{"id":39826,"date":"2014-09-11T21:54:48","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T01:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=39826"},"modified":"2020-07-13T21:54:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T01:54:57","slug":"photos-dragoncon-2014-fifth-age-taric-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=39826","title":{"rendered":"Photos: Dragon*Con 2014 – Fifth Age Taric summary"},"content":{"rendered":"

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More than a few times, I ran into a few\u00a0League of Legends\u00a0<\/em>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.\u00a0 Well, they\u2019re correct in the weirdo assessment, but more than once I pretty much realized that they didn\u2019t recognize me, and I had to remind them that I was the \u201cPink Taric from earlier.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 It\u2019s 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.\u00a0 No disrespect to the ladies, but this is somewhat of a new sensation for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Originally, I wasn\u2019t 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 \u201cyakuza\u201d or \u201cTriad\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019ve done over again, if I had the chance.\u00a0 And because I have a tendency to be a slacker with low drive, such improvements probably won\u2019t happen, or happen way too close to when they need to be done by, getting to the perpetual scenario where they\u2019ll be omitted again.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019ve 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

General shapes and patterns were drawn out in Illustrator, based on blown-up 3D renders from\u00a0LOLKing\u2019s Model Viewers<\/a>.\u00a0 Using a series of screen grabs, I blew up Taric to my height, and created everything accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since we live in reality, the shield and the ancient hammer of unblemished power were scaled down dramatically.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

100% of the armor is made from EVA foam, basically\u00a0the stuff that you can get<\/a>\u00a0fairly inexpensively and abundantly at any Harbor Freight Tools hardware store.\u00a0 Pieces were heated with a heat gun, and held in place until they kept the desired shapes.\u00a0 They were painted with Rustoleum 2X plastic bonding spray paint, and weathered with black acrylic paint.<\/span><\/p>\n

The shield is made from both EVA foam, as well as\u00a0pink insulation foam<\/a>; pink foam for the base of the shield, and EVA foam for the trim.\u00a0 Honestly, if the pink foam came in a width under 1\u201d, I might have gone that route, but alas.\u00a0 EVA\u2019s 0.5\u201d width and ease in working with it made it the logical choice for me to go with instead.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shaping the shield was deceptively hard, since I had to get it into a diamond-like shape.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 And then I actually had to bust out a fucking\u00a0protractor<\/strong>\u00a0to deduce the angles I wanted to achieve in order to get my cohesive half-diamond shape.\u00a0 And then, I had to compensate for the fact that my pink foam sheets were a 1\u201d width, not to mention when the parts of the EVA foam were on it, made it a 1.5\u201d width, the angle in which the surfaces would have be sanded down to in order to have a cohesive half-diamond shape.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Thankfully, when it came time to put the pieces together, I wasn\u2019t too far off the mark, and everything set into itself fairly accurately, and with enough hot glue.<\/span><\/p>\n

The center \u201cgem\u201d 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\u201d thick foam, in order to have some girth and substance to it.\u00a0 Once it was sized and shaped appropriately, it was painted using typical household acrylic wall paint.<\/span><\/p>\n

And almost as if it were created just for the purpose, it\u2019s Behr\u2019s high-gloss interior paint, and the color is seriously called, \u201cTutti Frutti<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And then it was hot glue encased into the center of the shield, to where it ended up finishing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rest of the shield was painted with more household acrylic, because half of it was pink foam, and you can\u2019t spray paint pink foam, so in the pursuit of consistency, I went with household acrylic for all of it.\u00a0 And then it was weathered using black acrylic paint.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Granted, that obviously me being snide, but really, it\u2019s pretty much all entirely pink foam.\u00a0 Literally, stacks upon stacks of 2\u201d foam, and all the \u201cgems\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the sheer mass and presence of it in the end are undoubtedly large and consume a lot of space.\u00a0 The final weight of it, I\u2019d estimate to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-7 lbs, which doesn\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I think that\u2019s really all of it.\u00a0 It\u2019s basically a foam suit of armor, and a shield and hammer of ancient unblemished power that\u2019s made out of a whole lot of foam, paint and hot glue.<\/span><\/p>\n

The wig was purchased from Arda Wigs, and is their\u00a0Buttercup wig<\/a>\u00a0in Spanish Brown.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, and\u00a0binding posts<\/a>.\u00a0 These are pretty much the greatest screws and posts on the history of the planet.\u00a0 Fifth Age Taric has around 30 of these holding various things together, and I\u2019m pretty sure I bought out at least three Home Depots\u2019 worth of binding posts in the process of making this costume.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the proverbial \u201cif I had more time,\u201d I\u2019d 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.\u00a0 Additionally, I\u2019d have attempted to paint the \u201ccracklature\u201d design on the shoulder pads as well as the hammer itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe next time.\u00a0 Maybe not.\u00a0 There\u2019s little guarantee there\u2019ll be a next time.\u00a0 Not because I didn\u2019t like the costume, it\u2019s just that I don\u2019t costume that often save for Dragon*Con.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, I had a tremendous amount of fun being Fifth Age Taric, and I\u2019m hoping that I\u2019ll stumble across some decent pictures of myself or the group I was a part of in coming weeks, but if not, at least I\u2019ll 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.<\/span><\/p>\n