Easy eva foam costume templates free download

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Painting the Foam Ringwraith Gauntlet. Prop Sword Design - Drawing Tutorial. Filter - All. This website uses cookies to improve your experience.

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These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. You can get perfect angles by just sanding down the edge of the foam but its down side is its time consuming and very messy.

For smaller pieces and finer cuts you can use the razor knife to quickly trim down the edge, sometimes if your scissors are dulling it will just bend the foam or tear it versus cutting it because the piece is so small. The rotary tool does allow you to do some crazy shapes and angles like creating swords and detailing in armor.

Quick Tip: There is another way to get those angles in the foam with out having multiple pieces using a soldering iron, well get into that in the next step. This step we'll tackle forming and shaping. Your main tool here is the heat gun, they come in many different shapes and sizes but you really only need a small basic one. I personally have the Wagner watt heat gun, you can find this model nearly anywhere.

The Process is simple but takes time and patience to master. Using your heat gun go from one end of the foam to the other. You can visually see whats been heated and what has not, this is because the heat gun seals the outer layer of foam further and softens it. Once you've heated the foam evenly, start to shape it.

Simple forms such as curves and angles will retain their shape after one treatment. When you get into more complex shapes such as a pauldrons or armor with flanges or domes you'll need to heat it more then once.

This is tricky because you need to heat the area of the second angle with out heating the rest of the piece, Putting to much heat on the entire piece will undo everything you just did. To avoid having your piece lose shape heat it in small increments followed by shaping. Keep the parts you don't want to reheat by covering it with your hand or a scrap piece of foam.

Keep in mind certain parts will take quite awhile, the starkiller pauldron displayed here took nearly an hour to shape.

I heated the whole piece then waited for it to cool and heated the edges little by little to get the flange in the piece, so don't be discouraged if your piece isn't forming right, set it down and come back after its cool and try it again. Quick Tip : Its a great Idea to heat the foam regardless if it needs to be shaped or not.

Once the foam cools it stiffens and seals it self making it tougher and keep its shape as well as being easier to paint. Your secondary tool here is a Soldering Iron. This can be used many different ways such as stiffening edges and boring holes in the foam but your main use for it is scoring the foam to make folds. Scoring the foam is great because it will allow you to make folds and hard angles with one piece.

It also keeps you from having you to clean up seams. To do this take your ruler and a marker and draw a line where you want the fold to be. Once you draw the line take your soldering iron and using your ruler as a guide gently run the iron across the foam following the line.

Once you have the angle you want grab your heat gun and heat up the seam and fold it over till it cools. For added strength you can run. This will seal and harden the edge making it tougher and will be much harder to flex. Quick Tip : Using the soldering iron technique works well but if you want a welded looking seam like the mark 1 iron man, you'll want to cut the pieces on an angle and glue them together.

If your building a prop, its good to build a support into it. With swords you can get a rectangular piece of aluminum in the metal siding and rod section of a home improvement store.

This will add the support you want but wont add much weight to it. Also wooden dowels are a good alternatives and can be used in all sorts of props like pistols and rifles. This step well discuss how to glue your pieces together.

There are only a few ways to glue EVA foam together and by far the most common and easiest to use is the High Temp Glue Gun with high temp glue sticks. Just be sure when it says "cordless" it sits on a charging station rather then the cord just being able to come out of the handle. Hot glue guns work incredibly well and is cost effective for big or small projects. When doing larger projects when you have to layer foam together you can use 3M Spray adhesive Super Quick Tip : Cut off the rubber end of the glue gun, this comes in hand went you want to smooth out excess glue.

Only use high temp glue sticks other wise you run the risk of your costume melting in your car if its left in the sun. While gluing your project together keep in mind where and how you'll be fitting in the harness or how the pieces will attach to each other.

Using your glue gun is pretty self explanatory but there are a couple tricks to keeping it easy and painless. Put glue along the edge of what your gluing and using the tip evenly spread the glue across the edge and press the two pieces together. When you spread the glue out it will cool and harden much faster as well as creating a better seam.

After the piece is secure from the glue on the inside or back side of the foam put some more glue to help support the two pieces. Quick Tip : you may also do this on the show side of the seam and evenly spread it out to fill gaps and strengthen the bond. For larger gaps in the seams there is an alternative filler method using latex caulk, well get to that next step.

