CSCC - Chicken Smoothie Cosplay Club!

[Wild Mothman]

@Rainpelt,
I'm cosplaying a character with a bow for sdcc this year so I've recently been looking a lot into making a bow myself and if you don't have the option of wood/metal work, I'd try one of these options-

1. If you live in the US Sports Chalet and Sports Authority are going out of business so you may be able to find a bow in clearence. I know Nerf makes bows so you can probably even find some cheap on Amazon and paint them.
2. Some girls who went to my high school made bows by cutting cardboard to the shape of the bow and spraying it with this stuff that dries like styrofoam to make it 3D (I can't for the life of me remember what it's called but if you Google "cosplay sprayable styrofoam" or something it will probably come up) Then, they just carved the styrofoam, painted it, and coated it in fiberglass resin. I used this method to made the levin sword from Fire Emblem. It's very tedious but probably cheaper than buying an actual bow.

Expanding foam?
I think I know what you're talking about
I know a cosplayer using that stuff to make his fish hook for a maui from moana cosplay.
you can pick it up from hardware stores I think

[Rainpelt]

@Rainpelt,
I'm cosplaying a character with a bow for sdcc this year so I've recently been looking a lot into making a bow myself and if you don't have the option of wood/metal work, I'd try one of these options-

1. If you live in the US Sports Chalet and Sports Authority are going out of business so you may be able to find a bow in clearence. I know Nerf makes bows so you can probably even find some cheap on Amazon and paint them.
2. Some girls who went to my high school made bows by cutting cardboard to the shape of the bow and spraying it with this stuff that dries like styrofoam to make it 3D (I can't for the life of me remember what it's called but if you Google "cosplay sprayable styrofoam" or something it will probably come up) Then, they just carved the styrofoam, painted it, and coated it in fiberglass resin. I used this method to made the levin sword from Fire Emblem. It's very tedious but probably cheaper than buying an actual bow.

I checked it out and I don't live close enough to either of those, dang. :\ I'll have to look into the foam/cardboard/resin idea, thank you! I've done plenty of other tedious things for the sake of cosplay, haha, shouldn't be too much of a problem. I'll look into Amazon first too, just in case.

I think you're probably right, Bleakverse, thank you! I think I've got some left over from when my roommate and I made our dressforms for sewing, so this should work out pretty well actually!

You can also use pvp pipe and worbla but it is a more pricey route.

This will probably end up being my back-up plan, heh. We were actually just looking into worbla for the Frozen armor adaptions we're going to try and do, so I'll have to try for the bow first and order it all together if I end up having to do this. Save on some shipping cost maybe.

[Uchuujin]

Just a heads up San Diego Comic Con does not allow cosplayers to carry weapons no matter how unrealistic they look. They will take them at the door.

[Wild Mothman]

it seems that a lot of cons are cracking down on props, especially prop weapons of late.

[abxy]

Just a heads up San Diego Comic Con does not allow cosplayers to carry weapons no matter how unrealistic they look. They will take them at the door.

Even if someone had a sord.....?

even a sord.....?
a sord.....

[GhiraWar]

I'm not sure what to think about the "no props that look like weapons/"are"".

[Uchuujin]

Since San Diego Comic Con is literally in the middle of San Diego near tons of busy streets, I guess I can see why they'd want to carefully control that. It's not a very self contained con? Like... you have to leave to get food, none of the hotels are actually attached, and the parking from what I remeber requires a walk as well.

Then there's DragonCon where you literally don't have to leave the convention area for food or hotels or anything, and they are very opened about their weapon policy. They even sell real weapons at the con. I think since you aren't mingling with tons of non-convention people they can be a little less strict.

But idk some cons like AWA are really pretty far from the city center but still have EXTREMELY STRICT weapons policies. That's what I don't understand. Ugh. AWA is one of the worst about that stuff.

But itd suck to make and bring a bow to SDCC only to have the staff take it apart like they did to my friend's bow at AWA. They had to cut the string and tape up the ends of it, which basically ruined the prop and she had to edit all of her photos like crazy. So I just wanted to warn you I guess?

[Wild Mothman]

NZCC rules aren't that bad,
it was just a cable tie around part of the prop to show it had been checked and had to be less than a 1m in length or something, as well as being made from con safe materials

though cosplayers are encouraged to cover weapons with cardboard or something on their way to and from the convention
and while NZCC do have stalls that sell real weapons, you aren't allowed to take them out of the packaging until you have left the convention venue.

But I know the reenactment group that's part of the con, has had more strict regulations placed on it and stuff. To the point where my friend who is part of the group is unsure if they'll be back in the next year or two.

[~Jaded]

I didn't know sdcc was strict like that. It makes sense because it's so ridiculously crowded. But darn. Wondercon which is put on by the same people is super chill about weapons so I was just assuming it would be like that. I've never actually cosplayed with weapons before so it didn't even dawn on me to check.
And yeah. Sdcc is the most inconvenient con I've ever been to. They have like one vendor that sells hotdogs and that's it and it's outside because most of the people there don't actually have a badge so they put the food outside so more people buy it and it is awful. Last couple of years I just haven't eaten there because of the hassle. Parking if you don't know what you're doing is an even worse situation than food though. A lot of hotels have shuttles which is nice so if you are planning on going and don't have a parking pass, look online for the shuttle scheduels. If you're not staying at a hotel with a shuttle, I recommend driving to one of the hotels with beach parking right next to it and park in the beach parking then pick up the shuttle at the hotel. I recommend doing this at the stop at Humphrey's hotel. It's sort of far from the convention center (the shuttle from that point takes about 30 minutes) but it's all free and it's in a nice area so you don't have to worry about people trying to steal stuff out of your car.

[Wild Mothman]

I've got allergies, so I pack my own lunch and stuff when I go to cons, but even then I still don't eat much
I don't cosplay with weapons, or props in general really (maybe two or three times) in the 4 or so years I've been cosplaying
I can understand to a degree with the new regulations, with geddon/nzcc becoming more and more crowded every year, and being unlikely to get a new venue any time soon. this is just gonna be the way things have to be
besides.

EEeeeek well I guess I'm going to con in october.
Okay I'm gonna go to geddon outside my home city in october
my first big non local con, because major milestone birthday present so my parents are covering my trip
four days worth of con
eeeep
gotta decide what cosplays to take/make
Making Evie and Ivy for it
Taking Kaylee's ball dress (as the actress who plays her was just announced to be one of the guests at the con - so no way I'm not taking that)
and might take Five.