Kuma - Afro Samurai Cosplay

Photo Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sharkhats/15124450462/

Inspiration
Last year (Aug 2013) I went to my very first convention, DragonCon. It was awesome! There was so much to see and do and there were so many amazingly cool costumes! Practically everyone was dressed up as something and I, not having dressed up, felt like I was missing out on a lot of fun. I decided that I had to give it a try!

It took me quite a while to come up with something that I wanted to cosplay as for my first time. It had to be something that I was interested in. I also wanted it to be original, a fairly well known character, and just plain cool looking yet feasible for my first build. So, after many weeks of brainstorming, I came up with something that met all my criteria for my very first super awesome cosplay build. I decided on Jinno from Afro Samurai, or more specifically his rebuilt form, Kuma (http://afrosamurai.wikia.com/wiki/Jinno)
I love the Afro Samurai series and Kuma is the perfect character to cosplay; he's pretty badass looking, original, not ridiculously difficult to build, and did I mention he looks freaking badass?!
The version I decided on was the battle worn Kuma who appears at the very end of the last episode of Afro Samurai.

In the scene, Kuma looks as if he has been through hell and back to retrieve the number 2 headband as well as other headbands (people have speculated that there used to be at least 10 and somewhere along the line the others were lost) so that he can fight Afro and finally take his revenge for all the misfortune that has come upon him due to Afro's actions. BADASS.

Research
So, the first step after having decided what I wanted to cosplay as was to do some research since I have no prior experience making costumes. For reference material, I took a few screen caps, found some great fan art, and also found a really awesome cosplay that someone had already done. I also found a bunch of really good cosplaying tutorials to give me an idea of how I wanted to build the costume which I will include throughout the build instructions.

The Build
First, I want to say, it was a ton of fun building this project, and it was a great learning experience! There are parts I think I did an amazing job on and others that I learned from. It took several long months of hard work to complete due to the limited time I could put into it each day, but I am happy to say that it was worth it! That said, below is a rough idea of the processes/materials/tools used to create my Kuma cosplay.

Fabricating the Teddy Bear Head

Supplies for head:
18" (42 cm) exercise ball - ($30)
newspaper - cut into 1" strips - Free
2 things of wallpaper paste (you can get this at Lowe's or any other home improvement store) - $18
printer paper - cut into 1" strips - Free
fabric ($12 from Joann Fabric)
foam blocks for muzzle ($9)
5" foam sphere for eye ($3)
hard hat
"great-stuff" insulation foam
hot glue gun (I had one, so it was free for me)
paint (roughly $10)
panty-hose

The process is pretty simple, but it was time consuming because you have to wait for each layer to dry which takes roughly 4 hours. If you're unfamiliar with paper-mâché, there is a nice little tutorial here: INSERT TUTORIAL LINK

The gist of it is this; using the exercise ball as a base, you add a layer of newspaper, wait 4-5 hours for it to fully dry, add another layer, wait 4-5 hours, and so on and so forth until you have built up about 10 layers. Then finish it up with another 2-3 layers of copy paper for extra structural strength.




First Layer Down. 11 more to go!

So, a week and a half later, the form of the head was complete. I had to cut the hole a little bit bigger so that I could easily fit it over my head.



Paper Mache Form Finished!

Looks Cool!

Covering the Head in Fabric

The next step was to cover the head in fabric. It took me quite a bit of searching to find the perfect fabric to cover it with, but I am quite happy with the material I found at Joann Fabric. Not to mention that it was inexpensive! :)

Insert Pic Here

Covering a sphere which is a 3-D object with a 2-D material without causing it to bunch up can be a bit of a problem, but after  doing some research, I found the best possible way to cover it would be to use a beach ball pattern (imagine slicing an orange into 6-8 slices and then laying the rind flat)

I just cut out the template, traced it onto my material, and then used spray fabric adhesive to glue it onto the surface of the head. It was definitely a bit tricky.



