Allison, a.k.a. Kitnip Cosplay, has been working on a set of armor to cosplay Shyvana from League of Legends. She built the armor from foam and Worbla and recently posted photos of the finished paint job. She achieved a beautiful finish with red and gold paints with highlights and shadows and a lot of shine. The finished product looks metallic – yes, she used metallic spray paint. The line-up of products she used is pictured below.

She wrote a step by step explaining her painting process:

1. Modge Podge Sealer to seal your foam. I used about 3 to 4 coats of this but probably should of done more. It was my first time using it and it was a bit of an experiment. I’d recommend using it until your entire piece has a nice even sheen to it. You can also use the brush on kind (cheaper but I didn’t to avoid brush strokes)

2. Paint Primer. Do a couple coats of this. If you are feeling ambitious, you can also wet sand it to get a super smooth and even texture smile emoticon

3a. Silver Paint. I used this but only on my red parts. The red paint states it gets its unique color when used over Chrome. So the silver paint is a base for the red. One coat of this was good for me.

3b. Red paint. This is very thin paint. It must be done in light coats or else you will get runs. The more coats you use, the darker the color. I used 3 coats. And I can tell you, picture don’t do this paint justice. In real life, it looks like it almost glows. It’s very, VERY cool stuff.

At this point, wait for your red paint to dry (I waited a day) and mask off your red areas. I used green frog tape. Or you can do the gold first and then mask that off and do red last (this is what I did because in my head it seemed easier, but it doesn’t matter).

4a. Gold paint. I did two coats.

4b. Bronze paint. Shyvana’s gold has almost a bronze-y tinge to it, and just the gold paint itself didn’t match right. So I very lighty sprayed the bronze on. Not enough to totally cover it but enough to change the color a bit.

Now all of your spray paint is on!

After it was all dried I did some shadows with a dark red and gold-brown color to give the pieces some depth.

5. Clear finish. Two coats. I kind of experimented with the type of finish. You can get matte, satin or gloss. I found just the gloss alone was too shiny (it looked almost wet). So I also tried satin but it seemed to of dulled it a wee bit too much. In the end I went with the first coat of satin and the second gloss. I really have no idea if there was much of a difference between the two but the final look was close to what I wanted. But I’d stick with satin if you aren’t sure.

She cautions that it’s not a cheap endeavor, but if you can practice and get results like what you see on the Shyvana armor, it’s probably worth the investment.