helpful – The Rebel Fae

Cosplay conventions, thanks to Covid last year we didn’t get any of them. But now that things have calmed down we get our beloved conventions back! Yet with that, sure we get fun times hanging out with friends, seeing our favorite voice actors—if you go to an anime convention or your convention invites VAs, and all of the other awesome stuff that comes along with conventions, but you also get some stressors too. That is where this week’s What the Bleep Am I Doing?! Rebel Fae’s Guide To… It will be on surviving the con! So, we can make the convention as non-stressful as possible. And as a frequent con-goer myself I’ve definitely picked up a thing or two. So, let’s get to it eh?

Make a list before the con

If there is anything I want you guys to take away from this article, it’s this singular thing. Make a list before going to the con. A list of everything you need to take, or you think you might need. Whether it be snacks—which I highly recommend along with water because dehydration and low blood sugar is very much a thing. Or an extra pack of clothes—cause getting tired of your cosplay, is also a thing. Basically, if you have the thought “Hmm, would I need this, or would it make my time at the convention easier?” Put it on the list. Some things that I myself always find handy to bring are:

A phone charger—probably a portable one because a wall plug isn’t always easily available.
Extra cash—never know when you have an emergency and need it
Ibuprofen—those wigs can be tight, and stress is a pain in the arse…and in the head, sorry not sorry.

Look up the panels of the con before you go

This tip is helpful so you can plan your schedule and you are not running all over the place like a chicken with its head cut off. I did that my first con and since I didn’t know what was going on, I only ended up going to one or two panels. That’s why planning ahead will give you an excellent idea and plan of what you want to do. Also, this gives you less stress.

Check the weather a day or two before

I feel this is also kind of a no-brainer, but a lot of people don’t really consider this surprisingly. Doing this will not only help you prepare whether or not you’ll need a jacket with your cosplay, or if you need sunscreen or even an extra bottle of water.

Well, that’s all of the information I have gleaned over the years of my convention going. If I find out more I’ll add it in! I hope some of this or all of this article was helpful to you guys and helps make your convention experience easier and more fun. And if you have any tips of your own that you have found on your own convention experiences I’d love to hear them!

Well, that’s all for now…

Rebel Fae out!

Hey everyone and welcome to this week’s What the Bleep Am I doing?! A Rebel’s Guide To… This week I’ll be talking about mastering Social Media. Well, at least trying to. No one can truly tame the internet’s unruly beast. But I do have a couple of tips to get you guys started or further in your influencer journey. Because whether you’re a writer, blogger, or even a cosplayer you’re going to have to come up against this fickle thing. But, it’s a lot of information so this will be broken up into a What the Bleep Am I Doing series! With each section as its own little article! So let’s get started, shall we?

Trying to get seen

This is probably the first step in your journey. Plus, it may be—no, it will be the trickiest. Now, it’s not impossible but it will take some time so get ready to become a very patient person. What I can tell you is, simply have patience. Because unfortunately, it won’t happen overnight unless you are extremely lucky.

But there are a few things that make being seen a little bit easier. For example, use the crap out of hashtags. Whatever it is that you are posting, put it at the bottom of your post—this is mainly for Twitter and Instagram by the way, a lot of hashtags that pertain to what you are posting. For example, say you are posting a cosplay of the character Shinsou Hitoshi from My Hero Academia. Some really good hashtags to use for that would be things like this: #Shinsou, #ShinsouHitoshicosplay, #Myheroacademia, #Cosplayer of Instagram. Just to name a few. You can get quite creative and put the different aspects of your post in the hashtags and you could catch a good number of views that way.

I say use hashtags because let’s face it that’s how most of us look for new content on social media through these hashtags. So, using this logic, the more prominent hashtags used, the bigger the chance your post will have of being seen. Simple.

Another thing that helps, well more like two things—but these two basically go hand in hand with each other. Tagging and getting to know other creators in your niche. This I’d like to think is pretty self-explanatory. Get to know the people that do similar things you do, make friends with them, and tag them occasionally in your posts. It’s like a little form of “Hey! Look at this! I think you may like it.” Plus, a little self-promotion never hurt.

Well, that’s all for this first installment of Social Media series. I hope this was some kind of help to all of you. Whether you’re a vet or a newbie with Social Media. And if you have any questions what so ever, feel free to ask!

That’s all for now…

Rebel Fae out!

