How to shape EVA foam cosplay - Quick Tip Clip | Cosplay Apprentice

hey cosplayers welcome to another quick tip clip video and this one we're going to be talking about how to shape EVA foam for cosplay you've probably had the question before or as you get gotten going or even now asking how do you properly shape EVA foam, can I use a hair dryer to do it what what are the tools I have to have and what's the best foam for holding its shape and for heat shaping alright so with that we're gonna dive in and answer these questions for you if you haven't yet go ahead and subscribe hit that Bell notification and select all notifications so you get notified whenever a quick tip clip video comes out so you can be at the top of your game in cosplay like a boss alright with that let's go ahead and jump in and if you've had some questions about shaping you VFL comment right now in the description below say yes why yes all right what that let's jump in so to answer a couple of those questions right off the bat can I use a hair dryer know what it doesn't get hot enough to really heat up the foam enough to really get it to keep its shape and hold it you can use a hair dryer to an extent with some foams to just do a simple curve which is gonna be something like this where you just have it you know just curve in one direction but you kind of have to like do it and then have it keep it held in that position for quite a long time to have it be able to stay there so what I recommend using tools wise is sticking with a heat gun get yourself a heat gun I've had a couple I've included a description in the description I'll include links to a couple of them there's one on Amazon that's really inexpensive and works fairly well and it's a great starter one Wagner recently said this one to me it's like the Cadillac of heat guns and it's amazing I'd highly recommend it that's which one I'm going to be using it's the wagner 550 Ferno 550 and it's super awesome but you don't need to go super fancy on the heat gun off the bat work your way up to it but just get a heat gun alright so with working with shaping the foam I mentioned a simple curve and a compound curve right so a simple curve is going to be like we showed here where you just curb it in one direction and then a compound curve is going to be something more like this where you have a lot more of a kind of a scooped dish to it more like a bull like type of complex compound complex curve right so we're going to do one of each on here right so I'm gonna heat up the phone basically on a regular heat gun that just has low and high kick it on too high we're working with what the phone here would actually which actually doesn't burn as easily so you don't have to worry too much but whenever you're heating you want to always kind of keep your heat gun moving so that you don't keep it in one place too long and burned your burn your phone now one of the key differences between working with what the foam and other traditional UVA foams for cosplay is that it does take a little bit longer to heat up with the foam but it does have a little bit longer working time it stays hot a little bit longer and it does hold its shape stronger in front otherwise it does cool down so right now I'm just running the heat across stick keeping it moving and I don't need to be moving that fast I can move at kind of a pace like this just as long as it's not staying at one place too long and I'm just heating up this whole piece right now you can see as I'm heating it up it's starting to kind of get a little bit of a shinier Sheen to it compared to the matte black that it had before and that's meaning that that's it's heating up and all those cells are closing together and it's just becoming a smoother kind of more shiny surface there that has all those kind of close together all right so on one side here I'm going to just do a simple curve right and so you can do that if you're doing a band brace or something like that simply just hold it around your arm that you're gonna be doing the vambrace on or if you need to you can kind of just kind of curl it to get that curve I like to do it on my arm with what the foam you can pretty much just kind of hold it around there and it'll hold that shape if you're using some of the other foams then you'll want to like over curl it pass where you think you need it because it will have the tendency to bounce back a little bit on itself I'm going to do that for just a couple seconds here and a little cool and there you go so you can see actually even just holding it around my wrist it actually took kind of the curvature of my wrist a little bit and everything to turn into a sign event so I actually kind of take the curvature of my wrist a little bit and you can see kind of on the horizon there which is super cool it's just like really just like takes the shape and just hold it there on this side we're just gonna heat it up again and I'm going to show you a compound curve it's on the cool mode cooling down here we go pick it back on here so now I'm just gonna heat up this side we're gonna press a compound curve into this so where it curves in multiple directions and for that I've seen lots of different cool techniques for being able to kind of push that curve into the foam you can like press it down over a bowl you can create a cool little like a raising tool like Ruben has done or that evil ted has on his