Toothless Cosplay Update #1
Happy New Year, everyone! Today is Fun Friday (and the first Friday of 2015) It’s time to take a look at my newest cosplay project. Here is the first update on the construction of my Toothless quadsuit. For anyone not familiar, Toothless is the Night Fury dragon from the movie How to Train Your Dragon. I’m making a costume of him that requires me to walk on four limbs.
From concept to completion, this is going to be a long road. But definitely a fun one! Here is a rough sketch (not mine, credit goes to nooby-banana) of what will be required for the full suit:
So far, I have a ‘skeleton’ created. I’ve constructed extendable front limbs, wings attached to my ‘back’, a partially constructed tail, and a poor attempt at making a dragonhead out of foam. Here is my monster’s origin parts:
For the extend-o arms, I used PVC pipe, creating joints and holding them together with carriage bolts. Then I covered them with padding and dragon-skin-like fabric. Here is a picture of them (not complete yet):
And for a tutorial on making extend-o arms, this is the one I used (warning: audio quality kind of sucks)
For the wings, I used more PVC pipe attached to a hiking backpack (the kind that has hips straps and a metal frame). To create this, I referenced a guide here.
For Toothless’s head, I started with a big hunk of upholstery foam. There is no one way to create his head, and there are a lot of examples to be found online (especially on DeviantArt). After an attempt with the foam, I decided to go in a different direction. I found a 3D pep online and have begun cutting out the paper pieces that will eventually create this:
All create must go to Graham Wiebe and his incredible guide, which can be downloaded here.
For the tail, I started with a pool noodle and wrapped it in padding and dragon-hide fabric. Then, to start making the tail’s fans, I used a silkier black fabric and bamboo sticks to create the boning. When I realized that the fabric was too flimsy, I hot-glued thin foam sheets to the back for a firmer look. Again, there are other ways to do it, this was just my trail-and-error method. Here is a picture of what I have so far:
That’s about it for this first update! I’ll let you know when I make more progress. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!
Have you ever created your own cosplay or Halloween costume? Thinking about starting one? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you.
Alisha Bjorklund 
Wow — super creative. I’ve never even thought about trying to do something like this, but now I kind of want to. Never enough time to play when you want to!! So did I miss it? Or did you say already where you are going to wear this? I’m sure you already knew about Comic Con in Madison in February. http://www.wizardworld.com/home-madison.html
Thanks, Valerie! I may not have mentioned it in the post, but I’m planning to wear Toothless to CONvergence in Bloomington, MN this July. I don’t think it will be ready by February, although it would certainly be fun to attend Madison’s Comic Con! I’m such a geek at heart that I would attend all the conventions if I could 🙂