Cosplaying Da Capo Nonon from Kill la Kill!

I totally forgot I even had a blog to ramble on so I'm gonna give a good long ramble about the process of making this costume. It was my first leap into big props and sewing a full look so I learned a lot through out. I also learned that big stupid hats aren't practical but they make you look cool.

First things first, I started on making the costume. I took a dress pattern that was quite form fitting and made it out of calico. Carefully while looking in a mirror, I started to cut the tails of the coat into the shapes I wanted and the height of where they met on the body. I also started to cut the shape of the top collar. I drafted my own sleeves and once I was happy with all of that, I cut it out of the fabric.

I decided early on that I didn't want the tails to be completely separate pieces with weird seems along the whole body so before I cut it out in the red fabric, I cut the calico into different pattern pieces. I cut them in a way that they'd attach in a smoother manner and piece together in a way that allowed for the tails to be  fully connected with part of the body. I've badly MSpainted what I did here.

I'm not a professional and making patterns but this seemed to work well for me. 

After that, I started to figure out the next pieces. I used an already made school shirt as the shirt underneath the coat and I started to made the bow and lapels out of white fabric. I was unsure about the bow at first but kept it around for a bit. The lapels I drafted out on paper for the shape and then sewed them together with thick interfacing fabric inbetween. I also started to draft out the bone shapes on paper and figuring out proportioning I wanted. Nonon is tiny and I'm not so I had to make the bones bigger than what they actually seem to create the same proportions on the outfit. If I had made the bones the exact size it would've looked pretty dumb on the body.

After that, I entered bias tape hell and had my first taste of making it myself. I know now I could've just bought some but I guess I would've had to learn this at some point in my life. I watched a lot of videos and looked at lots of walk throughs of how to make it and I think it went okay for my first try.

During this time I also ordered a stretch red leotard for underneath. I also picked out some shoes I already owned that are super comfy and started to paint the bottom of them white.

Next up was to sew the bias tape down and make cuffs for the sleeves. The cuffs also needed to be bias taped and then I started the process of sewing up the bones. It was really difficult to turn them inside out but I got there eventually. I also took a further look at the design and saw there was a pattern on the tail parts of the coats insides. I cut and sewed those and had them ready for attaching. Then I started on my first ever go at boot covers. It was some trial and error and I had to restart my first ones, but eventually I got the science of it. If I was using a stretch fabric i'm sure it would've been ten times easier but I wanted to use the same fabric as the coat.

This photo has most things just pinned together and roughly placed to give an idea. 

 Anyway I was at a happy place of the costume so I started on the hat. 

The base is a baseball cap I got off my sister and I started making the basic shapes with cardboard and tape. After I got the shapes I was happy with I added fabric onto the brim of the hat and covered it with card pieces to give the lines in the art.

At the same time I also ordered my wig which I got off ebay. I didn't really want to spend a lot but I knew it was gonna be best to get a longer wig to cut than a short one. People have interpreted her hair differently and I know for sure it's actually long with a bun but for cosplaying reasons I thought the bun would be way too much hassle with the hat and everything and that I was just gonna cut it short.

With the wig cut, I started to finish and neaten up the costume along with start on the second boot cover. I also started to cut out the shapes for the cannon to sit in the hat base and covered it in the same red fabric as the coat. Some things were still just pinned together but I felt like it was coming along at this point.

It was then to start the world of foam! I have never worked with doing any huge props before and neither have I ever worked with expanding foam. I looked at my options and I felt this would be the cheapest and easiest method to get what I wanted for the hat and other details. Firstly to start off simple, I started with making the monkey and it's body. I had ordered pipecleaners to mess around with for Kitacon but I figured they would make a good starting place for the body of the monkey. After I created the body I was happy with I started to cover it in mod rock and formed the skeleton out of that. I had originally made the baton out of the same method but it was too heavy and didn't work as well as I had hoped so I scrapped that.

