Nova – A Cosplay that took me two Years | Hacker News Reader

Nova – A Cosplay that took me two Years

kamuicosplay.com

119 pointspierrec19 comments

I genuinely applaud and love reading about the cosplay community and how tech like 3D printers is making it easier and easier for these young men and women to get really creative with their craft, it's so much fun watching these build projects.

I kind of dislike the "misleading" title of "took me two years" which implies "because I didn't touch it for a whole year".

By that metric, I have thirty-year projects to replace a light bulb.

Fantastic idea about the plastic packing material to diffuse light, I've been looking for a solution like that for one of my projects. Does anyone know what kind of packing material it is?

I don’t know specifically what she used, but some YouTube channels do go into detail about materials and methods used in props and costumes, such as Tested.

Thank you, I'll have a look, although I doubt I'll be interested in most of the video. My project is photography-related.

In the lightsaber building community rolled cellophane sheets are used to diffuse the light emitted form the LED evenly the refractive index changes between all the layers creates an even distribution of light this isn’t that different than how the diffusers in early LCDs work modern ones still use the same principle but they use a single patterned sheet or a very thin fused multilayer sheet.

You’ll have to play around to find exactly what fits your specific use case since there isn’t a single material that would work for every scenario.

For your use case I would hunt for old LCD monitors or TVs because they use a backlight, modern LCDs use edge illumination and the diffuser is a fresnel lease like sheet which might not work for a backlight.

So if you find an LCD TV which is 3-5 years old or older you’ll likely have a diffuser huge sheet to use for your lighting setup.

Sounds great, I'll try that, thank you. My project uses WS2818 LEDs as sort of pixels, so I want them to blend into each other a bit but not too much (I don't want them to look like points of light, but I also don't want them to bleed into neighboring LEDs).

I'll try cellophane, thank you!

If you need fine control and resolution which form the sounds of it you do you likely want to look at commercial diffuser sheets they cost about $10 per sheet and should be available on amazon, eBay and the likes.

https://dzevsq2emy08i.cloudfront.net/paperclip/technology_at...

These should be readily available and for fairly cheap.

That's exactly what I want, thank you! Fantastic.

Omg, I wish I had like 1/10 of her talent.

Practicing works better than wishing.

You can do it. :)

Your comment reminds me of this comic: http://sarahcandersen.com/image/168749352296

Obviously it takes practice to become good. But if you practice something you have talent for you improve much faster than if you practice something you lack talent for.

I know this because I have tried both and can compare.

> Practicing works better than wishing.

well this might be true for a lot of traits. but not for drawing and probably not for making "good" cosplay costumes. you at least need a steady hand and a lot of dedication.

> a steady hand

barring a neurologic condition, your hand could be as steady as any neurosurgeon's. The neurosurgeons will agree, practice makes perfect.

I've never considered myself very good at drawing, nor do I have a particularly steady hand.

Couple years ago I acquired some how-to ebooks for drawing simple anime characters. By following the instructions, and a few bucks worth of pencils, I quite surprised myself. I then had a go at the same instructions using an SVG app (Inkscape) and found that quite enjoyable.

Improving definitely takes dedication, which I don't particularly have much of for drawing, but I know the ability is there if I ever feel inspired.

This is plain wrong. Of course there are people who have a natural talent, but that’s a tiny minority and most people have to do with practice - it’s just the people with many more years of practice that you end up comparing yourself to.

You wouldn’t expect to sit down at a piano for the first time and have the dexterity and coordination to play, without any kind of practice, would you?

Almost everyone draws as a child. Then, they stop, try as an adult and then give up when they end up making a picture that looks “like a child’s drawing” - of course it does - that’s the point at which you stopped learning to draw.

I observed my kids and at age of 5 or 6, they drew super well (I mean, incredibly well for their age). Then they stopped practicing and the apparent talent faded away.

Personally, I decided that I wanted to draw in my early twenties. I may have had some natural talent so I was able to draw complicated things. But even if I consider this natural talent I can assure you that 99% of drawing is practice (which I don't have time to, unfortunately). Just look at the classical masters (Caravage, Rubens, whatever).

Drawing is first and foremost, observing, looking and watching. Watching with the eyes first, and the heart after. I can assure you than when I look at something to draw it, I "feel" that something inside of me. Drawing is an act of communion for me.

That's amazing! Nicely done! Kudos to having enough drive to finish a costume 2 years down the road!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com