Thursday, August 11, 2011

Wayfinder Project

So, as many of you know, I am very crafty. I may not be great at my arts and crafts, but I do enjoy doing them. Recently, I've been moving more toward working on my cosplay stuff. I recently finished my Stitch ears (see below post) and decided to move on from there.



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Long Explanation of Story 
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In the future I plan on cosplaying many different characters, so I decided to start making props I wanted/will need. Two new props came to mind. They are called Wayfinders. For those of you (pretty much everyone reading this) who don't know, a wayfinder "is a star-shaped lucky charm that is used to provide luck to travelers." They have many different appearances throughout the story of the game. The ones I decided to replicate come from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. In the game, three wayfinders were made for three friends (Terra, Aqua, and Ven), in order to keep them connected as they went on their voyages. In addition to that one, I am replicating one made by Stitch in the game. During the game, he runs into Terra, Aqua, and Ven. After learning what friendship really meant, he makes a wayfinder as to be connected to his friends. However, he is forced to use the materials on hand and thus, it makes it from scraps. Because I am planning on cosplaying Stitch soon, I figured it wouldn't hurt to start there.

So, without further adu, here is what I did:

To start, I took an image of the chosen Wayfinder from the internet and printed it out. I used this image. After printing it out, I used my "carbon copy" tracing method. I first attempted to copy it directly onto the foam paper, but it didn't work well (due to the difference in texture). So, I copied it to regular white paper and then cut it out. After the copy is cut out, I taped it to the foam and cut out the copy. From there, I had to add the inner details, which took sometime. Finally, I took the foam cut out and painted it. This proved difficult because the colors didn't match. I had to mix a lot of the colors I had to get the shading right. Below, I will post pictures of the work.  


Foam Cut Out before Paint


My Online Image and my Carbon Copy (Left, Right respectively)


Final Product
Verdict: I love how pretty it came out. The details and shape came out next to perfect. The size is also perfect, as it will fit perfectly in my hand. The downside to this is the colors don't match what they are supposed to; for example, the purple is not as light as it is supposed to be. It will need to be repainted with some different shades.