As avowning long-time steam-punk and one of the founders of the austrian steampunk-community I instantly fell in love with Metalbeard's robo-pirate design. I already made loads of costumes before but this was my first attempt on working with EVA-foam (Ethylene-vinyl acetate).
First of all I needed some patterns, so I made 3D-models using fotographs of the original LEGO-pieces as reference. After that I dissected the models into their single surfaces, unfolded them and arranged the on multiple pages for printing. Next I transferred the cut-out paper pattern onto the surface of my foam-sheets, sawed them out on an electric scroll saw and ground some of the 90 degrees edges to slopes with a disc grinder. Afterwards I thermo-formed some of the pieces with a heat gun and bent them into their final shape. After I had all the components I needed, I glued them together with a hot glue gun and finally painted the props with acrylic paint. To make the beard wearable I attached a leather-strap on its inside which would later be covered by the bicorne. Finally I made a matching eyepatch out of leather (also using some fotographs as reference).
The picture was taken at the LEGO-Store Donauzentrum (Vienna/Austria).
You can find more pictures of the single objects in my cosplay folder on my homepage.