Tsitsaiga (Inuyasha) walk through

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So I have decided for this week to do a walk through on how I got my awesome Tsitsaiga to look like it does.
It is CON safe and extremely light to carry. So if you are cosplaying as Inuyasha, you will be sure to not have sore arms after the time.

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My friend drew me out the shape of the Tsitsaiga on illustrator and printed it out for me so that I can have the exact shape of what the Tsitsaiga is suppose to look like without spending 2+ hours trying to get it to look very close to my reference image.

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My friend was also kind enough to give me a big chunk of Styrofoam to get it started because her father works at a construction site and they get big chunks of Styrofoam that they just throw away. It is absolute madness because the size of the chunk I got could easily have gone for about R200-R300 at the shops.
I traced the shape of the printed out version onto the Styrofoam and then her boyfriend was kind enough to help me cut the shape out of the Styrofoam using a hand saw. (it's so much easier then using knives) We thought at first that the Styrofoam would splinter and break if we used the hand saw but to all of our surprise it didn't.

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With alot of patients and my trusty exacto knife I started carving out the shape of tsitsaiga. It does tend to get messy so I suggest if you ever carve out Styrofoam, to do it all in one go so you only have to clean up once.
After I have achieved my desired shape, I started sanding it out with sand paper to smooth it out.

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The next day after seeing that the Tsitsaiga isn't completly alligned I carved out a bit more and sanded it some more down until I was satisfied.
I took a couple of looooooooooooong wooden BBQ skewers and pressed them in them in the handle part of the Tsitsaiga to make sure it wouldn't snap off with the amount of handling I will be doing with it.
Afterwards I applied a coat of papermache on the entire Tsitsaiga. I found this neat packet of papermache powder (that's also used as wallpaper glue) at my local hardware store to paper mache the Tsitsaiga

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After the whole sticky papermache deal, I applied a coat of poly filler. It's amazing how awesome the Tsitsaiga looks after just applying a coat of this amazing stuff.

I realized while applying pollyfiller to rather use your hands then using spoons and stuff. It's easier to smooth out the rough parts using your hands. And it makes the sanding out afterwards also so much easier. Sanding can be a bitch.

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Another of my time was spent brushing out wool using a cat hair brush for the Fluffy part of the Tsitsaiga. I found a couple of neat tutorial on how to make tails using wool, so I decided to use the same wool to apply to my tsitsaiga. It also doesn't cost an arm and a leg (like faux fur usually does) and I had the wool since I crochet as a side side hobby.
I realise that most of the wool tail tutorial require the fluffies being straightened after they have been brushed out but I went against that just so I can have desired volume.

I also applied a woodglue/water (1:1 ratio) to the Tsitsaiga after applying pollyfiller.


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After the woodglue/water coat was dry, I spray painted the blade part thoroughly on each side. And it was super Shiny.
I than applied the fluffies and a brown material to the handle.
I also made a little hilt using craft foam (I also applied a coat of woodglue/water to the craft foam and then spray painted it afterwards).

Tada. The final product and the labor of my love for Inuyasha is done. I am truly impressed with my own skill and glad it turned out so well.

It's not heavy and is durable for the con

I hope you guys enjoyed the walk through.

Have a wicked day everybody

© 2015 - 2024 sewleigh
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