A Cosplayer’s Guide to Building Rey’s Staff From Star Wars: The Force Awakens
A well-designed prop can take a cosplay to the next level, and Rey’s quarterstaff from Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a great example. The staff looks simple enough at first glance, and many Rey cosplayers have chosen to keep it simple by using a spray-painted broom handle. Katia Schiele of Kat Kosplay chose to go the extra mile!
Not only did Kat recreate an accurate and impressive version of Rey’s staff, she also documented the entire process via photographs and videos so that other cosplayers could borrow her methodology. In her video tutorial above, as well as in the progress photos on her Facebook and Instagram, Kat provides an excellent guideline for creating a staff like her own.
The process began with two lengths of PVC piping, each of different sizes; one was a half-inch in width, the other was a full-inch. The thin pipe runs through the full length of the entire staff, providing extra stability; it also makes it possible for the staff to have thin and thick parts, which can be achieved by making cuts in the thicker PVC pipe.
Even if Kat had stopped there, the staff would have looked great. It would have had some texture with some wide and thin pieces, and after a paint job, it would’ve impressed most people. However, she also wanted to find objects to use to recreate all the different strange shapes on Rey’s staff. She told The Daily Dot,
One time I even went up and down the shampoo and beverage aisle at the grocery store in search of a bottle cap that had a similar shape to the dome-shaped pieces on her staff. It finally occurred to me that I could use a shot glass to shape those pieces.
I was also a bit concerned about the coil-looking pieces that are on her staff, but that segment’s form was easily created using a plastic jump rope which I tightly wound around the PVC pipe.
Kat clarifies that her costume is not a “perfect replica,” since there are a few small differences between her staff and the staff that Rey uses in the movie, but it sure doesn’t seem like anything that anyone would notice! Here’s her Instagram post featuring the staff after it’s been painted:
A photo posted by Kat Kosplay (@kat_kosplay) on
The only way you’d spot the differences would be if you’d spend hours scrolling through reference shots of Rey’s staff. If you haven’t been doing that, then this may as well be a 100% perfect recreation of the prop, and it’s not even that expensive to make. The biggest resource required: time.
Kat plans to debut her completed Rey costume at Denver Comic Con this June.
(via The Daily Dot, images via Instagram)
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