channel check out those maybe I'll put links to some of those in the description and or I haven't quite decided how I want to create a tool yet for it because I've just been using my the back of my knife homies Steele and I just kind of press into the foam and just kind of scoop it like that I'll put it into my hand and press in like this or it'll kind of like pull on the foam a little bit while I'm pushing in to kind of add a little bit deeper curve pressing into that you can also if you need to just like kind of use your knees and handle anything and roll it across room you need to do that I find to get like a really deep curves I like to press it in with the back of the handle so the honing steel that I talked about in a previous video and link to it has a nice round back to it on Amazon so that you can do this with it as well because some of them might have a little hook or different things on the bottom but so you can see right there there's our complex curve now oftentimes your curves won't need to be this intense for complex curves can be a little bit more subtle and like this news Paul trains here these at some point too you end up putting darts if the curve is significant enough that you can't really press it in and without it like getting wavier different things like that and so you'll end up adding a dart and then you'll just move those pieces together to get back hurt which will cover those type of things in another video but there you go heating it to be able to get a simple curve and a complex curve we covered a little bit of the differences in heating with what the foam versus some others but just to give you a quick demonstration here sorry I've kind of prepped some of these here to just kind of show you that with what the foam just going to show you like the hold and then the hold of what you can get with regular traditional cosplay EBA foams and what it looks like with the different thicknesses right so like I said before you want to go with like a thicker one to get like a stronger hold so when you pull on this it can kind of bounce back to its shape with the other ones when you go to thinner foams like a four millimeter it'll still it'll keep its hold but it doesn't hold that keep that shape super well it can kind of get bent out of shape pretty easily and not have a keep that curve as much when you get to the thinner foams like a four millimeter so then I did the same thing here with so now on the four millimeter for what the foam you can see it's gonna have more of the hold of like a ten millimeter so when you do that so it's gonna spring back and hold really strong so you don't need to like reinforce it or anything like that to get it to keep its hold its shape and even the two millimeter for what the foam is going to be some - like the four-millimeter right it's it's gonna hold its shape but you know it might kind of like lose a little bit of it if you kind of get bend it out when things like that but so basically have the ratio that I've found with these is if you just kind of assume you're going to get a similar hold and strength for with what the foam of about half of what the number that you're using here so this is ten millimeter and you get the same with about a four millimeter and this is four millimeter and you're getting the same about with a two so just kind of some rule of thumbs depending on which foam you're working with all of which work great for cosplay I'm using what the phone because ours and that's what I have around and I love it and it holds great so but yeah so that kind of gives you an idea on different types of foams how they hold format phones are gonna be similar to some of these just as far as like the thickness ratios but yeah hopefully that was helpful for you keep cheeping you've got you want to use a heat gun I'll put links to those in here some tricks for me and keep it yeah keep it moving on the foam so you don't burn your phone and you can always reheat it and shape it again if you need to if you didn't quite get it the shape you needed in the first pass heat it up reshape it that's the beauty of BBA phone you can get exactly what you need exactly that shape and then too if you think it might be a little flimsy when you do go and you seal it and prime it seal it and paint it in everything it will increase its structural hold - so if it's if you're like I'm not quite sure if this is strong enough just it may be that once you just end up finishing it up it'll get to that point for you - so I keep all these things in mind thank you guys so much for watching if you like this give us a like if you didn't give it a thumbs down stay tuned subscribe so that you get these in the future and answer the question for us what is your great single greatest challenge when it comes to working with EB a phone that will help us to be able to hopefully answer your question in a future video thank you guys so much and cosplay on my friends

Channel: Cosplay Apprentice

Views: 17,163

Keywords: #Plastic_Apprentice, Cosplay Apprentice, Skyler Ostler, Polly Plastics, cosplay, eva foam, eva foam cosplay, foam armor, EVA, Foam, Cosplayer, beginner, cosplay tutorial, tutorial, diy, cosplay armor, armor, how to, foam tutorial, kamui cosplay, foam, eva foam tutorial, foamsmith, dremel, armor tutorial, costume, eva, anime, cosplay foam

Id: 0BPjvj-N5XY

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020