I’m back with Part II of my McCree work log! Part I featured his hat, gun, and serape. Now we’ll tackle his arm!

I was really nervous to start this project, but it was actually easier than I thought (but still difficult!), especially since I’ve never created something like this. It’s in 2 parts; the arm itself, and a glove.

Let’s get into it!

GLOVE
I used Kamui’s tutorial as a guide for doing the glove. I bought these gloves on Amazon to use as a base, since they’re thick and black. I cut off the bow.

Each finger has 3 foam sections (the thumb has 2) that are glued completely around the finger, allowing for movement of the joints. There are thicker foam layers on the back of the hand with knuckle joints cut out.

The back of the hand, and center of the hand, each got foam glued to it. For the front, I layered 2 pieces of foam with cutouts at the knuckles, and added ovals where the knuckles go.

ARM
The arm portion was completed in one day while marathoning Altered Carbon on Netflix :) The base is a foam trapezoid shape which I layered four pieces of foam over to create a “staircase” effect. To make sure the foam layers stuck closely together, I used superglue and a hairdryer to shape the foam.

I made sure that I was able to slip my arm and hand inside since I didn’t want to have to worry about closures and opening/closing the arm. It’s duct taped inside (high tech!) Sometimes it’s best to go simple and effective, especially since it won’t be seen.

Then I stated working on details…since this was a more feminine version of McCree, I went a bit more stylized (and to help keep mobility at the elbow!) At the back “seam” of the arm, I added foam squares in 2 layers with a small triangle painted on in puff paint.

The top of the arm (elbow area) is a rectangular piece of foam with a circle piece on top with dremmeled edges for a clean look. There are a few cutouts in the circle to give it a multi-dimensional look.

The little knob on side of arm is actually a twist LED light (battery dead) that was already a circular shape with a little circle at the top. I glued it to the side and primed and painted it along with the arm. Gives a nice detail!

The skull is a thin piece of foam layered over the top of the arm, layered on top of a thicker piece of foam (that covers up quite a bit of the mess underneath it with duct tape). Really, the entire arm is all based on layering of foam :P I free handed the shape based on reference pictures; I made it quite slim compared to his actual arm so that it takes up about 1/3 of the entire arm.

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FINISHING
I’ve never made anything so foam-heavy before, so I read a lot of tutorials on how to seal the foam before painting. I ended up using grey plasti-dip, which is like a spray paint. I then primed it white (so the color of the plasti-dip never really mattered) and sprayed it silver.

The entire arm is weathered with black paint on a flat brush. I dip the brush in the paint then dab most of it off on a rag before applying it to the foam; I start light then build it more into cracks and brush it on larger surfaces to look like dirt. If anyone wants a more detailed tutorial on weathering, let me know!

FINISHING
The are a few finishing details to the arm that I think make it stand out, even without fancy LED lighting:

• Knuckles: I hot glued some silver dots (not sure what they are, but they’re flat little round silver ‘dots’) to each of the 4 knuckles
• Silver edging: To add depth to the skull, I painted a thin line of silver around the edges. This both acts as weathering (where the actual arm may have “chipped”) and as an added reflective surface to catch light. On any of the raised edges I also applied this technique.
• Blue paint: In lieu of using LEDs, I mimicked the look of the blue lights by edging some of the pieces with a teal paint – obviously not the same effect, but it gives it depth. The triangle pieces in the back and the circle at the top of the arm both have this effect

Phew! I was so pleased with this result. The fingers move and I have mobility in the elbow – not a ton, but enough to be able to navigate a con.

As always, I hope this helps you in some way! And if you’re working on a McCree cosplay and have specific questions, just let me know :)

Hi everyone! So usually when I post cosplay-related posts, I’m posting the finished costume PLUS all the work involved. This year I want to step back and really break out the costume process into parts, and focus on sharing in small parts how I make costumes. Because honestly, it usually takes months and I tackle separate pieces individually.

So! McCree is my first project of 2018. Part I will cover: Gun, Hat, and Serape. Lets go!

GUN
This was pretty straight-forward. The raw 3d print was a gift for Christmas, so I didn’t print it myself. It’s pieced together using screws provided from the etsy seller. The barrel actually twists out, which is a neat feature.

All pieces were primed and sprayed silver, then individually painted with acrylics before assembling together with the screws and a generous amount of epoxy.

HAT
I bought this hat from Amazon and immediately removed the ribbon around it. I replaced it with a thicker band of upholstery faux leather from Jo-Anns and hot glued it down.

The emblem on the front was also purchased before my 3D printer, and was found on etsy. After being painted and weathered, it was glued on.

The gold eyelets were painted over with brown, and I attached bullets I bought on etsy (bullets were painted and weathered at the same time as the emblem). Everything is hot-glued on this hat…watch out for glue strings!

BAMF BUCKLE
I was REALLY excited about this belt buckle, since I was going to design and 3d print it.

The print itself was first drawn in illustrator. The design of the buckle was fairly simple, and didn’t have a lot of raised edges. The rectangle shape, letters, and outer “lip” were all exported separately as .svg files. They were uploaded into tinkercad (which was a process to learn, let me tell you) and shaped into the correct size. Once that was complete, I printed it on my NEVA 3d printer!

Once it was printed, I filled in the small gaps the printer left with gesso, primed, and painted it gold. I weathered it with some black paint. I haven’t actually added it to his belt yet :)

SERAPE
Despite a serape literally being one piece of fabric, the pattern for this was quite hard and took over half a day to get right. It ended up being 2 pieces; a square with a neck hole and a taped cowl neck that goes over the larger piece. Doing it this way made it more accurate to the drape McCree actually has. (I want to be completely honest here; I went through 4 yards of muslin and 4 patterns before I was happy with this).

The fabric is a bright red, stiff fabric that I found in the bargain loft of my local fabric store…I wish I knew exactly what it was. It could almost be an outdoor upholstery fabric.

I finished the bottom edges with gold edging that I had leftover from a previous project…it’s actually the “wrong” side of the fabric.

The pattern stumped me more…and required a lot of math. I measured one side of the serape and left ~2″ off each end for the weird spacing on the pattern. I divided that by 5 (the number of shapes on each side) and drew out a pattern piece. It’s a little over 1″ wide. That was chalked onto the serape and taped over.

I used a regular gold fabric paint for the “hexagons” and mixed white and gold for the triangles.

For weathering, I sat with brown paint and water and hand added in spots to make the serape feel used/like McCree was actually using it in fights.

So that’s part 1 of McCree, done! I hope this helps you out…keep your eyes out for part 2, which will be his mechanical arm!

Three years ago I made my first Frozen cosplay, Elsa. After that I said I wouldn’t do another Frozen costume, but here we are :>

When I saw Anna’s design from Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, I knew that was my next costume. It was detailed and I knew I would be pushing myself with a lot of hand sewing.

I was really nervous about shooting this costume, since it had to be snowy. In New England we got a massive storm last week but in a weird weather happenstance, it literally all melted before the weekend :( But we ventured somewhere that did have snow, and it actually started snowing when we took these photos. I was so excited! The snow you see here is all real, no photoshop :)

I’ve written up a detailed breakdown of this costume…read on to see how I made it!
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