This way it remained thin but more resistant.
Finally, to prevent the padding from peeking out between the stitches of the body, I sewed a fabric body (entirely by hand, because I don't like machine sewing), closing it directly around the frame and padding.
Once completely sewn it looks like this:
- The exterior body:
Once I had my knitting plan established, knitting the body was quite easy, and quite repetitive. The basis of knitting is 8 stitches, or 2 stitches per needle, which is a bit of a hassle at first. I had to start creating the stitches again two or three times to avoid a hole that was too large in the middle:
Then it’s just a matter of regular increase until you get the maximum diameter.
At this point, the increases are finished. I knitted the body without the sewn body for as long as possible, but when I got to the base of the wings, I threaded the knitting onto the fabric body, to be able to wedge the frames of the wings between the stitches, it would have been complicated to put them in place once the knitting was completed.
A few rows after the wings, I realized that the padded body forced me to knit a little looser, so I made a slight reduction in the diameter of the knitting to compensate.
4. Crafting
- The head:
The head of the occamy was made in the same way as the niffler’s, in polymer clay. But unlike the niffler, for which I used tinted fimo (making a mixture of three to obtain the right shade), here I used white Sculpey. The niffler had the advantage of having the color of the snout and legs very distinct from the body, but for the occamy, it would have been more complicated to find the right color, especially since some clays tend to vary slightly after baking.
As usual, I first made a structure out of aluminum foil:
Structure that I glued to a jam jar lid, it makes it easier to handle everything. The marker circle on the lid corresponds to the diameter of the body, to not exceed that so the two can then be assembled.
Afterwards, again as for the niffler, it's just several modeling sessions, saving the progress by going to the oven:
A first pass to obtain a vague overall shape:
Then a second to start defining the shape of the head to the neck ratio:
You can see in this photo that I started to estimate the location of the eyes, and that I marked, once the head was cooked, the location of the horns.
Since we are talking about the horns, just like my first occamy in his teapot, I modeled them separately, on an aluminum wire, and baked them separately, to be able to insert them and manipulate the head without risking deforming them by accident.
Between two modeling sessions, I also painted the eyes, on glass cabochons.
The horns are then inserted using their aluminum wire into the head, during the third modeling session, their base is reinforced with fresh polymer clay.
To estimate the location of the eyes, I use unpainted glass cabochons of the same diameter as the eyes, to avoid damaging them by risking scratching them.
And if you're wondering what the big line on the top of the head is, it's criterium peel that's integrated into the fresh Sculpey... No big deal, it'll be hidden later.
The fourth modeling session was used to put on certain details, with the sort of frontal ridges on each side, the hollow of the mouth, the central edge of the beak, and the nostrils. Which are also higher than in the previous photos. I started from the beginning to mark them so that they were sufficiently recessed, but ultimately their location did not suit me, it was too low. So I filled in the existing holes and made new nostrils, less hollow but higher.
During this fourth session, I also dropped my head from the height of my desk. With a lot of handling, the lid of the jar unscrewed slightly and ended up falling. Besides the fact that the head hit my trash can right on one of the front ridges on which I had spent a very, very long time, flattening it in part, the head ended its course, or rather its fall, on the horns...
Fortunately, they detached from the base but did not have a break along the length, probably thanks to the reinforcement of the aluminum wire. Despite being blocked before baking, we can see that they remain cracked at the base:
I finally glued them back together with superglue, the remaining micro cracks will be hidden by the feathers.
The fifth and final modeling session was only to place the eyes. I had from the start planned to insert them during the last bake, because even if the cabochons are made of glass and resist heat well, I was afraid that a succession of baking would end up damaging the painting of the eyes, with bubbles or cracks.
But when I looked at my reference images to check the placement of the eyes and their shape, I realized that my head was a little too smooth, even though it was supposed to be covered in a fine down of feathers.
So, I added a very thin layer of clay to the entire head (using the thinnest notch of my pasta machine), to be able to mark a slight texture without distorting the existing shape. Finally, I finished as planned with the eyes, again making a slight texture on the eyelids, more marked on the upper eyelid.
- The head feathers:
Besides the feathery body, the occamy has two areas of feathers: the wings necessarily, and a crest on the top of the head that extends slightly towards the neck. I'll come back to the wings a little later, so let's focus on the head feathers.
These feathers have the added difficulty of serving as a transition between the polymer material of the head and the fabric/knit of the body. I fumbled around a bit to find what suited me best.
Initially, I had the idea of making feathers directly with the thread of the body, by doubling the thread to obtain a fluffy appearance on both sides, like this:
I tested the placement with the head and body while knitting:
I wasn't very convinced. On the one hand, taken separately, they overall looked like feathers, but combined with the body, it gave a not-so-great jumbled appearance and a big disproportion, the feathers seemed significantly bigger than the body.
