For my progress from the start-ish, hit up Something DifferentSome of you may have noticed that one of my latest deviations was
Well, it's milestone 1 of 3 of a full bipedal Twilight Sparkle (likely non-Alicorn) costume that I'm planning to have ready for and wear to the next BronyCon. As this is my first experience doing any kind of costuming, I thought it might be fun to keep a few journals going while it's a WIP.
Unfortunately, since I kind of thought of this mid-project, there's no WIP pictures for the tail. I have been keeping some for the head, though, and plan to do the same once the bodysuit really gets underway.
Current progress on my milestones is:
1) Tail - Completed.
2) Bodysuit - Test suit created for fitting
3) Head - Working on the foam layer.
For the head, I'm working very loosely off of the tutorials at Spark Costumes (http://www.sparkcostumes.com/index.html).
Well, first thing's first, I had to build the skull. This was done with plastic canvas/meshing (these two terms being used interchangeably threw me off for

This took a bit longer than I would have liked because I decided to get most of the furring pattern done before updating again and I underestimated the work involved. In short, I blame duct tape.

I bought a cheap long hair shaver the other day. I was kind of hoping I wouldn't need to, but the ears convinced me otherwise.



I can quite likely leave the bodysuit, back of the head and back of the ears at full pile, but given how floofy the ears are, if I don't shave down the front of the face, I'll look a bit like a purple wookie. Not a huge deal, because I'll already be trimming the forelock and mane. Speaking of which...

Here's the untrimmed forelock:



I made it all a little bit longer to compensate for the fur's added volume, plus enough to allow me to shape it. I used the same technique as the tail, but the overall design was more straight forward. Or at least cutting out the sets of yarn and attaching them to the buckram was. Sewing the buckram to the head was a bit tricky because with everything that's already attached, things are getting a bit crowded. I was really glad I made the inner foam padding easily detachable. Especially when I got to the mane...



Same principle as the tail and just barely not as complicated. I made a miscalculation in that there's no real good place for me to thread key points in the yarn to keep it shaped without getting in the way of furring. So it's probably going to hang loose and get a bit tangled. On upside, that means it's not bound to be stuck to one of my cheeks, so I could treat it like a real mane and flip it to either side.

I had some trouble with length and the shape of the head. Not so much in getting the measurements wrong, but just that trying to work around that was difficult, because the yarn kept getting everywhere while I was trying to estimate where it would need to be place on the buckram plate. Then I had to really work to get the buckram plate up against the forelock as tightly as I could (difficult with all that bulky yarn around) so as to avoid replicating the bald spot the Twi brushable has. This involved partly attaching yarn to the buckram, then partly attaching the buckram to the head, then sewing all around that. I actually had to sew on a plastic mesh extension to prop the head up while I worked.

As with the forelock, I made the mane longer than needed to ensure the fur volume was accounted for and to allow me to shape it.

With that done, it was time to spend almost as much time on the furring pattern as I did for the forelock and mane. Not because it was particularly hard, but because it was long.

The toughest part of building this pattern was keeping the cling wrap in place. It didn't really want to stick to much other than the foam, which caused it to slide around a bit. However, once I got the edges duct taped, it held its form a lot better. After that was the tedious part. I had to use small (~2.5cm x 5cm pieces) of duct tape to shape the pattern around the head. The reason I couldn't use larger pieces is that they'd wrinkle or fail to cling tightly enough and I'd start to lose the contour of the head. And since duct tape just comes in rolls, I had to cut each little piece by hand. 1.33 rolls of duct tape later...



The next step is to chop all the duct tape off and use it as a pattern for the fur. However, before I do that, I need to work on the bodysuit and finalize how the head and neck will interact. I should hopefully had some bodysuit pictures for next time.