Nene Romanova

Hurray more WCS cosplay spam.

BTW you can watch our skit on youtube here: [link]

As promised I'll give a longer outline as to how the hardsuits were made.

Materials -
The majority of this costume is constructed from foil stretch fabric, yoga mat foam, pvc, pva glue, hot glue, wire, zippers, mini LED lights, clear plastic, glass paint, acrylic paint, fabric paint, elastic, velcro.

Construction -
I started on the boots as the forst piece. I built them up from regular boots with many layers of foam to get that strange round shape they have in the anime. Of course it meant the most dodgey part of the costumes were my boots, so no one look at them please. xDDD They ended up wrinkling really bad by the end & wouldn't pop out again after I added extra supports on the inside of them. Oh well, no one would really see much of my suit & it meant I could make Catty's boots more precisely & they worked so much smoother.

Each piece of the armor I'd start with a foam base & would carefully measure & cut to size to be pieced together like a clothes pattern... it was kind of wierd, but it worked for me.
I would then give the foam pieces a coating in pva glue & let the fabric stick down flat & dry for ages. This porcess took particularly long as I have very little spaces in my house to place things to dry, so I could dry about 2-6 pieces at a time on my kids play table (which I use as a work desk). This made the whole process just take even longer.
Now the reason for the pva is because the fabric was breathable, so any glue would go through to the other side, so I needed one that would dry clear, soft/bendy & cheap & pva surprisingly worked perfectly, it even tears the foam if you try to remove it. Which was great for me pricewise considering I was paying for it.
Once the pieces are dry I fold down each edge hot glue it down, then fold it underneath for extra support & hot glue it down again. This process takes a surprisingly LONG TIME... Especially when you're going around nearly 100 pieces.

The pieces are then glued together to make the pieces of armor. I double glued all the armor pieces to make sure they wouldn't be able to break apart. Some pieces I used the fabric to hold them together as that gave a slight bit more stretch to the armor for improved mobility a bit more than the foam could give. The great thing about foam is it'll squsih if you really have to move at a particular angle, I love working with it for anime designs because it definitely saved my life a few times now. xD

The suit as a whole is held together with pieces of fabric in between each segment instead of trying to stick it to a body suit, it is the body suit xD This also meant pieces would stay wher they're meant to & could come aprat for transporting the fsuker.

I was so happy with my fabric choice it was about $9/m which was an okay price, especially when you're buying over 20m of the stuff Unlike damned fabrictown which sells it for $25/m under the name of lycra, bitches wouldn't know lycra if it bit them in the ass, as I had this arguement with the store clerk. It only stretches on way & is at max a 25% stretch. Fail store was fail.

The LEDs some were tiny chinese ones you can buy which I put in the really awkward places such as the hips, then a battery pack cable one that I hid inside the battery pack of the hardsuit (quite convienent considering XDDD) I concealed the light using a few layers of clear plastic, whcih a moulded into a curved shape around them & then glued down. The centre light is a closet touch light, which you literally push in to turn on, it's fun. xDDD

Character -
For this costume I decided to use my real hair, just to prevent wig mishaps considering we were wearing helmets & had to pull them off during the skit, also because it was kind of fun to use & style my real hair for a cosplay properly for once. xDDD Unfortunately the humidity, rain & heat just killed it for when the comp finally happened, so it wasn't as nice as when I'd styled it earlier that afternoon, which sucked it looked so nice as if it were a wig. xDDD Oh well!
This is my first costume that really required a corset & spanky pants. Due to the horribly unflattering design of these suits & the retarded shape of anime characters, I could only do this with a corset. It was really painful too as I had to wear the corset much lower than it is designed for on my hips to make it look more like a smoother transition, which was wierd again considering I have no ass. xD Underneath I had to be taped in so many places, the spanks had to be taped up to stop wrinkling in wierd places, also the corset had to be taped between my chest to stop it from being able to bend forward as I moved, which HURT!!!
I was really happy with the blue contacts I had, they only last a month, but you can definitely see the fsukers from far away. I was sad my green suzaku contacts one was made incorrectly & seriously made my eye feel like it was bleeding. >____<'''
This was the first time I got to do all my crazy make-up at once. SO MANY LAYERS!!! It's really wrong that I felt so pretty after doing it. Pity it takes freaking 2 HOURS to do. OTL'''




Series: Bubblegum Crisis - Tokyo 2040
Character: Nene Romanova

Cosplay Made/Worn by:

Photo by: Bubby