Additionally, as the feathers were the same material as the body, it didn't make too much of a transition, they blended in with the body.
For my second try, I went with a completely different material than polymer clay or knitting thread. I did a test with the feathers cut from EVA foam intended for a wing test:
Well, they were too big, but the idea was not bad. That’s ultimately what I went with, making smaller, finer feathers, and with more textures:
(Yes, they don’t have any texture at all yet…)
Once the number and placement were decided, all that remained was to paint them to match the body.
- The wings:
From the start, I planned to make the wings in a different material from the body. I'm not a big fan of fabric wings, except for non-feathery artdolls like dragons, dinosaurs, or bats. And since I really like to complicate my life, I don't really like the addition of real feathers either. So, even before making the ones for the head, I had planned to make the feathers for the wings in EVA foam, in the same way, that I had made the scales of the Pangolin (There is no article on him, but you can find him on the Instagram account).
On the other hand, unlike the pangolin, here, to estimate the size, position, and especially the number of feathers necessary, I made diagrams using Inkscape software. Lots of diagrams...
One of the first tests, with three sizes of feathers: very long (here in purple), long, and medium. But I wondered if it wouldn't be better to make four lines of feathers:
It’s this test that I printed to see the result with the body (even if of course the foam feathers would not fall exactly the same.
That's when I realized that my longest feathers were too long. So I replaced them with a slightly smaller version, here in pink so as not to confuse my different layers.
After several tests, of which I will spare you the details (basically, removing/adding a feather here and there, or changing their inclination a little). I finally opted for three rows of feathers: very long (the pinks ), long, and medium.
This is the placement that worked best in my opinion, and what's more, it took about a hundred feathers off my plate. Yes because obviously, there are two wings and two faces to each wing. For a total of 202 feathers to make (compared to 310 with four rows).
Printed version :
Often when we see this kind of project with small scales or something else, the creator says “We can cut them by hand, but hey, I have a laser cutter so you might as well use it haha, just a small vector file to do... ". Nope, I just have a cutter and a hell of a lot of masochism.
In addition, I had the “good” idea of wanting to add texture to my feathers, by streaking them like the ones for the head. Texture is obtained by scratching the surface of the feather using a slightly dull cutter blade. 202 feathers, knowing that the largest ones are textured on both sides…
The worst part is that without the paint, the texture isn't visible that much.
5. Painting
- The head feathers:
For the painting, I used my airbrush, it was an opportunity to experiment a little with it. So I pinned all the feathers in the order of placement so that they would not fly away in all directions with the pressure of the aero. (I changed the support afterward for something thicker which held better.)
In terms of painting, I used two shades of blue, purple, and green. I did a lot of testing to find the colors that best matched the body colors:
Ultimately the two blues are colors straight from the tube, but the purple and green are mixed. Nothing too complicated then, since the body doesn't particularly have a color scheme, I just had to do spots of paint on the feathers to match the style of the body. Afterward, as the wool was slightly shiny, I varnished the feathers using a satin airbrush varnish.
- The wing feathers:
Once the TWO HUNDRED and TWO feathers were cut and textured, they had to be painted, 240 feathers to paint individually if we consider that the large double-sided feathers count as two. Unlike the head feathers whose painting had to be in continuity with the body, I chose to do something more orderly with some sort of color gradients.
As my masochism has its limits (sometimes), and I had no desire to redo the painting several times, at the risk of having to redo the feathers, I did some tests on paper beforehand which I (badly) duplicated later on Photoshop to get an idea of what it would look like.
I'll spare you the various trial and error, but I finally chose for the outside of the feathers something like this:
Finally, I made a few more modifications, notably to avoid the straight demarcation between the colors, to arrive at this:
Unlike the head feathers, these are painted with a brush, particularly to make color transitions. For the inside of the wings, according to the images, they are more in shades of pink and purple, so I did some tests on paper, removing the blues for pinks.
Finally, I opted to replace only the light blue with quite bright pink:
Awesome Photoshop skills, as always
Pink which in the light looks a little too much like orange, but I promise it's pink:
I can't say how long painting the wings took, since I did several sessions in the evening, but it was long.
Like the head feathers, the wings are then varnished with satin varnish. I tried the gloss on some test nibs, but I didn't like the result at all.
- The head:
Painting the head is a step that I procrastinated quite a bit. Since I don't like painting (and in my opinion it doesn't like me much either), I was afraid of "messing up" all my modeling work. But hey I said to myself “At worst there is always alcohol”.
Not to forget a failed painting, but it is more or less possible to clean paint on polymer clay with methylated spirits. It's not perfect but it takes away the biggest part.
In the end, I did everything in one go so I don't have a progress photo. I made a base with the same “electric” blue as for the wings, and on the beak and horns a grayish beige base. The rest is entirely pastels with light blue, emerald green, dark blue (quite similar to the wings), and a bit of brown at the nostrils and beak. For the horns, I did dry brushing with a darker brown.