It's kinda horrifying by itself. 

Anyway, my foam from ebay came and when it was a nice sunny and non-windy day to open the back doors I got ready to foam it up. At first I wasn't sure it was working even though I followed every tutorial I had read and watched but after some time it fully puffed up and I was pretty happy with the results. I had never carved foam before but I just decided to drive right in for some of the smaller parts like the monkey skull and baton. I started to carve the antler things and the main cannon from the giant block but I sorta messed that up shape wise. After messing up I realized I would need another can but I felt like that'd probs be better anyway as I wasn't happy with the monkey skull and would be useful to have if I need to fix any mess ups in the future. After some time I felt I got better at the carving, I guess it's just practice.

Also it was super duper messy but thank you to the wonderful device known as the hoover.

This photo was after doing the second can. As you can see I redid the monkey skull into a better 3D shape and started to sand down the baton. I also added more foam to the other side of the cannon and more onto the bases of the antlers. I also added some more to length the back part just incase. After fixing up these issues I had, I went back to properly carving the main cannon piece and the shapes. I made some decisions along the way and once I was happy with them I started to try testing them out on the hat and the placement of them. I would also start sanding parts down in preparation for the next part.

While testing out the foam pieces in the hat though I realized the antlers are way too big outwards, it was gonna make walking around a bit difficult. I went back and took a lot off the width to make it more manageable to walk around in. After I was happy with all the pieces and they were all sanded down I started to cover them in a layer of masking tape. I originally had the cannon to have an indent near the front but I saw that it wasn't looking good and fixed it with adding small rolls of tape under other lengths of tape to smooth out the shape again. Also at this point I decided for the bow I wanted to make it a solid piece out of foam. In the clips I watched of the fight Da Capo is in, the bow stays in place while the fabric parts move. I quickly carved that out and also did it up in tape.

Taping it up really makes it look ten times better and a lot cleaner.

After this it was onto the newspaper and glue layer to give it a more solid and smoother finish. By this point I was rushing a lot as Kitacon was nearing and I was aiming to wear this there. It was a bit of a mad rush of glue and newspaper but it got there eventually. I only did a few layers on each thing, wanting to keep the weight low. 

Then when everything was dry, time to rushingly paint everything! I also ordered feathers from ebay for the monkeys mohawk. I originally had planned to make the mohawk a solid piece but through some discussion, went with using marabou feathers instead in eggshell. I used acrylic paint to start giving everything coats of white and started to paint in the red parts. After the base colours were done I started to paint in the secondary colours and lastly added details and lines with a black pen.

Fuwa fuwa~

While working on the hat, I also aimed to finish the costume itself. I still had bones to make for the boots and needed to finish the boot covers. During this time I also made a decision to go with leggings instead of white tights. The leggings I felt would be better looking in photos and would also allow me to sew the boot covers into place, making it into weird shoepants. 

Some things are still just pinned down but I was in a happy place right before Kitacon.

The thing is though Kitacon was quite a long journey away and there was no way I was just gonna be carrying the hat like that around to Birmingham. I hadn't glued together the hat by that point and hadn't made the details like the stars or borders yet. I also wanted to make the hat a bit shorter too. So I devised a way I was gonna pack and unpack it for the con and the way I was gonna put it together on the day. Most of the foam pieces are connected into the hat with wooden skewers. The plan was to put it together then secure with hot glue before adding the final touches on the day. 

It was a bit of a rush but it was really worth it! I had a blast at Kitacon and got to take lots of great pictures with other people cosplaying Kill la Kill! Soon I will be having a photoshoot with Carlos for this costume and hopefully I would've fixed out some of the kinks I got from rushing it. 

I also appeared in a cosplay music video at 2:16! It was my first time being in one and I had a lot of fun filming my shots.

Anyway that was the process of this costume! I'll probably make another post about Kitacon which will probably include some more sillier photos of this costume.