Well be discussing seams and gaps this step In your build you'll have gaps in your seams or two much glue, its inevitable but don't fret! There are many ways to fix seams and Ill talk about the two main ones. Technique one: If you prefer to fill your gaps and seams with hot glue this is the method for you. After this you'll notice the foam has become very rough, this is where the high grit paper comes into play.

Using the or higher grit paper run over all the rough spots of the foam, this will smooth it out and bring it back to nearly the same smoothness as it was new. Quick Tip : You may also use your heat gun to quickly seal the foam again, this will remove and burrs left from the sand paper but be careful not to heat it too much as it will melt the hot glue!

Technique two: Use the nozzle of your hot glue gun to fill the gaps in the seam. Get a tube of latex caulk and put a bead down the seam, using your finger simply smooth the caulk down the seam. The water will thin the latex and make it easier to create a smooth seam. Once its all evened out you'll notice your gaps are filled and will be easily painted. Quick Tip: Wetting your finger will make spreading out the latex much easier, have a cup or bowl of water near by for this purpose and keep a damp rag or paper towel with close by in case you get latex where you don't want it.

Test each technique to see what works best for you, you may find mixing the two techniques together works the best. Here well discuss the option of weathering and detailing.

Weathering is a term used by costumers to describe the technique of adding the appearance of use or damage. This step is optional but can really pull the look and feel of your costume together. To weather a costume, you'll need to randomly damage your pieces with the rotary tool and soldering iron by creating pits, scratches and dents. It helps to predetermine where are scarring will be by using a marker. Mark up where you want dents, scratches and pits in the rough shape you want them to be.

It takes some practice so you'll want lots of examples to look at. Try put scratches and chips on the edges of the armor and dents towards the center, make it look realistic and try to not get carried away. Quick tip: Practice, practice, practice on scrap foam. Get used to the thickness of your foam and how your tools work with it before weathering it and keep lots of reference photo's handy to generate ideas.

To create detailing such as bullet lines or shrapnel scratches use your soldering iron. Start with a round area created by the rotary tool and drag your soldering iron away from it with gradually less pressure. It will create a ridge in the foam and in the paint process you can color the ridge accordingly. If you ever damage the foam to deep and go straight through it don't worry! Just put a scrap piece of foam behind it and glue it, you can either fill it with the caulk or just seal the gaps with glue and keep it as a dent.

These images where used from a brilliant foam Space Marine build on obscurus crusade forum. You can check out the full build and costume here. This step is Prep and painting. Once your seams are filled and your armor is weathered its time to start the painting process. EVA foam does not accept large amount of paint well by it self.

It tends to soak up some paint and after its hardened it cracks. The best way to keep your paint from cracking or loosing color is to seal the painted areas with Plasti Dip or Mod Podge. I prefer the spray Plasti Dip but It's expensive because it needs layers before its ready for paint. Plasti dip seals the foam as well as creates a rubber coating over the foam allowing it to still be malleable. It dries smooth and in most cases will fill small gaps. The spray can version works just like any other can of spray paint, once the surface of your armor is clean, spray it with 2 or 3 layers over the course of an hour.

Let it cure for a day before working with it again. Once your costume has been sealed you can paint it! This part its pretty straight forward just pick your choice of colors and paint layers of paint. I find Rustoleum paint works best cause ive just had way to many defective cans of krylon.

If your going for a metal effect do a base layer of bright metallic silver followed by a layer of "hammered" silver. It also comes in almost any metallic color so its also great for black or gold. There are a couple different ways you can simulate chipping in the paint. You can do this by either creating real chips in the paint or paint on scratch with a silver paint. In creating real chips you start with a metallic base coat. Next you apply toothpaste or mustard yes the stuff you put in your mouth on the areas you wish to have chipped paint, such as around edges or in the scratches or dents you made then simply paint over it.

It works by letting the mustard or tooth paste become hard after being exposed the air. This allows you to paint over it and easily remove it. Once your choice of chipping sauce selected and you paint cured cured you can use your finger, ruler or a butter knife to scrape it off but don't use anything sharp like a chisel or scraper, it may puncture the foam.

