Monkey King Cosplay WIP

Warriors Orochi is an interesting odd ball of a game, its a crossover between Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. Two very distinctive series with the same mash buttons and hordes goes flying, with a colorful cast of character from history. 

The monkey king is a very well known character from Chinese mythology. An insanely strong monkey man with an extendable cudgel he usually hide in his ear. He shows up in several moba games, such as Dota2, League of Legends, smite and many, many more. The character also shows up in various anime series and stories across the world or derivatives. Despite how well known and loved Wukong is. A great deal of the cosplay community has very little knowledge of him. Then again a lot of cosplayers have very little knowledge of series outside the ones they know of and will be very, very biased. Then gain so am I. My idea for a cosplay this time around is the Sun Wukong, the Monkey king, the one Goku is based on. In fact the basis for  Dragonballs story is based on a Journey to the West. Ironically a whole series about the legend of Monkey was released on Netflix, the day before the competition.

Despite this most people I know is willfully ignorant of this wonderful and whimsy story revolving around the character. Yet another obscure cosplay I have a brilliant plan behind, where the choices I make will be unknown to most people. Aside from this very blog. last weekend there was a lan known as Hordalan, where they held a cosplay and an outfit competition. Where I promptly lost to a woman with two lit lighters and a waving Disney princess. My dignity hurts badly, so to make up for this I will use my spite to make an even more awesome display, worthy of Wukongs legend. In the end he is a wushu monkey and I'm a wushu practitioner. Otherwise known as Kungfu, often associated with Hong Kong cinema and Bruce Lee. After all I am a professional, which means I have to make a better costume that I will use more than a day to complete. Whilst practicing monkey staff wushu. The art of acting like a monkey, climbing the staff and beating the living snot out of people. Hopefully it will not lead to such monkey business.

Anyhow the idea is to combine my skills at making professional looking and quality cosplay, while retaining movement and being comfortable in a hot location. Plus I can use it for wushu competitions and practice. I have a staff, a waistcoat and a not so magical headband. I'm more or less done with the arm guards, that only leaves the red part on the pants, painting and the leg bracers. 

On a side tangent, every one and their brother loves Worbla, that mythological thermoplastic that can be molded with heath. However it comes at a price, its expensive and usually requires a basic foundation to build on top of. The sheets of material acts a lot like dough, but to get to that point, it will become finger scorching hot. Which is why I found a glass of water very useful to have nearby. Especially when smoothing out some of the Worbla, since it's very warm.

Today I embarked on the first step of my cosplay. Recreating the red arm guards with black lining and gold decorations on. For those whom wants to make their own version, I have posted the schematics.Crafting an arm guards is a simple affair, especially this one since it only has a slight curve. The tricky part is the piece that goes above the knuckles. The 3D model only require two places to attach it and that's purely visual fluff. An actual set of these requires at least three and a joint strap as well. For this build to even work I have to attach straps from the knuckle guard to the underside of my palm. The pattern was traced onto cardboard, so I had a guide to use on the craft foam, which I eventually put a layer of Worbla on top. Like I mention earlier its a very simple build, with few tricky parts. The issue is simply comfort and accuracy. 

As usual I live stream the process and do a token effort to make a youtube video.

https://www.twitch.tv/zaceron

Here is the the clip from the 5 minutes long competition. 

Enjoy, Zaceron out.

#warriorsOrochi #wukong #monkeyking #mydignity #zaceron #sandcos #lol #dota #smite #cosplay #monkeyBusiness 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-eN-B81_fk&feature=youtu.be