Hi there ladies, gents...
It's been awhile. We've missed you, and would like to welcome those who have recently begun following our work. First off, we want to thank you for taking the time to check us out and follow. It means a lot to the two of us.
We have been active these past months with the convention community, from here in central Florida all the way up to Atlanta, Georgia and Dragon*con. During this time we have been working on so many different projects, and seem to be unable to complete one before a new one draws us off in a different direction. Because of that we currently have something like eight projects in various stages of progress. They range from the Master Sword and Hylian shield we began late last year to a Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device(A.S.H.P.D., or the Portal gun) that will have a variant color scheme, that of Fluttershy's, as well as sounds and lights to match. Starwind is also plowing through his Fallout 3 cosplay, one of the many projects we need to get some images up from the work in progress.
All that said, I would like to invite any of you who have a Facebook account to hop over there and follow our page.
CosplayGearHouse on FB
Neither of us are very fluent in the use of social media, however Facebook has made itself just as prominent as our beloved site, deviantArt, as well as much simpler to use from a mobile device. We are slowly becoming accustomed to it's use and intend to update it much more frequently than we do our page here on dA.
Anyways, enough of wasting your time with this update...we look forward to showing off more of our work and getting things caught up to where we are on a more frequent basis. Thank you again and if ever you have questions or comments, please contact us!
Journals5
Newest
We are still kicking!
3 min read
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Updates!
2 min read
Alright, so we've been out of commission for a little while and neglecting our page. Now that work has slowed down a little and we can start concentrating on our props and commissions, we will be getting some updates flowing for our followers and new viewers alike!
As of right now we are still toying with our vacuum form table and how we are going to go about making an OC designed mallet, based off of the Mad Rabbit. We are also building the chainsaw wielded by Juliet Starling from Lollipop Chainsaw. It's quite far along and I must apologize for not having taken progress pictures, but we should have some pictures up soon. If all goes well, I must say it will be more impressive than any we have seen online to date. It's given us the opportunity to work with new materials which are making the rather large prop quite light.
We are working on lining up more commissions as well and once we have them finalized and begin design and building we will start posting updates.
We hope everyone is having a nice summer and enjoying this wonderful convention season!
As of right now we are still toying with our vacuum form table and how we are going to go about making an OC designed mallet, based off of the Mad Rabbit. We are also building the chainsaw wielded by Juliet Starling from Lollipop Chainsaw. It's quite far along and I must apologize for not having taken progress pictures, but we should have some pictures up soon. If all goes well, I must say it will be more impressive than any we have seen online to date. It's given us the opportunity to work with new materials which are making the rather large prop quite light.
We are working on lining up more commissions as well and once we have them finalized and begin design and building we will start posting updates.
We hope everyone is having a nice summer and enjoying this wonderful convention season!
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After having completed most of our projects and having a short break between the local conventions, 5t4rw1nd and myself have decided to build ourselves a vacuum-form table to widen our abilities and learn new materials. To this end we are currently in the process of designing the table and looking for a local supplier of thermoplastics.
A big push for this table is a commission we recently picked up from Cosplay.com. There we ran into a fellow cosplayer who was looking for their own interpretation of Alice in Wonderland's White Rabbit's mallet. They wanted the headpiece to be, instead of the standard mallet shape, an hourglass clock. We found this really interesting and so contacted them and worked out the details. Once we have our table built and find the plastics we need, we intend to make the hourglass one uniform piece. From there we will start the construction of the mallet itself and put all of the wonderful details onto it. Keep an eye out for updates!
We are always looking for new ideas, fresh materials to use and new techniques to master. If you have a commission or just want to consult with us, please comment or shoot us a note!
A big push for this table is a commission we recently picked up from Cosplay.com. There we ran into a fellow cosplayer who was looking for their own interpretation of Alice in Wonderland's White Rabbit's mallet. They wanted the headpiece to be, instead of the standard mallet shape, an hourglass clock. We found this really interesting and so contacted them and worked out the details. Once we have our table built and find the plastics we need, we intend to make the hourglass one uniform piece. From there we will start the construction of the mallet itself and put all of the wonderful details onto it. Keep an eye out for updates!
We are always looking for new ideas, fresh materials to use and new techniques to master. If you have a commission or just want to consult with us, please comment or shoot us a note!
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Current Builds, Commissions and Trades
5 min read
We have been working hard for awhile now on multiple projects in the hopes of getting them done in time for the upcoming con season here in central Florida. We will be keeping you up to date with our current builds here through this journal.
