Making of Firecracker Jinx : Zap

This is a post I meant to write nearly a year ago. 

Finally with this blog made, I would like to share my experience making this cosplay so you can get something out of it for your own costume-making journey!

2015 October 25th, I started making the cosplay for Halloween. Super last minute! Ayoo. Also I haven't made/dressed up for cosplay for a couple of years at this point, being so busy with irl things such as work.

Anyways despite working on League of Legends for over a year at this point, I still haven't done any cosplay related to League. Feeling ashamed, I thought that this skin was a great low-scope to make in few days.

 

 Beautiful model made by my coworker, Minoh Kim.

Well, I had to ditch minigun and rocket, but then how will I hold my drink anyways? ...right?

Jinx without weapon is not really Jinx, I decided to at leaaast make the Zap, her W ability.

Spoiler, finished pic!

This is the base I used for my gun. Water gun I got from an event, which was never used and hiding in my closet for this day. Also I will be able to shoot water from it, if I make the modification correctly!

 This part doesn't matter if you don't need it to shoot water, or your gun has the perfect silhouette, but for me I had to cut out the unnecessary part and seal it off waterproof. I believe I used epoxy and plastic water bottle cap to seal it completely.

Because I wanted to make this frugal way, I cut up this water bottle to make a cylinder. I'm also a huge fan of recycling, so I repurpose for my DIY projects whenever I can.

With use of tape I can make the ghetto plastic sheet into a cylinder. Red line is where I made a cut so that I can slide the cylinder in with the water tank hidden inside.

You can also see that I already started to papermache around the gun to start shaping the gun. Hindsight, I forgot to seal the cracks of the water gun with some kind of silicon or so --- this being a really cheap water gun, it started leaking little by little in the future. But past me was in a rush, esp because I didn't think I had enough time to dry papermache if I didn't rush the process. 

Here you can see I use extra plastic sheet to make a silhouette for the gun. Given how I'm building this over a watergun, it is not going to look 100% like the original, but I'm trying my best with the given option. on top of this sheet I will continue to cover up with papermache.

Here you see the back part sealed with plastic cap, and the shape is sorta there.

Here I got some carving foam from craft store to make the tip of the firecracker. I wanted to find the isopink which I'm familiar with, but I couldn't find it at Blick. This one sheds so much dust and can be pressed down easily, so I didn't really like it. Once you carve and sand the form of the tip, cover it with papermache.

Add the tip you made to the plastic cylinder you made previously! You can see that I flaired out the bottom of the cylinder for the silhouette, and also added TP roll in the middle to give that subtle bevel of the spiral look. Recycling is cheap and environment-friendly, just be creative!

This is how it looks when you slide in the cylinder to the gun. I made sure that I can easily slide the cylinder in and out because I wanted to be able to refill the water tank for the water gun.

Pusheen totally judging my flimsy looking Zapper. Hang on there, Pusheen.

Once I finished the layers of paper mache for the silhouette of the gun, you will have sooo many wrinkles created by papers. If you would sand them with sandpaper it would take a looong time. No worries, we can address it later.Here I designed on an elegant shapes of bevels using a thick rope string and glue gun.

Then this is where wood filler comes in. I never used wood filler before, but wow this is such a handy material! Dries fast, lightweight when dry, super easy to sand, with an okay durability. Once you have smeared it with love, sand it down to perfection.

Pusheen approves.

Assembled. Now coat it well with gesso and dry it before going to painting.

Painting applied! I used Acrylic paint for it. I had a thin layer of gold paint over green so it has a nice shimmer, and some fake shadow like 3d model texture would paint in AO shadow. The green rope has a thin wire twisted into it to shape it into forms, and burnt the tip a bit to look like firework.

Next, I will be writing about the costume itself.