Zenyatta (How I made my Zenyatta Cosplay) (Patreon)

I think this is one of the more requested write-ups I have been asked to do so I thought why not lead the start of this Patreon strong!! Here I will give step by step detailed information about how I made my Zenyatta cosplay from Overwatch! Let's start.

Materials used:
•  EVA Foam  - (I also used a blue foam, but five below discontinued that brand for now)

 • Thin Craft foam 

 • Thick craft foam 

 • Googly eyes 

 •  PVC pipes (1/2 inch)
•  PVC capes (Various sizes) 

 • A plain black belt (Goodwill)

 • Base dress shoes (Goodwill)

 •  Black short gloves 

 •  Apoxie Sculpt 

 •  Smooth Styrofoam Balls (Various sizes)

 •  Plastic Ball Ornaments

 •  12 gauge wire 

 •  Blue LED rice lights 

 •  Open face, grey zentai suit 

 •  Worbla

PAINTS

 • Gold leaf Rub'n Buff 

 • Silver Leaf Rub'n Buff 

 • Rustoleum, Nickle Silver spray paint 

 • Rustoleum, clear primer spray 

 •  White and gold spray paint

 • Black Plasti Dip 

 • Basic Red, Brown, Black, White, tan and orange acrylic paints!

TOOLS

 •  Sandpaper

 •  Dremel

 •  Heat wand

 •  Heat Gun

 •  Glue gun/Glue sticks

 •  Paintbrushes

 •  Exacto knife

 •  E6000 Glue

 •  Drill

 •  Frog tape

 •  HDX Super Glue 

 •  Industrial Velcro 

 •  DAP Kwik seal 

THE HEAD

I started off patterning the shape I wanted for the front of Zenyattas face, I pretty much just free handed it myself, I don't really ever use premade patterns but here is the pattern I decided on in the end! If you wanna draft your own pattern be sure to stencil it onto construction paper first, that way you're not wasting your main materials! As someone once told me, measure/stencil twice, cut once!

After both sides of the pattern were cut out I began gluing the pieces together (the triangles on the masks design are there so when you cut them out and glue the sides together they give a natural curve!). The glue I used for this was HDX super glue, its a super cheap adhesive that is INCREDIBLY strong, I highly recommend it, you can only buy it at Home Depot though. The foam may not wanna bend the way you want it to at first but using a heat gun you can easily manipulate it to curve the way you want. Once everything was glued and formed together it looked like this!

I began drawing on the mask where I wanted the pieces to go and to just give an over all layout of how I wanted the piece to look! I also made the mask slightly longer then my face because I was going to cut out the chin piece and layer it under the mask to give more dimension to the helmet. With my exacto knife I then cut out all the pieces on the mask I just stenciled, I prefer using an exacto knife over scissors/box cutters because you get a cleaner and more precise cut.

Ta dah! Starting to look like something now! The shin piece was adhered under the mask and it was now time to start adding in all the very...very...many details to the helmet. 

For this process I used thing craft foam all along the empty gaps of the helmet, they are the foundation of where all my details would be going! All of the details on the mask at this point are made from layers and layers of foam that have sanded down to give it a smoother finish/look.

For the seam lines around the helmet I sanded down the tops with sandpaper to make it as smooth as I could, then with my heat gun I went in melted and small foam debris that was left behind from sanding. Doing this causes the seam lines to blend MUCH better. Every edge was also sanded and blasted with my heat gun for an over all smoother appearance. 

The inside core of the helmet is....a mess ahaha, but it is the structure needed make sure the helmet didn't warp shape and gave a stable holding. Spheres are one of the hardest things to shape with foam so it needs a good skeleton base in order to work! All the pieces were glued into place with HDX Super glue.

I added thin layers of craft foam to the nine holes on the forehead to five it more detail. Making the chin piece solely out of foam was presenting some issues for me so I opted instead to sculpt atop the foam with apoxie sculpt! Apoxie sculpt is a two part clay mixture that when mixed becomes stone hard and doesn't crack and it ended up working really well for this! Best part is it can be sanded to give a nice smooth finish.

To cover up the seam lines even more I used DAP Kwik seal, you can find this at most hardware stores and is usually used to fill in holes in drywall but here its perfect for filling in the seams and smoothing things out. You can just use your fingers and smooth it on.

This pretty much covers the base of the head! Now time to move on to the torso.

This was quite the chore if I am being honest ahaha, unfortunately I do not have many photos of this process because I was pressed for time trying to get this all done in a week for a convention I was gusting at. Though I will try my best to explain the process! For patterning out the base of the armor I did the duct tape dress form method! 

What you do is you take saran wrap and wrap your torso with it, it helps to have someone assist you with this part. I then had them draw on the basic shape of Zenyattas chest armor, that way when we got me out of the ductape monstrosity I would have the perfect pattern fit for my body!

(it basically looks like this after you are done!)

