How to Use EVA Foam - Basic Tools and Materials needed to Start Crafting HD Foam for Cosplay

welcome to the shop steve here at sks props and in this video i want to show you guys some of the basic tools and techniques that it takes to be a foam fabricator now for those that are not familiar with my particular work i am a multi-award-winning foam smith i love foam and i love it so much that i develop my own line of high density foam products specifically designed for prop and costume fabrication blick and i partnered up not long ago so they carry my hd foam foam dowels and the ever popular foam clay online and in select stores this particular video we’re just going to go over the basics of the different tools you need and different techniques to get you started on your journey to be a foam smith so let’s kick things off by talking about the material itself blick will be carrying my hd foam in thicknesses of 2 6 and 10 millimeter those sheets are 24 inches by 60 inches so that is a lot of material to be able to craft with now if you haven’t used eva before i am a huge fan of it because it’s an extremely versatile material but it’s also very very light so it’s great for cosplay and for props because it’s con safe you can carry it around all day now the things that separate my hd foam from a lot of the others that are out there is that is a high density foam so it cuts and it sands beautifully the other thing that’s great is the fact that it’s light gray which means you do not have to use markers on this to transfer into your templates you could use a ballpoint pen or pencil which is going to make your templates a lot more accurate now along with my hd foam sheets blick will also be carrying my hd foam dowels the dowels would be round half round and bevel they’ll come in sizes of 10 15 and 20 millimeter there are two of them per pack and each one of them is 36 inches in length now this is going to give you an opportunity to add some really quick and easy details to your costumes and props and last but not least we have the ever popular foam clay foam clay is great for your props and costumes especially if you’re trying to get an organic look to it you can sculpt with this material by hand the moisture will eventually wick out of it so it becomes hard but it still retains its ability to be extremely light which is great for cosplay now that you have your character or prop references ready to go you need to start thinking about construction and your templates now there’s a couple different ways to do templates there are websites out there that will have pep files available which are computer generated files that you can download and put together like a puzzle piece you could also do it a lot more traditional which is typically what i do i hand draw most of my templates because i do a lot more custom creations so if you’re doing that i prefer to use bristol board bristol board is like a thicker cardstock but it holds up really well for doing templates because you can actually hold it up to your mannequins duct tape dummies or a friend to get all the armor situated that you need now this is a shield that i had done that was a custom creation again drawn onto the bristol board you can see the back of it though i’ve done a lot of different iterations where i’ve changed it and that’s going to happen you know when you’re doing these types of templates you got to still take into consideration the thickness of the foam so a lot of times they change but it’s great to have a starting point with your bill before we talk about some of the basic tools to use one thing i want to bring up and that i feel is very important is safety make sure that you always do set it aside enough along with all your tools to get the proper safety equipment that includes eye protection i prefer ones that are shatter proof a decent dust mask and that’s because our foam does generate quite a bit of particulates into the air when using a rotary tool and an organic filter mask and that’s because we use solvents we use spray paints we will make sure none of that is getting into us so moving on to the workstation itself this isn’t really the kind of hobby that you want to be doing on your kitchen table so out here in the shop i have a piece of butcher paper down and i have a self-healing mat i feel self-healing mats are really important because most of the work you do with foam fabrication is going to be cutting it so having a self-healing mat allows the blade to go all the way through the material and into the surface this does two things it’ll give you a nice clean cut it protects the edge of the blade and most importantly it protects the tip of the blade now this particular one that i have out here is put out by blick it is a 36 inch by 24 inch so that gives you a lot of room so if you’re doing a nice big piece of chest armor or a shield or something you’re not going to be running off so you can have a continuously nice cut next to that i always have a pencil and pen on hand this is how i do all of my template transfers nowadays because the foam is light gray so i’ve noticed that my templates come out a lot more accurate now when it comes to the blades honestly i’ve got three of them that i use pretty much all the time and this is really all that you need three blades one is kind of a bigger heavy duty this is great for 10 millimeter foam one that’s kind of a mid-range that’s great for a six millimeter foam and then a little detailed scalpel blade that’s great for two millimeter foam and also for scoring and doing a heat treatment to it to make the foam open up this is great for that so for the best type of cutting technique you want to make sure that the blade remains completely straight up and down you don’t want it at an angle unless you’re specifically trying to get a bevel