Cubone Cosplay

Cubone.  The little ground-type Pokemon that could. His back-story is tragic - as he wears the skull of his deceased mother upon his head. And yet he still manages to be cute. Go figure.

(source)

My sister made a clay cubone pendant, which combined with my recent $38 purchase of Pepakura, inspired me to go searching around for cubone 3D models.

bad angle, but her clay pendant is quite cute.

I found one, erased the body portions, scaled it up, and printed it out.  I was very close to making the file silhouette-friendly for easier cutting and scoring, but I didn't want to deal with file set-up and registration marks, so I ended up just cutting the pieces out by hand. Penga-sis helped, though I do recall a fair amount of whining.

16 pages or so of pieces.

Together with Sak and my sister, we glued the pieces together, one tab at a time.  My preferred method of gluing is to scrape a thin layer of Tacky Glue to the tab with a toothpick, and then press and hold together.  We finished in one night, watching Youtube on the TV in the process. (Sidebar, but seriously, I love that you can remotely connect multiply phones to the PS3 Youtube app and just have many people fill up the queue with things to watch. So useful.)  Once finished, we had to cut out some of the paper from the "neck" region in order to fit our head inside. No biggie, just enlarge the circle until it fits.

That bone club was a PAIN. It's hard to glue something that's completely enclosed!

With a can of Rustoleum Matte finish clear spray, Penga-Sis protected the paper surface.  Though she apparently didn't protect her face. :P Please wear a mask when spray painting! ..At least we were outdoors?

Thinking we'd complete the process just as we did with the Vegeta hair, we bought a can of white Plastidip spraypaint and Sak gave the skull several coats (while wearing a spray paint mask for protection!).  Unfortunately, even after 2(!!) cans of spray paint, you could still see the printed tab numbers underneath.

The paint must not be that opaque or something.

So the skull sat for a few weeks until my sister visited again.  When she did come back, she painted the inside of the skull black with cheap acrylic paint. That really seemed to help, but now somehow there were black smudges on the outside of the skull!  A little touch up with white acrylic paint fixed the problem.

I just love the rubbery texture from the Plastidip, so nice.

For the rest of the cosplay, my sister originally wanted to do parachute pants and some sort of tube top.  But she didn't want to sew it, and I didn't want to sew it either, so we did the next best thing - thrift shop.  I eventually found a nice Anne Taylor tan dress for a few dollars, which would also be good to wear to work. WIN WIN.

Miss Cubone in all her glory:

Overall, I think the skull/bone club is pretty awesome, but the rest of the cosplay could have been better executed.  better shoes, some arm guards, or something.  She pulled it off well enough in any case, and even got asked for her first "photoshoot" at con! In all my years I've only been asked for one once - and that was in a giant Diglett costume.  So we're quite proud of her.

If you'd like to make your own cubone skull hat and bone, and don't feel like modifying the original file, feel free to email me.  My address is on the "about" page at the top.