Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay

As the title suggest, I'm gonna attempt to make my first costume. My sister is attending Wondercon in about a month and she told me to go with her and make a costume. The dwarf armor from The Hobbit movie left a great impression on me so I'm gonna try to make it. I don't think that I will be able to complete the full set by then but I'll try to have it for another convention. Others on RPF are making it as well and they have been a good inspiration.

Here for reference:



I've started working on it this week end but with a lack of appropriate tools it's been a slow progress. I intend on replicating everything except for the scale armor on the legs and will replace that with chain mail. The breastplate seems to be the move challenging to me because of it's straight lines looking at it from the front but the panels are curving looking at it from profile. If anybody has an idea on which material to use it would be greatly appreciated

So far I only worked on the helmet though:




The helmet is not perfectly symmetric because the wooden yardstick I was using to trace and cut the parts was warped. I just got a straight aluminum one now. I started with measuring the circumference of my head around the brow ridge and then eyeballed everything else from that. Everything is made out of 2mm craft foam except for the front-to-back ridge which was made by gluing two 5mm craft foam sheet.

There are still a lot of details to add, another panel to the top of the neck guard and I'll fiberglass the inside of the helmet to reinforce it.

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

There so much detailing to do which makes the whole process so slow.
Once every piece will be done I'll paint them all at the same time. :wacko

Right now working on detailing the pauldrons and the shield.

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Hey phoenix, nice job so far!!!
Do you have some patterns for the shield you could send me?

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Looking great so far! I love the dwarfs armor in the Hobbit, I can't wait to see more

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Thanks, since then I finished the helmet and pauldrons, patterned the vambraces and greaves, started cutting rings for the chain mail skirt, and did some research for the chest plate pattern and the herringbone weave for the belt. Too many things to do.

For the shield I didn't really make a pattern, just did some simple geometry with a ruler and a protractor. I started by drawing a line. From that line i measured a 43° angle (44° works too but it gives a shallower shield), drew another line and from that we get the first triangle of the octagon. repeat the same procedure until you obtain 8 triangles. Then from watching the movie it looked like the shield covers the entire torso of the dwarves so I measured mine, divided it by two to get the length of the triangles, and added an extra inch to account for the shield not being flat.

The pattern would look roughly like this with all the triangles being the same size.




This is what mine looks like as of right now:


There are so many details to do that I can't sit still and complete one item at a time. I jump from one to another.

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Thanks for the info I'll try it!

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

How big is your Shield?

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

How big is your Shield?

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Eloquiell said:

How big is your Shield?

Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay in my reply. At the widest part the shield is 64 cm.

- - - Updated - - -

I just sprayed one layer of silver paint on the helmet to see how it would turn out.

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Awesome, great work on the shield!

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

64 cm...ok...I did some research and make mine regarding to the dwarf pics I found.
I took my pic and a pic of a dwarf with shield and compared them and got the 88 cm size shield.
I hope it will fit together.

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Eloquiell said:

64 cm...ok...I did some research and make mine regarding to the dwarf pics I found.
I took my pic and a pic of a dwarf with shield and compared them and got the 88 cm size shield.
I hope it will fit together.

Click to expand...

Yeah I did mine the same way. I looked at the size of the shield compared to the dwarves and Thorin at the battle in front of Moria. I suppose you must be taller than me then. I stand 1m70 and 64 cm seemed to be appropriate.

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

oooh Yes I'am about 189cm
giannt dwarf I would say.

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Great work so far! Can't wait to see the armor!

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

I've been procrastinating and working on other projects but today I finally decided to go back to my dwarf costume. After looking at many picture of dwarves from different angles I tried to replicate the breastplate as best and keep them looking like roundish little tanks:



Sorry for the crappy pictures. It's night time and taken with a flash:

It's my sister's dress form so that's why the torso doesn't fit the breastplate.

And here's with a wig standing as a temporary beard:

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Detailing on the breastplate as started. It should be completed by tomorrow and ready for sealing and priming.

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Breastplate almost done. I just need to make the two boars sculpts at the top of the shoulder straps. Since there was no clear picture of the design on the back I carried over the details that covers the rest of the armor and added a carving of the Lonely Mountain (Erebor) based on a drawing by Tolkien. The idea was that the dwarves defend their homeland (Erebor) with their hammers (detail in the front of the breastplate.



I also finished the two chainmail panels that are gonna be used to make the split skirt. I didn't want to have a full hauberk to keep the costume as light as possible and because it wouldn't have been visible under the breastplate.The chainmail is made out of aluminum and weigh 5 lbs. I might make some short mail sleeves for the biceps area.


I had plans to make the chainmail links hexagonal like the dwarves have in the movie but the 14 gauge wire wouldn't conform tightly to the hexagonal mandrel. Maybe a thinner wire would have worked. A bigger mandrel would have made the links too big.

I decided to take a break from the armor itself and work on the weapon. Originally, the plan was to make the oversized masonery hammer from the illustration but I changed my mind and decided on a sword and scabbard because it would be much easier to walk around with it during the convention. Eventually, I might make other weapons if time permits.

There aren't many pictures or drawings of dwarves swords except for the heroes swords. This is the one I'm gonna base mine on:


I'm gonna have to freestyle what can't be seen on that pic.

As usual, to keep everything as light as possible I picked a sheet of 3/16" foam board from a craft store.I drew the template, including the positions of the cutting edge and the fuller. I cut two of them and glued them together. I also cut more parts for the handle, guard and hilt.



To sand the cutting edge I used a dremel with a sanding attachement to remove the bulk of the material, a sharpening attachement for more finesse work, and finally a nail file for precision work. The lines on the blade serves as a guideline for sanding. Sand up to the line and for the middle part, the paper layers that have been glued together serve as another guideline.


Now for the fuller, score the line with an exacto knife. Go through the first layer of paper and foam. Do not go through the layer of paper that form the middle of the blade. Once done, remove the strip of paper and use some tool to remove the foam.


If you do this on both side then the fuller section will be only made up of 2 layers of paper so I bulked it up with 2mm (1/16") strips of craft foam. Since the blade itself was pretty plain at this point I decided to add some runes to the fuller. It was printed to the right size, taped to a sheet of foam, cut with an exacto and treated with a heat gun to tighten the foam and open the cuts a little more. Any rune that appeared "blurry" was retraced with the exacto knife until it was cleary readable.

"Swords (not axes) of the Dwarves! Dwarves are upon you!" ~ based on the dwarves battle cry from Tolkien's writing
"May this blade protect the Kingdom under the mountain." ~ based on the inscription at the Erebor's secret entrance.

The strips were cut and glued into the fuller:


Voila! The blade itself is done so now it's time to carve the grip, guard and hilt.

To be continued...

Looks great! Can't wait to see more progress