After Playing FFXIV for many months, I fell in love with the game and so many of its costumes. The first one on my list to make was the starter gear, as it nice and portable compared to a lot of the other designs in game that I eventually wanted to work on. The shoulder harness, bustier, belt, adventure bag, and wristbands are all made out of automotive pleather. The patterns and shapes for this costume were quite unusual, so all the pleather pieces were hand drafted with a combination of draping and being wrapped in cellophane/duct tape to get the shapes right.
Many of the metal pieces were extremely unusual and I was unable to find good duplicates anywhere, so I had to cast them out of resin. The arrow studs, square studs, bag clip, and leg clips were all made out of sculpey and then made a negative out of Oomoo 30. Those molds I then used to cast many, many of these studs. All of the resin pieces were primed with Krylon Fusion and then finished with acrylics.
The staff for this, the Alkalurops, was taken from the artwork from the game promotional material. A bit of a last minute decision, I managed to make the staff in just under 9 days. The base staff is made out of 3/4 inch PVC piping, and bent to shape with a heat gun. EVA foam was then glued to it and carved to get the basic overall shape and any uneven spots filled in with spackling. The body of the staff was then covered with Terraflex and covered in about 4 coats of gesso and wood glue. The leaves and flower petals are made out of 3 mil craft foam and Terraflex and smoothed out with wood glue. Painting took about 14 hours to do all of the weathering and veins on the leaves. The staff is lit with 15 LEDs clustered in groups of 3 to get the brightness I wanted. The power cord runs through the hollow PVC piping of the staff head and the battery pack/circuit board/switch rests on a stop inside the staff handle where the two pieces connect. The staff handle is 3/4 inch PVC piping. The bottom spike is a dowel rod that I ground to shape on a belt sander and then tacked into the pipe. All of the raised surfaces on the staff (the wood knot and the spike wrap) are made out of scraps of Terraflex that I heated together and reshaped. The dowel rod and Terraflex on the handle were primed with 5 coats of wood glue and painted with acrylics.
Overall, this was my fastest prop build ever- and my first time working with electronic circuits. Overall it went amazingly well. There were a few gremlins with this project (ie, the circuit board failing the morning of the conventions and rushing out to get a replacement, and the sheer size of its transport container), but its a very sturdy prop and possibly my new favorite this year.
