sptcosplay:

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how I’m doing my arms for my Opal cosplay. So basically:

-wrap arm in cyran wrap or cling wrap. Whatever you call it. Just make sure you cover YOUR WHOLE ARM.

-this part is tricky, and you are going to need a partners help on this, trust me. Now cover all that cyran wrap in duct tape! Oh yeah!!! You want the form of your arm to be recognizable. But don’t wrap it too tight! Because of blood flow and stuff.

-Now with a sharpie, Mark a big oval over the crease in your elbow. And now your partner can help you cut this death trap off of your arm!!! Make sure it is someone you trust with sharp objects. Once it’s off your arm, tape it back together!!! After you’ve done that, you’re going to cut it in half at your circle mark, and cut out the circle!

-Take a big piece of 1"foam and roll it up now!!! You’re gonna stuff it into your duct tape arm parts!!! It will stick a little to the cling wrap, but just keep stuffing and pulling!!! You want your arm to be pretty stiff and only squish slightly. Like a real arm. Make sure you’ve got your spiral part of the foam in the middle ish of the arm. Important.

-Alright, now take that bad boy and shove a thin PVC pipe through it!!! This is basically the “bone” of the arm. Don’t cut the PVC or anything like that yet. You just want the arm on something you can pike in the ground.

-So take your arm on a stick and go outside!!! Plop that baby in the dirt so it stands on its own!!! This is the fun part. I used white plasti dip! But that stuff comes in a lot of colors, so use what you want. You’re basically just going to cover your arm in this shit until it’s smooth!!! Think of the plastidip as the ‘skin’. Any pieces of duct tape that jut out can be cut off with an xacto knife and painted over with plastidip. This step takes the longest, and you want to make sure it’s nice outside because you will be out there a while. You basically put on a coat, wait for it to dry, put on another coat, wait, coat, wait…etc. Typical cosplay stuff.

-once you’ve got that all done, you can cut the PVC and use rubber cement to glue it into your arm!!! Your foam shouldn’t budge if you packed it tight enough. If not, glue that too.

-Now you’re gonna have to do some soul searching at your local hardware store, but just get like a joint of some sort so that your elbow moves the right way. Idk what it’s actually called. It’s not the kind for doors, you want a long skinny one, so that you can glue it into your arm and have room to bend.

-The idea im going with is to run wires through the pipe to make it moveable and poseable! The hand will be constructed in a similar way, to be posed. And then you’ll make a stiff part on the sides of your harness to attach the wires to!

-These arms are meant to go UNDER a body suit! Meaning your body suit will have 4 arms. Unlike other cosplayers who attach their arms outside of the costume. I think the overall look will be nicer and cleaner!!!

I hope this helps at all!! Sorry for the lack of pictures, my phone updated and deleted a lot of what I had!