* We are more than willing to replicate these builds for sale and are always open to new commissions! Please send us a note if you are interested in any way and we'll let you know all the details. *
Recently completed builds:
Current builds:
Trades
* We are more than willing to replicate these builds for sale and are always open to new commissions! Please send us a note if you are interested in any way and we'll let you know all the details. *
Recently completed builds:
- Ragnarok, the Demon Blade
After recently getting into Soul Eater, both of us decided that we were going to build quite a few of the props and costume pieces found throughout this amazing series. This is the first of our projects and it's moving along nicely now. Follow us to keep up to date on this and our other up and coming Soul Eater goodness! Current builds:
- Decisive Pumpkin
This build is being headed up by Gurthag and it has taken much longer than intended. It is going to be a gift to a friend and it has been a very fun build. It is nearing completion and we hope to have pictures of the owner wielding it in all of it's glory.
- Fatal Crest
5t4rw1nd87 has taken the lead with this keyblade and has been pushing hard to complete it. After browsing the web for other attempts at this one, we just weren't quite satisfied and so took up the challenge to build it as no one else has. It too should be complete within the coming days and we'll be sure to post pictures as soon as it is.
- Metal Chocobo
This is a project of a friend of ours and it is coming along nicely. It will be his first keyblade and first project ever. We cannot wait to see more!
Trades
- Kingdom Key for souffle-etc
Souffle-etc approached us with interest in our keyblades and we agreed to trade them for one of their fabulous wall plaques. They are currently making us a recreation of the spiral hill from The Nightmare Before Christmas...and the WIP picture has us excited! **Update!** Souffle has completed our wall plaque and our respective pieces of work are on their way to the other. We absolutely cannot wait to see it in person!!! :thumb294658089: :thumb294658190:Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Kingdom Key
7 min read
Awhile back 5t4rw1nd87 and myself(Gurthag) were working on our first mock up of the Portal gun and came upon the tangent conversation about future builds. He mentioned wanting to build the Pumpkinhead keyblade from Kingdom Hearts I. So during some downtime we took a look at some art of it and it really sparked my enthusiasm for building keyblades. After some debate over materials, our intended use and/or audience and which to build, I decided to start simple with the Kingdom Key to get some experience with these awesome pieces.
So now that the blade is nearly complete, we thought we would share our build of the Kingdom Key and all of our past and future builds as well. Thus CosplayGearHouse was born. Let's jump into this build already, yeah?
Our first hurdle was the design process. 5t4rw1nd87 has played the games extensively and I fear I must admit to not having played them at all...yet. We are looking into getting a hold of a PS2 and a copy of the games as I write this. But come on...who doesn't enjoy all of the Disney characters and the whole feel of the world that has become Kingdom Hearts? I hardly need to play the game to love the art. After some thorough searching we found that quite a few fellow cosplayers have already designed and built varying qualities of the Kingdom Key and there was no lack of images from the games from which to use for the build. We didn't want to copy anyone's build so we quickly cut those from our research and settled on images from the game. We found a nice clean one from which we traced onto a sheet of standard A4 paper.
From there we needed to decide upon the scale. After looking at yet more pictures of Sora holding the Keyblade, we decided it was rather long and found that a four foot length was fitting. This gave us a scale for which we used to blow up the traced image of the Key. We then began talks on the materials to be used which naturally led to a shopping trip to our local big box store, in this case Lowes. There we found a nice 1 and 1/4" poplar dowel and some particle board that we thought would be perfect. The weight was nice and above all the strength that wood gives is quite handy when building this. After all, it will be carried around conventions and last quite sometime.
Lacking any real skill with airbrushes, we decided to try out some spray paints for the colors and came upon the perfect gold, royal blue and metallic silver for the Key. The keychain and it's parts we waited on, knowing that it would be one of the last components that needed designing and assembling. So we headed home with our collection of materials and set to transferring the guard and headpiece's shapes onto the particle board. After that was done we used 5t4rw1nd87's Dremel with router attachment to cut out both pieces. From there we sanded down the rough spots and edges then moved onto the dowel and how to properly connect it to the guard. We wanted it to be sturdy, so any real cutting of the pieces had to be done just right. We decided upon removing a slit in the base of the dowel which would then slip over the guard. At the top end of the guard we removed a length of particle board just wide enough to snugly fit the dowel through. For extra security, we drilled 3" drywall screws through the board and into the dowel at angles and removed the screw heads flush with the board.
Next was the headpiece. This was a rather simple connection, we drilled 2 3" drywall screws through the back of the dowel and into the headpiece. Now we had a roughly assembled Kingdom Key which was already rather impressive, even with touch ups and paint still needing applying. I wanted to give the handle the appearance of being flush with the rest of the blade once we had applied the grip tape, so I began to sand it down. Being my first build, I ran into a few troubles along the way, namely not having planned things out just right. Ideally we would have worked all the pieces and their details before assembly...however you live and you learn.
