Planning an Outfit

For the convention season next year, which starts roughly around the end of May with Anime North, I've decided to really test my skills on something I've recently had my attention drawn toward.

Gundam Girls were originally created as a friendly option for costumers to try to create to wear to conventions. Personifications -- or 'tans' -- of various inanimate objects or animals is not uncommon, but Gundam Girls sort of fall into the category between 'slightly sexual' and 'OH MY GOD A GIANT ROBOT BUT IT'S A CHICK THIS IS AWESOME'.

As a giant geek for everything mecha (I've previously mentioned my penchant for building Gundam Models, right?) It's a great way to combine my love of mecha, love of cosplay, and love of just straight out building stuff. This costume will require a whole lot of planning. What will I make it out of? How will all the parts stay together? Is it going to need wiring, cooling systems, extra batteries, an attendant to walk around with? Pretty easy to know where to start. Same as anything else: Research!

To start my cosplay I picked out a few mobile suits that I like the design of, and would want to re-create in a slightly 'cuter' form. 

Here we have two of my favourite mobile suits to pick from, from left to right: Nu Gundam and Sazabi. They're both fairly structured suits, so it's easy to see each part and how it fits with all the other parts. It's much easier if you have a model kit of each mobile suit to see how they're put together. Once I have that down -- well, at least the EXTERNAL structure -- I'll start with an image of how I want the finished product to look. For general ease I'll use a plan that I created for the Sazabi Mobile Suit.

This will involve leg pieces, some sort of body suit, arm plates, a backpack booster unit, a gigantic shield, and a modified helmet. Figuring out how it'll all hook up together can wait for now. We'll go into 'How I am going to construct this' first. After a bit more research, I've decided that my basic construction procedure will go as follows:

• Create the base skeleton of the outfit out of thin cardboard. This will include latticework for stability, grooves for parts to hook onto other parts, harnesses for wear, underlayers, etc.
  
• Parts that need extra stability or moulding will be covered with expanding foam, and then carved into the required shapes. This will create the rounded surface parts of the basic suits (Unfortunately, Sazabi has A LOT Of smooth surfaces. Probably why I like it so much.)
• The entire suit will be paper mached. (This step may be taken out during later plan revisions, depending on wonderflex tests.)
• Wonderflex will be applied to the shaped skeleton for a plastic-like finish and hard outer shell.
• The wonderflex will be painted and airbrushed the bright red of Sazabi, with most decals.
• Each piece of armor will be individually coated with Friendly Plastic in order to create a thin layer of 'resin' over all armor, and to add a last level of protection to the suit.
• The plastic will be sanded to a MIRROR SHINE.
• All electronics will be attached, tested, and glued in place.

Hopefully everything will go as planned! Keep in mind that this is for next year so there won't be any updates about it for a while, but it's nice to get a plan out in the open.