Fuzzy ball head. lol

Fabricating and Painting the Eye, Muzzle, and Ear
For the eye, I used a 5" foam sphere. I cut roughly 2/3 off and hollowed it out so that it would fit flush against the head. Once shaped, I covered it with paper-clay, allowed it to dry overnight, then sanded it down to create a nice smooth surface.



Covering the eye with paper clay



Eye: sanded and ready to be painted!

The muzzle was sculpted from 2 foam blocks glued together. I sketched the shape of the muzzle onto the foam with a marker and then cut off sections at a time. Once it was shaped, I sanded down the surface. Then, just like the eye, I covered it with paper-clay, allowed it to dry overnight, then sanded it down to create a nice smooth surface.
The nose was molded out of heat baked clay.




Muzzle before sanding

Once the pieces were shaped, I then used some white spray primer/paint to seal the surfaces and prep them for painting.


Lookin' good!

I then did a mockup to determine the proper placement of the pupil so that the eye would be looking forward and used a stencil to paint on the pupil.
I painted the muzzle using khaki colored acrylic and a golden brown to add a little weathered look.
The nose was painted black and then hot glued to the muzzle.
After the painted pieces were dry, I sealed them using a clear semi gloss.

 Before I hot glued the eye to the head, I first trace the circumference onto the head so that I could cut out the missing eye hole using a dremel cutter. I then hot glued a section of the panti-hose to cover the hole from the inside which allowed me to cover the eye hole and yet maintain visibility while wearing the head.







Hot glued everything into position.

It's like he's staring into my soul. lol

The ear was fabricated using 3mm craft foam and some of the excess fabric. I first drew out a rough design and then traced it onto the craft foam which I then cut out. Next, I prepped the foam for painting with a couple light layers of plasti-dip and a layer of primer. I then painted the ear piece using the same colors I used for the muzzle and then sealed it with a quick spray of clear semi gloss. Lastly, I cut out some of the fabric to cover the ear and then glued it on using a hot glue gun. Once completed, I attached it to the head using the glue gun.

As a final touch, to keep the head from moving around and to make it more comfortable to wear, I glued a hard hat inside of the head. It took quite a bit of patients to get the helmet positioning just right so that I could see out of the empty eye socket. I had to glue the helmet to a block of foam which I glued to the inside of the head and then to secure it, I used "great-stuff" insulation foam to fill some of the void around the hardhat.



Getting ready to glue the hard hat into position

Finished product

This thing is just plain fun to wear around. lol





#Selfie #JustWokeUp #NoMakeup

Head Bands

Supplies Needed:

3 yards of white cotton cloth

red fabric marker

black fabric marker

The headbands were fairly easy to create. The first thing I did was roughly cut 2 inch strips from my 3 yards of fabric. It's supposed to look kind of battered so being choppy with it is okay. It actually improves the look :)

Once the Fabric was cut, I then weathered the material using cocoa powder, make-up, and coffee. There are a lot of different techniques and materials you can use to weather the fabric, but I think it turned out well :)

Next, it was time to add the symbols. Basically, each headband gets a red circle, the kanji symbol for "number" in black on the right, and the kanji symbol for the actual number of the headband in black on the left. I found that the quickest way to draw everything out was to print out the symbols I would need and then trace them out onto the fabric. *Note: a back light really helps out when trying to trace out your patterns*

The Armor

Torso

Supplies Needed for Torso:

black long sleeve compression shirt ($20)

Plaster Cloth

Wall Paper Paste ($9)

Strips of Newspaper

Strips of Copy Paper

paint

clear acrylic spray

Velcro

hot glue gun

Being new at this, I was very unfamiliar with how to fabricate a chest plate. But, after searching around the web, I was able to find a ton of different armor building methods (foam, cardboard, paper Mache, plastic, plaster casting, etc...) However, because I wanted to make the chest piece form fitting I decided to do a plaster-cloth casting reinforced with paper Mache. Although I am happy with the results, the process was quite time consuming and in hind site, was probably not the best method to use. Regardless, here's the process I went with:

First thing you want to do is cast your body using the plaster cloth strips. You'll need a friend (or two!) to help you out with this. Coat your chest in Vaseline to prevent the plaster cloth from sticking to your body. Get ready to stand still for a looooooong time (a really loooong time!). No seriously, this is gonna be rough! You are going to have to remain as perfectly still while your friend applies 2-3 layers of the cloth to your body. It dries fairly quickly, so the quicker you apply the layers, the better. Once you are cocooned, you wait! It'll take the plaster cast about 20-30 minutes to harden up enough to cut yourself out of it. It helps if you use fans or a hairdryer to speed things up.

Once it has dried, you have yourself a cast :) Now you just have to strengthen the form using the same paper Mache method we used for the teddy bear head. So, about 12 layers of paper Mache later (9 on the outside, 3 on the inside), you'll have a nice sturdy piece of armor. At this point in time the armor will be strong enough for you to make any necessary final cuts to shape out the armor as you'd like. Once the final cuts were made, I then added a couple more layers of paper Mache using copy paper to seal the edges and make sure the piece was solid.

After fabricating the chest piece, I primed and painted the pieces, and weathered the piece to make it look worn and old. If you are unfamiliar with weathering, a quick Google search of "weathering armor" will give you a plethora of tutorials on how to weather an object using paint :)

Here's a pretty good tutorial that I found: http://makezine.com/projects/simple-paint-weathering-in-3-easy-steps/

I then fabricated the "bolt" you can see in the middle of the piece using 6mm craft foam and paper-clay. After assembled, primed, and painted, I attached the "bolt" piece to the chest piece using hot glue and then sealed the whole thing using a clear coat.

Strapping the chest piece

In order to make the armor wearable, I had to add on some straps. I wanted the strapping to be a low key as possible so I made an internal strapping system. I glued velcro to the inside of the piece at the shoulder and side on the left of the armor so that I could put it on my slipping it over my body. I then hot glued more velcro on the right side so that I could open and close the armor as I pleased. As a final touch, I glued on some panty-hose I had cut to cover any velcro that was visibly after donning the armor.

Gluing on the straps of the armor

The Ribs/Spine

After the chest piece was complete, the next piece to the torso was the "rib" section.

I cut out four 2" x 20" 3mm strips of craft foam and glued them to a 4" x 6" rectangle of 3mm craft foam. I then glued a 3/4" x 6" to the back of the rectangle piece to give it a sort of a spinal cord look.

I then coated the piece with a couple of light coats of plasti-dip and a coat of primer and then painted it as seen below. I then weathered the piece and used watered down black acrylic to give it a dirty/ worn look.

insert pic of rib section

Robotic Arms

Materials:

plastic wrap

painters tape

plain black gloves

3mm craft foam

plasti-dip

paper-clay

primer

paint

Velcro

Once I decided on the material I was going to use, I did a little more research and came across a really good tutorial on how to create really cool looking robotic limbs. The tutorial goes into really good detail on the process, but I will give a brief overview.

There are 4 main pieces to my arm design: the hands, the forearm, the upper arm, and the shoulders.

First, I created a pattern by wrapping my arm first in plastic wrap and then with the painters tape to make a sort of cast of my arm. Next, I drew the pattern I wanted using a marker. Then I carefully cut the cast off, leaving a form fitting stencil which I then used to trace my patterns onto the foam sheets.

After cutting out all of the pieces, I applied a couple of light coats of plasti-dip spray to the craft foam and followed up with a layer of primer. When using plasti-dip, you want to do very thin layers and do 2-3 layers to keep it from coming out sloppy looking.

Once you have sealed the foam pieces, it's time to mold the foam to your arms. Using your stove-top at medium high heat, hold the piece of foam you are molding about 8" above the eye of the stove until it becomes floppy (about 10 seconds) and then quickly press it against your arm and hold it in place until it cools (around 30 seconds)

*Note: you might need a friend or maybe some tape to help hold larger pieces flush while it cools.

