I published 6 posts to Alphonse and Barry dedicated to the design of their armor.
If you haven't read them I invite you to find the Making-of of Alphonse HERE, for the helmet and the bust, HERE for the arms, and THERE for the legs.
And for the making-of of Barry HERE for the helmet and the bust, HERE for the arms and legs, and finally THERE for the accessories and sewing.
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…).
All that remains is to deal with the part that I like least in the world: the painting…
But before that, yes because I procrastinate the painting even in my blog posts, we will see a little of electronics!
5. Electronic circuits
Barry's and Alphonse's eyes, shine, to give a "human" aspect to the empty armor. So obviously, I had to integrate that into the helmet, especially since I quite like doing a bit of electronics since my Nerfs customs for our Men in Black cosplay.
The circuit itself is very basic, two LEDs, a resistor, a battery, and a switch:
as a bonus, my calculations for the resistor and the average battery life.
The LEDs would be placed behind some plastazote (or “LED foam”) to diffuse the light.
In fact, the most complicated thing was choosing the LEDs, because the eyes of the armors, and especially Alphonse's, have a kind of red glow, but are not pure red either... And so neither a white LED nor a red LED matches perfectly. I did a lot of tests. By drawing a red circle on the inside of the foam, with red paint, with transparent red paint, with a marker..., with a white LED, with a red one, with a white one slightly tinted with a red marker… And of course, I try all the different combinations.
I don't even remember which one is which one.
I finally found a combination that I liked, or rather a combination for Alphonse, who has a red circle on his eyes, and one for Barry, more diffuse.
I was able to move on to soldering:
The LEDs are mounted on small strips of EVA foam to then be able to fix them to the plastazote:
Finally, to not be blinded by the LEDs' backlight, they are put in a small EVA foam box:
Alphonse's eyes, ready to be installed in the helmet.
Same for Barry's eyes, which I later reduced in thickness, because they pressed uncomfortably on Neevillia's forehead.
Thus, the eyes of the helmets are absolutely not functional.
If you are wondering how Neevillia and I saw, well, Neevillia whose helmet is raised, can see, mainly the ground, through Barry's mouth, and me, through the small slits of the helmet below the eyes. Suffice to say that we didn't see much of the con that day…
6. Painting
“Finally !”, you might say, but actually, no.
Painting the armor is not very interesting. Fullmetal's design being rather smooth and clean, even Barry, the painting was almost limited to flat colors, metallic blue-gray for Alphonse, and aluminum gray for Barry.
So, I'm going to talk a little about the preparation for painting instead. (And not just the self-motivational speech "I know it sucks, but you can do it!").
Two complete armors, that's a lot of pieces, especially since at this stage, all of Barry's plates (arms and shoulder pads) are completely independent.
And so, two big questions: first, where to paint all that?
I was lucky enough to be able to do all my painting, in the living room of my future apartment, still empty and waiting for renovation, which left me space to put everything down.
But above all, how to put the pieces down while drying? To avoid painting and ending up with the piece in your hand, without any unpainted surface to support it.
For flat pieces like the arm slats, it was easy to place them on a protective plastic mat, but for the shoulder plates, thermoformed into curves, I used small pieces of foam to raise them:
And for all the small pieces like arms, forearms, etc. I created hooks, to hang them by the inner ring:
All put on an old sock-drying octopus from Ikea:
It may not seem like much, but it's a very practical system!
Once I found a solution for each part (I won't go into detail, but the legs were hanging like on a clothesline for example), I started with a black primer.
I wanted to use flexbound paint, which I had already used for the EVA parts of Kid Icarus, but since this primer tends to make brush marks, I tried an airbrush approach.
Since I didn't want to risk ruining my good branded airbrush, I especially bought a cheap airbrush with a larger nozzle. In itself, the diluted flexbound goes well in the airbrush but tends to dry very quickly and cause clogs:
It looks like I'm hyper-focused on my painting, but in reality, I'm unclogging my airbrush…
The last step before painting (I promise), installing the rivets. Almost all of Alphonse's pieces and all of Barry's slats have rivets.
Like many before me, I used googly eyes, but since they are made of plastic, the plastic primer doesn't stick to them, so they had to be put on afterward. And for the paint to adhere, you have to sand them, all of them, one by one…
And that's not even all of everything I had to sand. For Barry's collar alone, there are a dozen:
(the rivets are undercoated with black paint, not primer.)
And now we can paint!
This is where my workspace became apocalyptic :
No, I'm kidding, the apocalypse started with the primer…
More seriously, here are some pictures of the painting:
Color test, just because…
first coat on Alphonse's forearms
second coat on Barry's shoulder pads.
Barry's face is painted with a brush using resin paint:
third coat.
That's pretty much all I have of the painting. I have to say that at that time, I was practically running home from the office in the evening, to finish the armors in time for the Herofestival...
And finally, after gluing slats and other last-minute adjustments, the finished picture :
Conclusion
The choice to cosplay Alphonse and Barry was made a bit on a whim by Neevillia and me, but honestly, I don't regret it. I've wanted to try a full armor for a long time, and even if my cosplay masochism led me to make two at the same time, it was super cool, although paved with nervous breakdowns.
Are the armors perfect? No, not at all. Will they one day be the subject of the series of blog posts: "Come on, let's improve!"? Most likely.
In all honesty, I prefer Barry's result to Alphonse's, maybe because there is more diversity of colors and textures (armors, bones, fabric...), whereas Al is a uniform block of metallic blue metal. On the other hand, making patterns for Alphonse's armor was more fun because there were different shapes, whereas Barry was a long strip of foam.
For each cosplay in making-of, I highlight one or more negative points, and on the contrary, I try to find at least one positive element.
Alphonse :
What I would do differently:
- Alphonse's bust is a little too narrow and straight compared to the original, as I had to be able to move my arms I didn't enlarge it out as much as I should have
- In the same vein, the shoulder pads should be wider, to increase the build.
- It's not something I could (easily) change, but the shoes make my feet look ridiculously tiny…
What I like:
- the helmet, maybe because it's the first element I made, or because it's really what characterizes Alphonse, but I like my helmet.
- I didn't talk about it here because I would like to make a more generic dedicated post, but I like the assembly system of the armor, everything is put on quite easily (except for the shoulder pads which are a bit more of a hassle), and above all the pieces stayed in place throughout the convention.
Barry :
What I would do differently:
- externally, there's not much, but unlike Alphonse, Barry's arm attachment system needs to be reviewed, it held up throughout the convention but just barely.
- Same for the bust which was quite uncomfortable at the shoulders for Neevillia. This is something that will definitely need to be remade to wear it again.
- This is something that I would definitely not do again, but technically the face is not quite the right shape, the nose should be more forward and the jaw more square. But if we consider that it is an armor with facial expressions, well…
What I like:
- In total contradiction to what is said above, like Alphonse, I like Barry's helmet, it really looks like him!
- Barry's belly: it was a challenge to modify Neevillia's silhouette that much, but it looks good! Too bad it is so difficult to store…
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Of course, there are a few things to change... When will Alphonse and Barry be in a “Come on, let's improve!”?
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