onsdag 19. august 2015

Building Mercy's wings from Overwatch

Another reason I wanted to make Mercy is that I have never made wings before and thought this could be a great challenge. Also these mechanical wings look really cool. Here's the tutorial for the staff and the rest of the costume.

They also look heavy. And for my first iteration did not make the yellow feathers, which is not a problem as Mercy also walk around with the "feathers" turned off. But I did include the feathers for my upgrade before thte CSPLY.eu photoshoot.

The build The first thing I did with wings was to make a simplified blueprint (outlined using vector drawing) scaled it up to my body size  and printed it out. This blueprint would be my guide. 

Then I had to think about how I would attach the wings to my body and flag pole holders embedded i the back piece was my solution. 


The back piece for Mercy is not that big to begin with and I wanted to keep it as small as possible. 

To add support I screwed the pole holders to a Plexiglas plate


And built the rest of the back piece around it. Starting with cardboard to get my overall shape.


Adding foam to build up details.


To make it sturdy to be able to hold the weight of the wings I covered in in worbla. 

Painting. I used spray paint and it is still a little too shiny. Must remember to put on a matte clear coat.

I built both the wings and the back piece simultaneously to know that they would fit together. Here is a sum up of the wings. 

I had my blueprints

Which I traced over to 10 mm foam board. Also known as Kapa 

I used an electrical saw to cut out the pieces. (Still took forever)

Layout test

The attachment between the wings and the back piece was made from the rest of the flag pole (eg. an alu pipe). I drilled small holes down the pipe which I would press nails thought to get it to get stuck to the foam board. 

Adding nails

Gluing the pieces together. 

For the top part of the wings I needed a double curvature piece. To make it I took a PVC pipe and added ting foil and masking tape to build up my shape. If I had more time I would have made it smooth, but when in a rush this worked. 

Then I added worbla over my mold.


 New assembly test

 To smooth out edges I used paper mache.

 Started with painting

In the middle of the wings there are two other complex parts which also have a red light in them. I build the base out of 5 mm foam board and covered it with worbla. Then I carved out a hole for the lights and filled it with polymorph. 







The finished wings, a
t least the first iteration until I make the yellow feathers.
Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus


Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus 

Yellow feathers :D
To be able to move around I scaled them down a little. I used a 2 mm clear acrylic sheet (only thing that you can buy in the city center of Oslo). The feathers were spray painted yellow.




The final wings
Or maybe I will upgrade them with lights, because everything is better with more lights. 
Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus

Phot by Kyman Cheng for the CSPLY.eu photobok project. 

Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus

38 kommentarer:

  1. Hoori shitto! Those wings look so swag! :O Thanks for posting how you made them, I've been wondering how they stay up and how they are attached!

    ☆ Shiro Samurai's Cosplay Blog ☆
    ☆ Ink & Sword Lifestyle Blog ☆

    SvarSlett
  2. AMAZING! seriously this tutorial, you have become my Mercy, my saviour. Because this helped me with several issues with several costumes/props. It was to no surprise the keeping the wings up, making sure they attach right, aren't too heavy. I have seen other tutorials but none that gave me such step by step CONFIDENCE you have given. For a cosplay that had unprecedented time squeeze to get this done. I hope you know your pictures are making rounds online. Fans are flipping out that you made such an epic cosplay to a game that isn't even released yet. You deserve every bit of it to!

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. Oh, wow. Thank you so much for those kind words, it really made my day <3 And I'm so glad it could help you with your build :D Good luck

      Slett
  3. could you tell me how to get the blue print for the wings pieces thanks so much

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. I made the blueprint by Tracing the blizzard reference kit (first photo in this post). hen just printed in the scale I wanted. :)

      Slett
    2. Where exactly do you buy your Worbla from? Your costume is amazing and now I no longer have to pull hairs trying to figure out her dang wings. Thank you. ^^

      Slett
    3. you're welcome. And I buy my worbla from Nerdeportalen.no. before that I bought it from coscraft.co.uk :)

      Slett
  4. Denne kommentaren har blitt fjernet av forfatteren.

