Defenders of Amestris

News of the scarred Ishvalan had reached Mustang's desk at a most unfortunate time... right as Fullmetal had come. Hawkeye at their heels, the alchemists fairly flew to the abandoned warehouse where the fugitive had been seen. They were ready, willing, and prepared to fight.

We didn't actually have our Scar that day, but we decided to keep him with us in spirit, chasing him through the abandoned warehouse. ^_^

So, this shoot is from PA. Most towns in PA were built and booming during the coal and steel era. When those collapsed, so did the towns. I happen to live near one where the warehouses still stand. Most of them have been renovated for new uses and manufacturing, but this one stands open and beautiful. We were tipped off to it by an upstanding member of the community, and told it was used for legitimate things... as well as the occasional party/getting high, based on the sorts of trash I saw in the deep dark corners and holes. Some places had crazy deep inches of fine, powdered dust, others were nearly bare and crisscrossed with recent footprints. The brickwork was beautiful. And, in other pics, we're on upper levels and ladders. Don't worry, these were all tested before bearing weight and turned out to be more solid than a building built today.

I've never edited in this style before, so I hope it worked out.

Edited to add:

Photo by:
Edward Elric cosplayed and wigs styled by:
Outfits and automail made my be (except for Ed's pants)
Mustang cosplayed by... Zuko?
Hawkeye cosplayed by me

I've decided to add construction notes to the pictures, so this one goes to the automail (very long, and very skippable).

The automail is my 3-Day Automail. I was suffering from a fatigue disorder at the time, and had fallen way behind. Our shoot was in 3 days, and the automail prototype hadn't progressed to a final product. Desperate, I spread out the pieces of my test arm and set to work. This is a craft foam build, with thicknesses varying between 2 and 3mm, depending on the piece and location. I cut each piece based on a custom pattern and heatformed them with a hot air gun, using such things as glass paper weights and pint glasses to get the proper shapes. Fingers were heatformed on my fingers...

Once formed, the pieces were hot glued together where necessary. Finger joints were made into circles or caps, and a few upper arm pieces, as well as the shoulder socket piece, were all glued. After that, I went outside and used fiberglass resin--but no fiberglass--to seal the foam as well as give it a glossy, ready-to-paint surface. I could have sanded a few pieces down after it had cured, but I had no time. For reference, the resin works marvelously. Just apply it on with a brush in a thin coat and leave it overnight to cure, or for a day in the sun (it likes the sun). It only really needs a few hours, but giving it longer gets rid of all the tackiness.

AFter it had cured, I painted the pieces with the shiniest silver paint I could find. I would have preferred a chrome, but couldn't find one. I wanted to add hammered metal paint accents, but didn't have time (version 2!). Once the paint had dried (overnight), I glued each piece together to form the shoulder socket, shoulder cap, upper arm, lower arm top and bottom (they don't connect permanently), and the top and bottom of the palm.

The next day, the day of our first shoot, I glued metal rivet caps everywhere the references showed a screw or bolt or anything small and circle and shiny. I sewed a glove, a lower arm sleeve and an upper arm sleeve out of black spandex, and glued the pieces to the sleeve. THe top of the sleeve was glued to the socket only every few inches, allowing it to stretch freely most of the way around. The lower arm sleeve is separate from the upper to make it easier to put on (and if the red jacket is on, the socket doesn't have to be). The glove is also its own piece, which turns out to be really fun to play with. On the way to the shoot, we applied silver rub'n'buff, which has a duller sheen than the paint, to any area that would have been beat up a bit more, just to add a hint of dimension.