Once all of your pieces are formed, it's time to paint! I used silver to paint the entire surface of the piece and then did a second coat on the side that would show. After painting, I weathered the surface to make it look worn and a bit rusted (this is the battle-worn version of kuma after all. He needs to look like he's been through some shit)

After all of my pieces were painted, I sealed it using a thin coating of clear gloss and then hot glued them into position to assemble the gloves, the forearm, the upper arm, and the shoulders.

To add a bit more detail, I fabricated a few "bolt heads" using paper-clay which I attached to the joint areas at the shoulder and the elbow. After fabricating, I sanded, primed, painted, and sealed.

Once I was done assembling all the pieces, I attached Velcro to the pieces and to my black compression shirt to keep everything in place.

Katanas!

 



For Reference

Materials:

3 wood - 1/4" x 3" x 4'

wood glue

primer

paint

4 - 72" black shoelaces

craft foam

spray clear acrylic

Every samurai needs a sword. It just so happens that Kuma is so badass that he has 2! Using a couple of really great tutorials I found through deviant art and YouTube I was able to quickly fabricate the katanas. I highly recommend borrowing a jigsaw and a belt sander from someone because those two tools made fabricating the katanas a breeze.  You can check out the reference tutorial I used here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL95120D21536501A9

Based off of the tutorial, I drew out the 2 katanas and then cut them out using a jigsaw. From the pieces I cut, I then traced out 2 additional pieces that would be part of the handle. I then used a belt sander to smooth any rough cuts. Next, I used some wood glue to combine the handles with the sword and used clamps to help hold it all together while it dried. Once the piece was formed, it was time to shape it. The tutorial does a really good job explaining how to get the correct shape, but basically I flipped the belt sander over and used it in a similar fashion as a grind stone to put an edge on the blade and to shape the handle. Finally, I cut out my tsuba design, shaped it with the belt sander, and glued it into position.

In order to save time and effort, I fabricated the habaki (collar) and kashira (end cap) from 2 mm craft foam and glued them into position with a hot glue gun.

Next, it was time to sand the whole thing with fine grit sand paper and then spray prime it to prep it for painting. I used silver for the blade and handle and gold for the tsuba, habaki, and kashira. After everything was painted I used a bit of watered down black acrylic to weather the habaki, tsuba, and kashira.

Once I was done painting, I then used spray clear acrylic to seal the whole thing.

The final step was to wrap the handles. I found this great tutorial on Deviant-art which I followed to wrap the handles in no time!

Kendo Hakama

From the tutorials I was able to find, it seems to be fairly difficult fabricate a hakama due to the seven pleats which give it it's look. Therefore, I decided to just purchase a hakama rather than spend countless hours attempting to throw one together with my lack of sewing skill.

There are tons of site's out there to buy from, but be ready to dish out at least $40. I got mine through amazon:
I'm 6'3", so I went with a size 28 Kendo Hakama. You can Google a hakama sizing chart to get your fit, but when looking at sizes, the height is the most important part. Also, it's better to be slightly shorter than longer because you don't want your hakama to drag on the ground.



Kendo Hakama

Footwear
For my footwear, I decided to go with the inexpensive and comfortable route and simple use a pair of plain black flip-flops I had on hand. The other option would be to buy a pair of geta (sandals with an elevated wooden base). However, I think a pair of plain black flip-flops work fine and aren't really noticeable with the hakama mostly covering them.

DONE!

I put a lot of time and effort into making this cosplay, and had a ton of fun doing it! I showed it off at Dragon Con 2014 and it was a hit :) Here's a few pics of me wearing my completed Kuma cosplay:

Left: Me as Kuma, Right: My friend as Shadow Link

Lots of people wanted to pose with me by having me to put my swords together like I was going to cut off their heads :)

Fight!

Looking like a boss!

My friend and I were very popular at Dragon Con! It was awesome!

AFRO!!!!