Hey everyone, Welcome to a new version of What the Bleep Am I Doing?! Rebel’s Mini Guide To… Yep, you guys read right…Mini! I thought of this when I was working on a new project recently. It was a small thing, but I wanted to show y’all but…it would have been too short to cover in a regular article. So thus, Rebel’s Mini-Guide To was born! Well, enough leaving you guys in suspense this article will be covering how to turn regular soda tabs into cool-looking scales! So let’s get to it, shall we?

Okay, so you can do this one of two ways I’ve figured out. The first is taking the soda tabs and a jar of paint and immersing it fully into the jar of paint. Make sure you have a pair of pliers or something long to hang onto the soda tabs when you dunk them because immersing the tabs full of paint with just your figures is annoyingly messy. Even if you have gloves. Just trust me on this one, guys.

Then after you immerse it in the paint, make sure you put it on some kind of grate to dry—with something under it to catch the extra paint drippings of course. I suggest using a grate because if you just use something like tin foil or cardboard, the tabs will stick when you go to pull them off. Plus, the side that was stuck to the material won’t dry properly, making it more difficult to have it painted completely. This is why I suggest using the grate.

The second way you can paint the soda tabs is once again to put them on a grate but instead of dunking the tabs, use a sponge and lightly pat them with paint. Ensure to hold on to the tabs slightly so they don’t fall off or attach themselves to the sponge.

After they’re painted just seal them with some primer and voila! You now have some pretty awesome scales! I chose to put some shiny mod podge. But, that was my opinion.

Well, I hope this info was helpful to you guys! I love providing new tips to different things I find out. Even if is just small things. What did you guys think? I’d love to hear your thoughts! And if you try it out for yourselves feel free to show me your results! I’d love to see ‘em!

Lastly, if you wanna support Rebel Fae and get exclusive access to things such as work in progress posts and stories I don’t post here or anywhere else, hop over to my Ko-fi page and donate. I’m eternally grateful for all that y’all do for me, you guys give me the strength to keep going so thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Until next time…

Rebel Fae out!

Welcome my friends! Wanna know more about EVA foam and how to work with it? Well, you’ve come to the right place! After the first part–What The *Bleep* Am I Doing?! An Artist’s Guide To ALl Things Creative: EVA Foam Part 1 I’ve explained what EVA foam is–from the different types of thickness and just a few different types of it, to a basic list of pros and cons of the material. With this part we’re going to go more in detail of what I covered in the first part. Not only that, I’ll be covering the different aspects of working with it. Like using a heat gun, what different primers you can use and why they’re important, etc. So let’s get started shall we?

More EVA foam Types-

Foam rolls, mats, and basic craft foam sheets

Rolls, mats, and your basic craft foam sheets are the main staple material for any cosplayer. When a cosplayer thinks of EVA foam, this particular category immediatly comes to mind. It’s the material that was explained breifly in the first part of the EVA Foam series. The rolls come in varying thickness from the thinnest being 2mm all the way to the thickest which is 10mm. The mats which are about 6mm in their thickness and are used a lot for bigger projects thanks to their bulkyness, and finally the craft foam sheets which come in at 2mm, are easily found in your regular craft store, and used mostly for minor detail work.

Pro’s:

Easy to work with
Light weight
Easy to cut
Perfect for amor projects

Con’s:

Very porus so it soaks paint up like a sponge
Get’s reallly warm after awhile when you wear it
Can be quite unforgiving if you mess up, so be careful
Lots of dust is produced when sanded, be sure to wear a mask for protection

EVA foam clay

Now this, is a fun material to work with! It’s not realitivly known to cosplayers who are new to the craft. (I know I had no clue what in the world it was until my second year of being a cosplayer). It’s a spongey-like clay substance that is not only incredibly malleable but it’s stretchy too! It can also be made into realtivly any shape or form and dries into that exact shape after at least twenty-four hours.

Pros’s:

Can be shaped into literally anything
A very forgiving material, just wet it slightly with water even after it dries to fix minor details
Acts like actual clay so it’s quite easy to work with
Works excellently with molds
Initially moist and very maleable when first taken out of the container, so no prep work is needed
Can be a great seam filler

Cons’s:

Because it’s so wet when it comes out, it can get everywhere if you’re not careful
The thicker you make your item, the longer it will take to dry
If left out too long, the clay will begin to dry out, so I reccomend having a bowl of water near by to combat this
For long connected pieces it needs to be propped up else it’ll sink
You need to take great care when shaping be cause any added pressure can leave any indents
Because of it’s moist texture it will stick to anything so it could get particles you don’t want in it

EVA foam dowels

These are long cylindrical or hexagonal dowels that come in varying lengths and are usually 5mm in thickness. These dowels are most commenly used for creating those last little deatils in your projects. You guys know the ones, the details that you want to stand out the most and really make an impact. The details that you can’t really acheive with scraps of regualar EVA foam or EVA foam clay.