I transferred my patterns from the duct tape dress form onto the foam and glued everything together with HDX! Now began the process of building atop the base armor I had just made, a lot this I did just by eye, while using a thicker piece of foam for all these details. I cut my PVC pipe and began placing them into position, with this since they were much larger things I needed to glue down I used E6000, this glue is great at keeping things in place no matter what! To cut the PVC pipe I heated it with my heat gun and while the PVC was soft and malleable I cut it was lawn scissors (no joke, but I needed big scissors for this and well..use what you got!).

The PVC pip was covered with foam, small rectangle I cut out to give the appearence of connector pipes. With a heat wand a seared the details on the foam, its a nice little touch to make your armor not look flat. With E6000 I also glue down the PVC caps to all the ends of the PVC pipes.

Hope you're still following along, sorry I didn't document this process with photos but feel free to ask questions if you feel lost!

The back of the torso armor is a bit hectic, I know lol. But break it down into sections, a lot of it is just foam layering and PVC pipes placed into position, same as before. I also used googly eyes to give the appearance of rivets on the back middle piece, googly eyes are one of my all-time favorite things to use when crafting cause there are so many things you can do with them! With E6000 I also glue down a belt to the lower back to mimic Zenyattas thick wire he has running along his side, a thin long piece of foam was also glued atop that to add that extra detail in there.

As with the mask all the edges of the foam were sanded down with either my dremel or sandpaper and then heated with a heat gun.

In order to get me into the suit and for it to close tight on me I used lines of industrial velcro on the interior of the armor, I prefer using industrial velcro because it rarely will come down as opposed to the normal kind.

THE GLOVES

These were quite tricky and are also the only placed I used worbla at. I needed a firm base for his robot fingers, something that wouldnt come off/break on my hands. Since i'd be using my hands a lot I really didn't want to have loads of issues with it so I cut out small rectangles of worbla, heated them and wrapped them around my fingers with the base gloves on! All the detailing again is just made from different thicknesses of EVA foam that have been sanded down and heated with a heatgun, again the googly eyes were used to give the appearance of rivets.

THE SHOES

I got some old dress shoes from goodwill and began modifying! I covered the entire shoe in thin craft foam, for the bottom of the shoe I used thick EVA foam since id be walking on them and repeated the process same as before for all the other foam pieces, sand, heat, DAP kwik seal to hide seams and continued on! I also again glued down the PVC pipe covers onto the shoe with E6000. For his laces they were just thin straps of craft foam layered atop and painted red.

You may be asking "But what about the arms??" unfortunately I did not have time to make them and so I had to modify my old Genos arms from my One Punch Man cosplay to fit Zenyatta so I do not have a tutorial section on them.

At the end of it all it looked like this!

THE ORBS

I got nine of these large Christmas plastic DIY ornaments from Hobby Lobby for the base of my orbs! I broke off the top hooks to each of them and proceeded to spray the insides with a very thin layer of white paint, this fogged up the plastic and made them look frosted over, the reason for doing this is so that when the LED lights are inside the light will shine much brighter and fuller. After all that was done I glued them together with HDX glue, then I drilled holes into every one of them, this is because I would then take my LED rice lights are weave them in and out all of the orbs. make sure when drilling you go slow, you don't want to break your plastic orbs!! I also took a thin piece of wire and weaved it through all the holes as well, that way the orbs would have a good sturdy necklace support! Turning them on they looked like this...

I cut tons of cirlces and began gluing them down the orbs with HDX, I believe my pattern for the orbs for these circles was the bottom of a coke can! Once all had the foam circles on them I covered the edges and a small portion of the orbs with frog tape, reason for this is because I was going to spray paint the orbs gold to get a cleaner paint job, once that was done I could then peal off the paint to reveal an unpainted side underneath that LED lights would shine through.

I painted the silver areas of the orbs with silver Rub'n buff and any places that missed paint I used the Gold leaf Rub'N Buff. Once done I tied the ends of the wire together and ta dah! The orbs were complete. For the LED box I glued the box down to the back inside of my armor.

THE SASH...BALLS

Zenyatta has these orbs on the side of his waist as well! For the smaller ones I used smooth foam balls with a large PVC pipe connector piece in the center, for the large on I used a large normal foam ball, covered it with apoxie sculpt and sanded it down till it was smooth! A wire was then run through all the pieces to keep them sturdy! I did it was this method instead of just gluing them all together so that when I moved they would sway naturally. Later on I covered the PVC connector piece with same red fabric I used for the sash, I just glue that down into place with hot glue.

PAINTING

Now that everything was constructed I sprayed down all the pieces with two coatings of Plasti-Dip and two coatings of Primer as well! For the base coat of silver I used Rustoleum Nickle in Satin, for every gold detail I used Gold Leaf Rub'N Buff!

All other colors were painted with basic acrylics, the armor was then distressed by dry brushing black paint on different areas of the armor to give it a worn look. I used a faceless Zentai suit in dark grey under my armor and with that the look is basically complete!!

If you have any questions at all just let me know!! I didn't go into the sewing too much but if you'd like I can! The only real somewhat advanced sewing done for this is the cord around the waste, which was just a long rectangle that was stuffed with cotton padding and sewn shut with bias cording added throughout it to give a more detailed look!