Quick Tip: A ny tooth paste or mustard will do so buy the cheapest you can. In post-application scratching technique apply a base coat of silver metallic spray let cure then add your next color over it. Once the paint has set for a minute take take a variety of sand paper and scratch off bits of paint. This will simulate the chipping and scratch. After it cures you can go back with a medium grit and smooth out the scratches and add wear areas.

After you have completed your painting and chipping process go back and fill your dents, scratches etc with black paint. I just use a bottle of acrylic craft paint you can get at walmart in the art supplies section.

This will give it a dirty and heavy use look, you can also use dark grey and browns to simulate ash or dirt. Quick tip: When doing the post weathering paint, experiment with the colors and layer them, you can get some really incredible results.

Once that's all done and you've let it cure for 24 hours you'll notice there may be a few gaps in the chipping paints and the weathering paint doesn't stay on great this is solved with a clear coat of spray paint. You'll want to do a satin clear coat if your going for a weathered look and a gloss for a newer look.

Even if you don't weather at all you'll still want to do this, it makes the paint look much more realistic These images where used from a brilliant foam Space Marine build on obscurus crusade forum. Almost there! This is the assembly and fitting step!

Now that your project is cured and ready to go you'll need to be able to wear it and fit it to your body. The most popular method is to attach it with straps with buckles. Be aware of where these straps and buckles are visible and hide them to the best of your ability.

If they costume has visible straps use those for your fitting straps. Use nylon webbing for costumes like the mass effect armors and leather straps and cording for costumes like dragon age. It all depends on how you want it to look and fit. I use nylon straps and buckles in varying sizes for the harness and hide the buckles under the armor plates.

You can get both the nylon strapping and buckles at craft stores how ever a great alternative is camping straps or luggage straps at your local Walmart. Quick tip: The most common mistake is making the harness not adjustable. If gain or loose 5 lbs it wont fit any more and you'll have to alter the costume to fit in it again.

So always leave extra strapping on the buckles or add some elastic the the straps to give them a little give.

Bigger pieces like full plate armor or a space marine you'll want to create a harness. Simply make one out of nylon straps using a suspenders style connector in the back about shoulder height, don't make it too high up or it'll dig into your neck and not to low or it wont stay on your shoulders.

When attaching it to the costume you can simply glue the straps with the buckle connectors to the costume it self. Hot glue will keep it there no problem as long as there is no paint over the area your gluing. If it fails to stay onto the foam just use some basic lochtite epoxy. Quick Tip: If your having trouble hiding the straps or the buckles just give them some paint and they'll blend into the costume more. This works well for smaller pieces but but you sacrifice the fitted feel you would otherwise have with the harness.

I would highly recommend that you sew or stitch the velcro to a piece of nylon webbing or any durable fabric. Hot glue doesn't grip well to Velcro by itself. If you sew it to a section of of webbing or fabric then it will have something to grip to.

When fitting you costume fit it comfortably to you, make it look like it was made exactly to fit you. There shouldn't be any gaps between your costume and your armor and it shouldn't look bulky but it also shouldn't look to small.

You don't want to be blue in the face because your chest piece is cutting off blood to your head. Break that costume in! Make sure it fits right and its comfortable, Then bring it to a con and show it off! The sky's the limit when working with eva foam, you can make small costumes or huge ones, it all just takes practice. This will be updated monthly because i'm always learning new trick and better ways to do things so check back often! Hope you enjoyed reading and hope this instructable gives you the confidence to make your first costume or ideas for your next project!

Feel free to visit Towering Props on facebook and send me pictures of what you've completed using this tutorial. I love seeing the feedback from you guys! I'm a newbie when it comes to armor but I decided to give it a try! My dad have a lot of tools and I bought some good foam recently, I will certainly start tomorrow! I found a "modest" armor in Monster Hunter tri that will be fun to make! Your article is very clear, English isn't my first language but I can understand it very well!

Reply 7 years ago on Introduction. Your are welcome! Thats what im here for. If you have any questions feel free to send me a message on facebook! Would a closed cell foam like Plastazote be suitable for this kind of project? Question 2 years ago. I'm a bit of a newbie and I was wondering how you decide what thickness foam to use 5mm always seebed to small and 10mm always seems like its be too bulky. The weathering part of the tutorial was such amazing help.

Is there any other cheap alternatives to the Mod Podge and Plasti Dip?