Like her, I used a foam exercise mat for construction on the helm. I searched a ton of places online but was reluctant to make a purchase without seeing the actual thickness of the mat. Luckily, my friend Lindsay had an old mat that she was willing to let me cut up - on the caveat that it was chewed up and had cat pee on it.
So, after washing the mat THOROUGHLY in my shower, and using a hair dryer to accelerate the removal of moisture (I'm impatient), I was able to commence.
I first measured my head with the tape measure and then cut a strip of the foam to act as the initial base. Now, originally I had heard a couple people reference using Liquid Nails to glue this stuff together, and so I was using binder clips to keep things in place while the Liquid Nails dried.
This, as it turns out is a CROCK, and not only does it take too long to dry, but it wasn't doing a very good job for me. Hot glue is a miracle of modern science and did the trick just fine in like no time at all.
Clearly I'm hilarious. It looks a little tight, but once I cut the eye piece...
Much more spacious! You'll notice I'm going with the 'Gamecube' version of Midna wherein her left eye is the one covered by the fused shadow. I did this because Link is originally left-handed, but in the Wii version the game had to be mirrored to accommodate the fact that most players are right handed. Sooo... in my nerdy little head, the Gamecube version is the right one. LOGIC.
Doubled up the foam to add to the bulkiness of the helm, began blocking in some of the details with pencil, and then added the second tier to the thing. You can see the kitty teeth marks! Thanks, Lestat!
Cutting the ear spaces was a guessing game based off of screen shots from the game and other people's attempts at this costume. With all this completed, it was time to make the 'horns'
I was trying to do this thing where I used maths to figure out how big it should be. That came back to bite me in the ass but we'll touch on that a bit later. Anyways, I used my art board to draw out the pattern first, I then cut it out with an x-acto knife and traced it onto my foam with pencil.
Like that, dawgs.
Now, when I held the thing to the mask, it looked hunky dory to me. I was excited so I promptly glued it on and several hot glue gun burns later I had to face this:
Too damn tall. Do you SEE how displeased I look? Where did my maths go wrong?
In a panic I knifed the horns off and tried to figure out just where they needed to be in the grand scheme of things. ...Then I had to go to dinner with my friend Nicole so my process was interrupted and I was stressed out because I didn't know how gluing the pieces back on would go.
But as it turns out, fine. The 'scars' will be covered up with poster board and paperclay later.
You can see how much happier I am, and how much less unruly the thing is.
So after that I started using the poster board and x-acto knife to cut out patterns which I will glue to the horns part of the helm to give it that 'relief' look.
This is the left side. This hurt the hell out of my fingers to cut because the board is mega thick. So once I figured out just how much more sucky the right side is going to be...
I got scared and gave up cutting for the night. Before getting to that point, I put on a paper base where the eye will be (I need something for the paper clay to stick to) and I started etching right into the foam for the details on the lower part of the helm.
So that's where things stand today. Tonight I resume cutting...
My poor hands. Between this and the hot glue burns I probably won't even have a right hand by the time CON gets here.
More updates to come once I make some more headway. ...No pun intended.
