Katsuki Bakugo-
Cosplay Break Down
Katsuki Bakugo is from an anime called Boku No Hero Academia or in English, My Hero Academia. I like to think of this anime as the new "Naruto" of the generation. It's follows a main heroin and his journey on becoming the worlds number one super hero. If you haven't see it, I definitely recommend checking it out. Let's begin on the cosplay break down on how I made Bakugo.
Hand Grenades-
I sealed these guys how I seal all my props and foam armor. First a I take a heat gun and with swaying motions, I hit the whole area of the foam. This removes a lot of micro bubbles and hardens the foam a tab bit. This allows a little smoother surface when applying your first coat of mod podge,
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I add three coats of mod podge, and maybe one or two more depending on how it feels and looks. If the the foam still feels kind of vulnerable, I'll add a few more coats. I try to lay on thin coats, but by the time I get to the third I'm a little impatient and a thick coat. You can do this, but it'll need a full night to dry. Don't add on more coats of mod podge until the previous coat is completely done drying.
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After the mod podge, I then hit it with a black coat of spray paint. What I wish I would have done differently it, his hit it with a coat of plasti dip or filler primer to make it a little more durable. I usually do, but I was running out of time for this project.
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After the black paint I hand painted the grenade details with acrylic paint, taped it off, and painted the remaining silver paints with a metallic spray paint. If you end up spray painting the whole thing, ALWAYS use the same brand on spray paint, even with you're sealing it with a clear coat. If you end up mixing spray paints, it'll cause awful cracking in the paint.
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Then finally, hit it with a clear coat and you're done!
I first started off with the hand grenades. I cut out over 100 pieces for these guys. For the grenade structure I used "" foam and "" foam for the edging details. I used a combination of contact cement and super glue to hold them together.
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The first pair of grenades I made looked to boxy and sharp, so I ended up recutting the main structure pieces out again and heat forming them to make them look more rounded. (picture below for reference.) These over all looked much smoother, so I stuck with these for the main piece. I then attached the grenade detail boxes. These I cut out in different sizes, that way when you look at it, it has more of an actual grenade look, vs just square boxes glued onto it.
The trigger and used "" foam gently using an exato blade I drew out a circle and another circle inside that and hit it with a heat gun to give it that rounded detail. To make sure they fit to my hands on ear side of the opening and closing base I cut out circles big enough to insert my wrist and arm in. It still ended up being to loose so I ended up stuffing them with pillow foam. You can get this stuff at Walmart for super cheap.
Wig-
This was the first time I really styled a wig. So I had no idea what I was doing, but I did end up liking the results. I watched a poop ton of YouTube tutorials on how to do this, and to be honest, they all make it look stupid easy.
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I used:
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got 2b glue hair spray
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Elmer's School Glue
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Hair Clips
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Texturizing scissors
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Hair cutting scissors
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The wig I used for Bakugo was Arda-Wigs:
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Like I said before I really had no idea what I was doing, I would run my fingers across the tips to get them to stay spiky and used the hair spray to get the spikes to stand up. And before you know it, you have some sort of anime looking hair.
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Mask and Hair Explosions-
I drew out several mask and hair explosion templates. Once I got on that I liked, I transferred it to "" foam, heat formed it, sealed it with mod podge, and then hand painted it with acrylic paint.
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I ended up not liking how my foam mask looked over time from just getting moved around, so I ended up transferring it to worbla. It molded to my face much better. Careful when doing this so you don't burn your face. Once the shape was held, I mod podge it about 5 times to hide the texture of the worbla, then spray painted it black.
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When it came time for a test fit, I had the hardest time with the Liquid spirit gum sticking to my face, so I ended up buying a black face paint on amazon, and using the that as my face mask. I think it looked a lot better than what I had initially built.
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For the hair explosions, they ended up melting in the sun the moment I walked outside, so I ended up backing the outside edge of them with floral wire and painting over that. It held really well again the sun. To make them stay in the hair I added two bobby pins on the ned of them, and ended up weaving them into my wig. It held really and wasn't all wobbly against the wig.
knee Pads, Hip Grenades, Strapping, Leg Pouches -
The knee pads were a lot of fun to make:
I started off with the inital shape and added under cuts to give it more of that edge look that be has but without a bunch of lines showing on the foam, One I got that, I took my dremel and used a small sanding dowel and slowly worked in and out those divots into the foam at an angle.
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Once that was done, I mod podge 3 coats, black base coat, metallic paint, and then finally hand painted the orange details in the divots.
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I added black stapping and sewed Velcro at the the end of them to keep them on my leg, and a piece of Velcro in the middle, and the on the pants to hold it in place.
The side pouches were also pretty easy, I hand drew out some stencils, rounded the edges and cut out some details in them, pushed them down and glued them into place to give it a better depth.
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These were then mod podged with three coats, black base coat, and then spray painted with green paint.
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I added Velcro to the back side of these for easier packing purposes, and then another piece to my leg strapping to hold it into place.
The hip grenades I bought off Amazon as a toy. They came in pack off four. I ended up removing the little sticks that came with them as well as the batteries because they would make a lot of noise every time you grabbed the handle.
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I spray painted it black, then taped off the green and metallic areas for the remaining grenade.
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I finished it off by attaching Velcro to the back side of it for easy travel purposes, as well as to the strapping to hold them in place.
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You can get the grenade's here!
Strapping was another really easy past of this cosplay. If you live in Arizona, I recommend getting all your strapping from SAS Fabric Store. You can buy yards of this stuff at .25 cents a yard!
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I bought the buckle there too and ended up just spray painting it.
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Ok! So first I measured out my waist, thigh length, and width and transferred those measurements to the strapping then cutting them. Finally sewing it together. It was really that easy!
Neck brace -
The neck brace gave me a lot of trouble, I had to measure out how far I wanted it, how high it needed to be as well as add in the angles and the curves. ended up adding angle cuts to all of the edges so they would sit flush with each other but I ran out of contact cement and ended up having to use super glue so the edges didn't turn out as flush as I would have liked it too.
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I mod podged three coats, black base coat, and then metallic paint. I ran out of time, so instead of drilling the holes like I would have liked to, I took a round sponge brush and ended up stamping the black hole details into place.
Shirt -
I ended up making my own patterns entirely form scratch. I drew out how I wanted the shirt, transferred it to a cheap cotton I got from SAS cut out the pieces, retransferred it with seam allowance, and then sewed the model together to see how it would look. Once I liked the look, I transferred it to a the fabrics I was actually going to use.
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I used Yaya Han's black spandex fabric and an orange linen. for durability.
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Instead of adding the X on top, I sewed it as if it were apart of the shirt so I would have flush seam lines. I loved the way it turned out!