notice i’m using a metal ruler here press all the way through the material into the cutting mat itself and then pull in one straight cut this is going to give you the cleanest cut possible so you have all your pieces cut out for your prop or costume and now it is time to clean them up and we’re going to do that using a rotary tool a rotary tool is going to be one of the most important tools in your arsenal for being a foam fabricator it’s going to allow you to clean up all your edges round them over and start giving the foam character now there are a lot of different rotary tools that are on the market and they’re going to range in price anywhere from 20 bucks to several hundred dollars so just make sure that you get one that’s in your budget and it works for you when it comes to the features of the rotary tool the biggest thing that i tell you to look for is one that has a flex shaft without the flex shaft the sandy drum will just go right here on the end but then you’re dealing with the weight of the tool itself when you’re working around your piece having a flex shaft it’s a lot more natural feeling and it’s a lot more flexible and so you have that agility to work around the piece in a lot more fluid way now along with the rotary tool usually you will get a box of accessories the most important in here of course being your sanding drums this particular dremel series comes with a coarse one and a medium grit one the coarse one works great for taking away a lot of foam really quick the fine one i use as a second pass to smooth everything out and then for a third pass i like to use stone bits you set these to the highest rpm and what it does is it actually cauterizes the foam and it gives it a very smooth appearance and remember whenever you’re using your rotary tool make sure that you’re always practicing shop safety so whenever i use mine i always have my eye protection and a proper dust mask for demonstration purposes we have our foam that has been rounded over using our rotary tool and now we’re going to pretend as though these are pieces that need to be assembled to create our final proper costume which means we’re going to talk about adhesive but before we get to that i actually want to talk about heat sealing foam real fast and to be clear you actually do not have to heat seal my foam you could just go ahead and seal this with plasti dip or flex bond and paint it and it would be good to go if you are going to heat seal it i would recommend to do a very light heat treatment to it i feel too many people overheat their foam as it is currently so with mine just barely hit it with a little bit of heat even after i do that i will then go back in with some 400 grit sandpaper lightly buff the surface so if i’m using plasti-dip or any other type of a sealant on there it has something to bite into now while we’re on the subject of heat guns let me talk about one real fast this is one of blick carries it’s put out by wagner and i really like the design for two reasons number one you have these fins on the side so after you’re done using it if you set it down the heat source is not in contact with the surface of your top that way you’re not accidentally burning or melting anything here number two is you have these two additional foot stabilizations on the bottom there and so it’s completely hands-free you can actually be manipulating something up above it and have a direct heat source without actually having to hold it so if you’ve got a large piece that you’re trying to manipulate you can do that all hands-free so this is definitely one that i would look into if you’re needing a heat gun i just really like these safety precautions that are on it now when i first started building props and costumes i of course just used hot glue which there’s nothing wrong with that the only problem that i ran into is when i made an armor set and i was walking in a parade in atlanta and it was summertime a lot of my hot glue has started to fail on me so nowadays i use contact cements and super glues for a lot of my builds now that being said if you are going to use hot glue and i still deal with certain aspects of my costume such as if i’m adding fur or other types of linings to the inside of the foam itself these surebond hot glue guns work really well and they’ve got a few design things that i really like about them so number one this is the larger one this is a high temp and it’s all cordless which i think is great because the cord gets in the way so many times so if you have this charging and you need to use it for a little bit it’ll actually run for two minutes before it needs to be recharged again and get the glue back to an optimal temperature the other thing i like is that it has a silicone pad here so if it does drip additional glue out of it it’s not again getting onto your surface it’s getting on the silicone pad same thing with this little guy so i’ve got a large one and i have a small one that has a detail tip on there so if i’m wanting to make sure that some of the small wires that i’m using inside of my masks or costumes aren’t going to be moving around i like to use a little detail one to make sure that i’m just not getting hot glue all over the place so both of these surebond ones are really cool and if you’re using hot glue it’s definitely something i would look at if you’re going with the contact cements of course there’s lots of ones that are out there this particular one is a weld wood i also use barge quite often and then as far as your super glues you have lots of those to choose from as well so when it comes to putting together pieces like this a lot of times i do a double adhesive method where if it’s a large piece i’ll do contact cement for the majority of it and then i use super glue around the perimeter and that way i’m making sure