More than a few times, I ran into a few League of Legends costumers the following day, and picked up conversations with them, before I came to the realization that they had no idea who I was, and that I was probably some weirdo. Well, they’re correct in the weirdo assessment, but more than once I pretty much realized that they didn’t recognize me, and I had to remind them that I was the “Pink Taric from earlier.”
Overall, I was very pleased at how well received Armor of the Fifth Age Taric was from people, especially League fans, and it was admittedly nice to be in a costume that could legitimately rival the vastly more aesthetically pleasing looking women that I was privileged to be grouped up with in terms of popularity and cult following. It’s like for every rando dude who just wanted a picture of hot chicks in tight costumes, there would be like two legit Taric fans to sing my praises about how truly truly outrageous my costume was. No disrespect to the ladies, but this is somewhat of a new sensation for me.
Originally, I wasn’t even planning on being Fifth Age Taric, as I had already started on, and began gathering components for what was going to be a Xin Zhao costume, since I could easily use my Asian-ness to my advantage and not have to worry about being called the “yakuza” or “Triad” version of any Anglo-looking League character, but during the summer, the idea of being Taric; specifically Fifth Age Taric was planted into my head, and the snowball began rolling and gaining momentum faster than I could put Xin onto the shelf.
Needless to say, I was pleased with the costume as a whole, but naturally, as anyone with a perfectionist complex would say, there are lots that I probably would’ve done over again, if I had the chance. And because I have a tendency to be a slacker with low drive, such improvements probably won’t happen, or happen way too close to when they need to be done by, getting to the perpetual scenario where they’ll be omitted again.
Whatever though, what this post is about is a basic quick nitty gritty summary of what the costume is, and how it came to fruition, because as I’ve done in the past with my Graves guns, and the LeBlanc staff I never finished, I have a tendency to think that there are people out there that might actually be interested in reading write-ups like these.
General shapes and patterns were drawn out in Illustrator, based on blown-up 3D renders from LOLKing’s Model Viewers. Using a series of screen grabs, I blew up Taric to my height, and created everything accordingly.
Since we live in reality, the shield and the ancient hammer of unblemished power were scaled down dramatically. Believe me, if you thought my hammer was absurdly large when I wore the outfit, in actual scale, it should have been roughly the size of myself almost completely.
100% of the armor is made from EVA foam, basically the stuff that you can get fairly inexpensively and abundantly at any Harbor Freight Tools hardware store. Pieces were heated with a heat gun, and held in place until they kept the desired shapes. They were painted with Rustoleum 2X plastic bonding spray paint, and weathered with black acrylic paint.
The shield is made from both EVA foam, as well as pink insulation foam; pink foam for the base of the shield, and EVA foam for the trim. Honestly, if the pink foam came in a width under 1”, I might have gone that route, but alas. EVA’s 0.5” width and ease in working with it made it the logical choice for me to go with instead.
Shaping the shield was deceptively hard, since I had to get it into a diamond-like shape. Asian jokes aside, geometry was always one of my weaker mathematical categories, mostly because when I was taking it in high school, coincided with the year in which I had my first part-time job which occasionally called for some late evenings, and geometry was my first period class.
Basically I made a mockup of what I wanted the shield to be in Illustrator and made it out of paper, until I reached a shape that I found to be satisfactory. And then I actually had to bust out a fucking protractor to deduce the angles I wanted to achieve in order to get my cohesive half-diamond shape. And then, I had to compensate for the fact that my pink foam sheets were a 1” width, not to mention when the parts of the EVA foam were on it, made it a 1.5” width, the angle in which the surfaces would have be sanded down to in order to have a cohesive half-diamond shape.
Once the geometry was all squared away, the surfaces were shaved down on a belt sander to get as close to 30 degree edges as I could get. Thankfully, when it came time to put the pieces together, I wasn’t too far off the mark, and everything set into itself fairly accurately, and with enough hot glue.
The center “gem” is essentially more pink foam, and was deceptively difficult to create, considering the same geometric process had to be used in order to create it out of 2” thick foam, in order to have some girth and substance to it. Once it was sized and shaped appropriately, it was painted using typical household acrylic wall paint.
And almost as if it were created just for the purpose, it’s Behr’s high-gloss interior paint, and the color is seriously called, “Tutti Frutti.” About four coats of Tutti Frutti was enough to get it to become glossy, and hide some of the more prevalent imperfections of painting insulation foam. And then it was hot glue encased into the center of the shield, to where it ended up finishing.
The rest of the shield was painted with more household acrylic, because half of it was pink foam, and you can’t spray paint pink foam, so in the pursuit of consistency, I went with household acrylic for all of it. And then it was weathered using black acrylic paint.
When people asked me what the hammer was made out of, I pretty much explained that it was 5% PVC pipe, 4% hot glue, 1% household acrylic paint, and 90% bullshit. Granted, that obviously me being snide, but really, it’s pretty much all entirely pink foam. Literally, stacks upon stacks of 2” foam, and all the “gems” are made from it as well. Lots of hot glue, and a few machine screws are what are bonding a lot of the pieces together.
But the sheer mass and presence of it in the end are undoubtedly large and consume a lot of space. The final weight of it, I’d estimate to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-7 lbs, which doesn’t sound that bad, but considering the weight distribution of it and the only one true safe holding point of the entire thing, needless to say my left forearm began to tire at times.
And I think that’s really all of it. It’s basically a foam suit of armor, and a shield and hammer of ancient unblemished power that’s made out of a whole lot of foam, paint and hot glue.
The wig was purchased from Arda Wigs, and is their Buttercup wig in Spanish Brown.
Oh, and binding posts. These are pretty much the greatest screws and posts on the history of the planet. Fifth Age Taric has around 30 of these holding various things together, and I’m pretty sure I bought out at least three Home Depots’ worth of binding posts in the process of making this costume.
With the proverbial “if I had more time,” I’d probably have given some actual detail to the gems themselves, and probably attempted to add some white accents to make them pop a little bit more. Additionally, I’d have attempted to paint the “cracklature” design on the shoulder pads as well as the hammer itself.
Maybe next time. Maybe not. There’s little guarantee there’ll be a next time. Not because I didn’t like the costume, it’s just that I don’t costume that often save for Dragon*Con.
Anyway, I had a tremendous amount of fun being Fifth Age Taric, and I’m hoping that I’ll stumble across some decent pictures of myself or the group I was a part of in coming weeks, but if not, at least I’ll have this mini gallery of shots that Jen was so gracious enough to take of me before I vanished into the sea of Dragon*Con attendees.