Pro’s:

Very good for detail work
Don’t need much prep work such as priming unlike their foam roll, matt, etc counterparts
Light weight
Pretty maleable

Con’s:

Difficult to cut thanks to it’s cylindrical/hexagonal shape. You will defenitly need a tool different than your average exacto knife
Not the most forgiving material
Produces foam dust just like their counterparts
A dremel is needed to make working with these materials easier

Processes for working with EVA foam-

Priming

This process is key for EVA foam prep. Although it isn’t exactly necessary when you work with the foam clay, it’s a valuable process for the material as a whole in general. What it does is it preserves the paint job and the project itself from wear and tear that your project will no doubt go through. It also prevents having to use multiple coats of paint since it covers the foam and takes care of its porous-like nature. It can be a rather difficult process to go through depending on the kind of primer you choose though.

There are two types that are generally used: Spray on or your basic paint. There are even commonly used primers as well. Plasti-Dip, which can be used either as a spray or paint. And a newer primer I’ve come across which is called Creature Cast Rubber. As far as I’ve come to know it only comes in paint.

For Plasti-Dip or any other primer spray you may find there are drawbacks as well as good points to it. The spray works pretty well as far as coverage goes, but it does need multiple coats after each spray. Make sure to let each spray job dry in between though else wise your work was all for naught. Also you will want to make sure that you don’t spray too close or too far way else you will get bubbles on your project and no one wants that. I find that spraying at least five to six inches away works pretty well.

On the other side of things, we have the paint on primer. The one that I found that works quite well is called Creature Cast Rubber. And you can easily get a hold of it by going to their website http://www.creaturecastrubber.com I find that this primer works really well for your projects. Especially since it’s easier to use than Plasti-Dip seeing that it will not cause bubbles nor do you have to deal with the hassle of using a spray. It only takes a few coats as well. Perhaps two or three. The only drawback I find to this primer is that you need to be careful when applying it because after one part is dry–and it dries relatively quickly, chunks will come off if you go over it with another coat roughly. But this only happens after the first coat. Once you get the second coat on, you’re golden. The other thing I’ve noticed is that you need to make sure that the container is sealed properly else it will dry up into big rubbery chunks. Other than those two things, this primer works remarkably well.

Using a heat gun

This particular tool will be a cosplayer’s best friend, trust me on this one. The main prupose of using the heat gun for your EVA foam projects is “healing” the foam so to speak. Th healing process is when you cut out pieces of the foam and take the heat gun and move it over the sides to soften them up and lock in the shape and get rid of any excess dust.

Another use for the heat gun is it can make the EVA foam malleable so you’ll be able to shape the foam to any form you want. This will help you make your armor and prop projects easier to make and glue together so you won’t have too much trouble putting them together.

Glue

This is probably one of the most important processes aside from priming and painting. Glueing your EVA foam will of course keep your pieces together so your whole project doesn’t fall to pieces. And we certainly don’t want that! With my experience of working with EVA foam, I’ve come to find that there are two different glues that work wonderfully for putting together your projects. Contact cement, which once applied to both sides glues the project together perfectly. Just make sure you glue it together correctly the first time because it won’t be moving once connected. Just be wary of the smell so I suggest using a mask. Then there’s the other glue alternative, Gorilla Glue. It’s quite similar to Contact cement expect it’s a cheaper and less smelly alternative. But I recommend both the same.

Paint

This is the final category for this article. Paint! More than likely acrylic paint! This type of paint is the kind that you’ll make sure you want to use for your EVA foam projects. Not only will this paint not crack–especially if you prime first, but it’ll look amazing on your projects since it stands out the most from other paints. The best paints that I use are usually Folk Art and Fx.

In conclusion, with all of these tactics together you are sure to have an amazing project! Of course I’ll be adding more tactics along the way so stay tuned for more my friends! And of course if you have any more questions I’d be more than happy answer any of them!