that if one glue fails the other one will actually step up in its place so when it comes to gluing sections together like this like if i had these two smaller pieces what i like to do is actually take a pencil mark where that one is going to be on the front and on the back that way i’m not over using my glue in areas i do not need it and just for this particular instance i’m going to use the super glue just because it’s not a large piece i usually use the super glue when it comes to a lot of the smaller detail pieces just on its own so that is now going to be set that’s really not going to go anywhere even if you were to bend this you could tell there’s still a lot of strength with that super glue holding these together but i’ve used all different types of adhesives so far on my phone and i have not found anything that hasn’t worked yet now that we have our foam pieces cleaned up and assembled we can start thinking about sealing it and there’s lots of different types of materials that you could use to seal your foam you could use white glue or mod podge me personally i like brands like plasti dip and flex bond both of these work great because if your armor is to ever get crushed you can use a heat gun and it will actually pop back out without distorting the surface now the big difference between these two plasti-dip is not really safe to use inside you want to make sure to use this in a well-ventilated area if you’re going for a non-toxic version flex bond is great because you can add your acrylic paints directly to it and apply that to the foam so you have your completed proper costume it has been sealed and is ready for paint now painting is an extremely important step because you could have an amazing prop and a poor paint job and it could ruin it you could have an okay prop and a stellar paint job and it will look great now when it comes to me i usually like to do a primer base on top of the plasti dip so i’ll do a rattle can of a primer usually in a black or in a red and that just gives it a nice base for whatever colors you’re going to be building up on top now as far as the layers after that there are a couple different ways that you can go you could airbrush or you could hand paint me personally i like to hand paint most my stuff but i was an illustration major so i’ve been hand painting all my life i have friends that all they do is airbrush and there’s no right or wrong way it’s just whatever works for you if you do airbrush i prefer ones that have a dual action which means that you’re able to press down to get the air flowing and you pull back and that sends the paint out so when it comes to hand painting your props of course brushes are key and there are a ton of them to choose from but if i had to just tell you a couple to put in your paint box the ones that i would choose to go with would be a one inch mop brush a half inch flat brush a number eight filbert brush a number four flat brush and a detail brush you can paint just about any proper costume using these types of brushes now i know that’s a lot of information to take in all at once if you’re new to this hobby so let’s take a look at some of the practical applications of putting all those techniques together to make one build this custom armor set was fabricated to show off what the hd foam products are capable of most of the armor on here is made out of six millimeter hd foam i used a bunch of the 10 millimeter bevel dowels for a lot of the detail pieces that are on there the shield is made out of some 10 millimeter hd foam and 15 millimeter bevels on there i also use foam clay to fabricate all the horns on the armor now that technique was accomplished by using tin foil as a base and then skinning it with the foam clay that way i didn’t have to use as much material and the horns are more structurally sound to fabricate his weapon i used a pvc pipe for the main under structure and then skinned that with some two millimeter foam i also did the same wrap for the handle the top is made out of 10 millimeter foam pieces now because i used the pvc pipe as a main structure i could then use the couplers and make it so the entire piece breaks apart so i can take it to conventions all around the country after the fabrication on this guy was complete i sprayed it with two coats of plasti dip to protect all the foam armor pieces after that had been allowed to cure properly i then sprayed it with a rattle can hammered metal then i go in and i start hand painting all the details now on this particular guy i used a lot of the utrecht and liquitex brand heavy body acrylics i specifically use heavy body though when i do any of my pieces i actually don’t seal any of my props or costumes once they’re done i let the paint speak for itself really allows for that luster and shine that you see in a lot of these pieces now this entire armor set including the weapon weighs less than 10 pounds which is great because scott had to walk around new york comic-con with it for hours but he said it was actually one of the most comfortable costumes he’s ever had to deal with well guys that’s my basic intro into the tools and techniques needed to become a foam fabricator the cool thing is almost all the tools that are seen in this video can easily be found at blick art materials including my hd phone line which means blick is quickly becoming the one stop shop for cosplay now if you guys enjoyed this video and you want to see more tips and tricks that are prop and costume related head on over to sksprops.com because on my website i have full build threads and videos of almost every single costume that i’ve ever created and if you guys are using hd foam or any of the materials from blick be sure to tag us on twitter and instagram because we love seeing the progress until next time thanks for stopping by .