To varnish, I first airbrushed a satin varnish, to prevent the bristles of the brush from moving the pastel powder, but as I found it too shiny, I then applied a “soft mat” varnish. with a brush. Varnish that I bought for the niffler by the way...
6. Assembling
Once all the elements were made/painted/varnished, all that remained was to assemble everything, with the wing feathers on one side and the head and its feathers on the other.
- The wings:
To serve as a base for the wings, I cut a shape out of canvas, which I painted with the same blue as the head and some of the feathers. All that remained was to glue the feathers:
the 202 feathers…
Each group of feathers corresponds to a wing, each with a pink side and a blue side, the large feathers are mutual to the two sides.
But for the next rows, I then had to sew the fabric to the aluminum frame, otherwise the edge feathers would have prevented me from sewing. To keep the placement approximately symmetrical, I made a sort of negative template, indicating for each level the location of the bottom of the feathers.
For the medium feather rank:
then for the small feathers:
We can also see the seam, which is in fact simple loops around the aluminum wires, so as not to cause too much thickness. The circles are just scraps of foam from another project that I used to prevent my pliers from making marks on the feathers.
After all that, the major parts of the wings were finished.
Said it like that, it seems as quick as it is easy, but in reality, it was long and a bit of a hassle. I made two gluing sessions, and despite the templates, I had to improvise a little with the different placements. One of the lines of medium pink feathers for example is not at all the original placement, but hey...
To hide the edge of the feathers, and to make more consistency between the knitted body and the foam wings, I made a chain (you remember, the only thing I know how to do in crochet...) with the same thread as the body for the blue side, and one with a pink/purple thread, which I got from who knows where, and which had previously served as a test thread. The chains are then glued to the edges of the last line of feathers to follow the curve. The blue chain also serves to fuse the aluminum frame into the rest of the body by wrapping around it.
- The head:
Once detached from its jar, I made a hole in the basic aluminum structure of the head, and then I cut the aluminum rod of the body. The head is then assembled extremely professionally, using lots of hot glue.
The head fixed to the structure, all that remained was to attach the fabric body to the neck, still using hot glue, by first gluing 4 cardinal points, then once dry, the rest of the neck circumference. This way, we avoid pulling on a part of the glue that is still soft, which weakens the whole thing.
Finally, just like the chains made the foam/fabric transition, I glued the foam feathers to make the fabric/polymer transition. On the other hand, I ultimately had less space than expected on the top of the head, so I had to change the placement of the feathers planned at the start and put fewer. Afterward, it is better than the opposite and running out of feathers.
But as a result, I have some spare feathers, which will join my stock of "extra things that I made and that I don't know what to do with, but just in case I have it", (there are foam pangolin scales, and even extra modeled feathers for the previous occamy…)
But with that, the occamy is (finally) over!
And so, the final result:
Conclusion
I started this project a while ago, I mostly did the body, then I stopped to focus on Alphonse and Barry's armors, and then I started working full time (while finishing the armor for the Herofestival in November…).
I generally have difficulty working on a project without a deadline, because I can procrastinate on the parts that I don't want to do (here the texture of the feathers mainly) and because without a deadline, I could redo certain elements countless times.
But there, the fact, as I was doing other projects I couldn't do and undo the occamy, forced me to put the occamy on pause, and therefore to just think about different ideas before doing them. For example, I once considered making the wings out of worbla, but they would have been too rigid and too heavy compared to the rest.
I'm pretty happy with the end result, I really like my Newt costume, so it's always nice to improve it a little!
For each making-of cosplay, I highlight one or more negative points, and on the contrary, I try to find at least one positive element.
What I would do differently:
- Technically, I already did things differently since this is my second occamy. But more seriously, the aluminum structure of the wings is a little weak, I probably should have used a thicker wire, but I would have had to unknit the body up to the join, unstitch the inner body, no, just no.
- Wing feathers. I don’t know if I would do them differently or not, but it was SO time-consuming to make! I could have just made three lines of feathers, with all the feathers in the same line cut from a single block. But it would have been less pretty…
What I like :
-The head, first the modeling, which I find rather successful and detailed, although I don't think that modeling is necessarily my strong suit. And beyond the modeling, the painting is rather good (ooooooh it's going to snow in July there...) I find the color work of the face honest, the painting of the eyes rather successful, and the resemblance between the colors of the body and those head feathers is quite an illusion!
- the “feather” aspect of the body. Without wanting to throw flowers at myself, the knitting was a great idea for the feather body. I looked for a long time how to do with faux fur (and there are some very beautiful creations with it), but I couldn't find a way that I liked, but here, we are close to the colors of the original!
______________
Someone whispers in my earpiece (Neevillia on the phone...) that the demiguise (and her handbag) is still missing, one day perhaps.
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