Once I was satisfied with the handle's new diameter, I moved onto the small indention where the royal blue coloring is. For this I took the Dremel and cut it down roughly and then sanded it smooth. After that were the other small detail lines along the handle and guard. Finally we were ready for the primer and paint. This part was rather easy, simply taping off the areas you wished to paint another color and hitting the areas left with your choice of color...however I managed again to be a bit messy with the job. Currently the gold is a bit thicker than need be and I intend to go back and sand it all off and give it a proper finish. Thankfully the blue and metallic silver were easy enough and so I placed a few clear coats on it to protect the finish for now.
Lastly was the keychain...we made another trip to Lowes and found the perfect chain, an eyelet screw and a rather close interpretation of the clip that holds most of the keychains to their blades. For the bauble, Mickey's head, we found a nice size of welded steel. After a tedious cut with our new Dremel Trio, the head was done and ready to be finished and attached to the chain. For this we decided to cut the chain links and pry them apart. The problem came when it was time to drill a hole for the chain to fit into the bauble. We couldn't close the link tight enough, so we decided upon solder as a solution. A quick touch up with a file and *tada*, our Kindgom Key is complete.
So now that the blade is nearly complete, we thought we would share our build of the Kingdom Key and all of our past and future builds as well. Thus CosplayGearHouse was born. Let's jump into this build already, yeah?
Our first hurdle was the design process. 5t4rw1nd87 has played the games extensively and I fear I must admit to not having played them at all...yet. We are looking into getting a hold of a PS2 and a copy of the games as I write this. But come on...who doesn't enjoy all of the Disney characters and the whole feel of the world that has become Kingdom Hearts? I hardly need to play the game to love the art. After some thorough searching we found that quite a few fellow cosplayers have already designed and built varying qualities of the Kingdom Key and there was no lack of images from the games from which to use for the build. We didn't want to copy anyone's build so we quickly cut those from our research and settled on images from the game. We found a nice clean one from which we traced onto a sheet of standard A4 paper.
From there we needed to decide upon the scale. After looking at yet more pictures of Sora holding the Keyblade, we decided it was rather long and found that a four foot length was fitting. This gave us a scale for which we used to blow up the traced image of the Key. We then began talks on the materials to be used which naturally led to a shopping trip to our local big box store, in this case Lowes. There we found a nice 1 and 1/4" poplar dowel and some particle board that we thought would be perfect. The weight was nice and above all the strength that wood gives is quite handy when building this. After all, it will be carried around conventions and last quite sometime.
Lacking any real skill with airbrushes, we decided to try out some spray paints for the colors and came upon the perfect gold, royal blue and metallic silver for the Key. The keychain and it's parts we waited on, knowing that it would be one of the last components that needed designing and assembling. So we headed home with our collection of materials and set to transferring the guard and headpiece's shapes onto the particle board. After that was done we used 5t4rw1nd87's Dremel with router attachment to cut out both pieces. From there we sanded down the rough spots and edges then moved onto the dowel and how to properly connect it to the guard. We wanted it to be sturdy, so any real cutting of the pieces had to be done just right. We decided upon removing a slit in the base of the dowel which would then slip over the guard. At the top end of the guard we removed a length of particle board just wide enough to snugly fit the dowel through. For extra security, we drilled 3" drywall screws through the board and into the dowel at angles and removed the screw heads flush with the board.
Next was the headpiece. This was a rather simple connection, we drilled 2 3" drywall screws through the back of the dowel and into the headpiece. Now we had a roughly assembled Kingdom Key which was already rather impressive, even with touch ups and paint still needing applying. I wanted to give the handle the appearance of being flush with the rest of the blade once we had applied the grip tape, so I began to sand it down. Being my first build, I ran into a few troubles along the way, namely not having planned things out just right. Ideally we would have worked all the pieces and their details before assembly...however you live and you learn.
Once I was satisfied with the handle's new diameter, I moved onto the small indention where the royal blue coloring is. For this I took the Dremel and cut it down roughly and then sanded it smooth. After that were the other small detail lines along the handle and guard. Finally we were ready for the primer and paint. This part was rather easy, simply taping off the areas you wished to paint another color and hitting the areas left with your choice of color...however I managed again to be a bit messy with the job. Currently the gold is a bit thicker than need be and I intend to go back and sand it all off and give it a proper finish. Thankfully the blue and metallic silver were easy enough and so I placed a few clear coats on it to protect the finish for now.
Lastly was the keychain...we made another trip to Lowes and found the perfect chain, an eyelet screw and a rather close interpretation of the clip that holds most of the keychains to their blades. For the bauble, Mickey's head, we found a nice size of welded steel. After a tedious cut with our new Dremel Trio, the head was done and ready to be finished and attached to the chain. For this we decided to cut the chain links and pry them apart. The problem came when it was time to drill a hole for the chain to fit into the bauble. We couldn't close the link tight enough, so we decided upon solder as a solution. A quick touch up with a file and *tada*, our Kindgom Key is complete.
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