    SvarSlett
  5. Hi!! So. Trying to make a mercy cosplay and i got kinda confused on your turtorial.. When you did the wings how did you make it thick and how did you make the parts that go around the wing? Also how did you round it out sorry for inturupting you

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. Hi, I don't really understand what you are wondering about. You could send me an email with photos describing more in detail wat you are wondering about. chrix.design.props@gmail.com

      Slett
  6. Sorry let me try again. So i as wondering if you doubled up on the foam for thickness?

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. For the "feathers" (not yellow)there are one layer of 1 cm foam with details made of 4mm foam. The base of the wing is three layers of 1 cm foam. This makes it possible to attach all the "feathers and the metal tube inside.

      Slett
  7. Hello! Thank you for this tutorial. I had some questions on your yellow feathers. How did you cut your acrylic sheet? And how did you attach the feathers to the rest of your wings?

    Thanks!

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. The yellow wings are PVC, and therefore soft enought to easily cut with scissors. If I had acryllig I would have used a lasercutter. The yellow featers are just glued to the white wings using glue (plastic adehesive)

      Slett
  8. Are you willing to post your vector drawing of the wings? I'm terrible at drawing, and I can't find a good way to trace them digitally :/

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. Hi, I'm sorry, but I can't find my drawings any longer. A tip for you could be to scale up one of the ref photos and just print out that. Might get blurry, but you could always trace the lines with a marker :)

      Slett
  9. Hi, first off I wanted to tell you how much I love your cosplay and thank you for taking the time to make this awesome tutorial! Just one question, how did you attach the back plate to the rest of your costume? Did you use buckles and straps? And if so where did you make the anchor point? You probobly mentioned this in the tutorial and I missed it. Thank you!

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. The backpiece is attatched with buckles to the chest armor, like it's done with most worbla armor :) and thank you for loving my cosplay ^_^

      Slett
  10. do you take costume commissions, i want to cosplay sigrun mercy but can't make costumes to save my life

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. Sorry, I don't take comissions in that scale. Too hard to be sure it fits in the end... :)

      Slett
  11. I was wondering how you attached the two armored pieces together (the front breast plate and back part that hold the wings)? Did you use some kid of clip?

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. The backpiece is attatched with buckles to the chest armor, like it's done with most worbla armor :)

      Slett
  12. Hi - Ive been looking into doing a celestial mercy cosplay and I have found your blog to be the bible for any mercy cosplay (so useful :) ). I was wondering if you knew what the wing to height ratio for mercy is, as I am 1.7m and have no clue how big i should scale my inkscape vector image up to...

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. Thank you ^_^ Since Mercy is actually 1.70 herself, then it should be "easy" to calculate from the reference photo: http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/overwatch/images/2/2a/Mercy_Reference_1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160502194346

      Slett
    2. Thank you - didnt think to actually check her height but its a convenient surprise anyway :)

      Slett
    3. Convenient surprises are some of the best :D

      Slett
    4. oh quick question - how would you go about calculating the size of them anyway? im kinda new to this cosplay thing - my first one was evie frye which was just a load of sewing and mercy is my second :P

      Slett
    5. Just google "how to scale props to character". Then you'll get many tips

      Slett
    6. Thank you - sorry for being a bother lol

      Slett
  13. For the Worbla, how much did you use? A jumbo sheet or lots of smaller pieces?

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. I don't really remember. I used worbla for the leg bracers, halo and the upgraded "side wings" too, so kinda lost count. More than you think ;)

      Slett
  14. Hey, I was wondering what exact paint you used to spray paint the parts of the wing yellow? I also have acrylic sheets to work with. Just not sure what paint will look the best on it.

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. mine are made of pvc. I used "regular" spray paint.. You could also use an airbrush to paint them :)

      Slett
  15. Your wings are beautiful! What thickness of plexiglass did you use for the back piece?

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. Thank you. the Plexiglas I use to stabilize the backpiece is 3 mm I think (so long ago). The PVC for the "feathers" are 1.5 mm (I think)

      Slett
  16. Amazing works ! Get your favorite Overwatch cosplay costumes from Vcosplay.com now !

    SvarSlett
  17. This is so gorgeous and helpful thank you so much for posting it!
    I was just wondering when the yellow feathers were added, are they between two layers of the 1cm foam used for the white feathers?

    SvarSlett