[Finished] Black Templars Emperor's Champion (Warhammer 40k)

Hey everyone! First real thread here and I'm happy to finally contribute with awesome WIP and finished photos.
See, instead of making a thread and never really updating it (I am a slow builder, mostly because I lack the cash to go all-in), I figured everyone would much rather check out a finished build.

Now, I'll be doing a fair bit of self-promoting here. I've got a facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Durosarmory where all my photos (and a lot more!) can be found. I am usually seen at danish cons like SVSCon, where I have been a part of a rather big team of amazing cosplayers. If you like what you see here and want to see more, then I suggest you give it a like.

One more thing before I start the stream of photos. I love nothing more than constructive criticism. So go ahead and tell me if you see something I can improve or an easier way of doing something. I know most of my seams are relatively bad, but can you really expect perfection from the first build?

Now, onto the fun stuffs!


Final result!

I need to raise the chest and shoulders and get myself a nice neckseal but I am pretty darn happy with the end result



This is what I wanted to make. I am a huge Black Templars fan and I love the pain train that is the Emperor's Champion. I love the mini, I love the lore and I love how he can lay down the hurt on pretty much anything he touches. So yeah, I had to make a Champion.

I decided to start on one of the most iconic pieces.. The helmet. I spent a weekend at a friends house and I knocked this one out in a few hours then spent the rest of the time dicking around with details and drawing on the foam and stuff.

Here you start to see the iconic Space Marine helmet shape with the mohawk floating around.

I got the wreath and front piece all done, and drew a maltese cross on it.. I decided not to use the drawing on the final helmet. Would've looked strange.

Here's one of the coolest things ever. Glowy glasses from GloSpex. They fit the eye sockets perfectly and are really easy to use. They're not that visible in daylight but they're amaaazing at night!


And here it is in all its glory. The finished piece, painted and weathered. From start to finish it took me right around 2 months, due to economic troubles (this hobby is reeeaaally expensive for a student!). If I had everything lying around, it should take less than a day now...


Awwww yeeeeeaaaaaahhh.......!

Nice is there a suit

Now, a space marine needs a weapon. In my case, I need two. The Black Sword and a bolt pistol. I decided to make the bolt pistol one weekend when I had a few spare sheets of foam lying around.

I started with the base of the body.



.. Which quickly grew into a MASSIVE gun. This thing is 13½ cm wide! I never got around to actually making a barrel, but I might have a solution for that...

Gun build finished. I don't actually have any images of the finished and painted prop, so this'll have to do!

That same weekend I painted up three Sword Brothers to use in my army. Kitbashed from several sets, and I think the end result is pretty fine. Not amazing by any standards but I am not ashamed to put these on the battlefield!

Then suddenly I got an influx of cash from the sale of a collectible item I had lying around. I made this chest in a few hours then spent at least a week trying to make the collar area work. I almost threw away everything at this point, I was so mad

I got the collar down and for some reason clear coated my helmet again.. Hitting my old glospex glasses and making them totally useless. I couldn't see ANYTHING so I removed them and ordered a new set. I also quickly made a set of arms.

Here's the arms and shoulders in front of the chest. I ended up throwing away the shoulders because the shape was bad. They didn't have the correct curve and it annoyed the ever living **** out of me. I remade them correctly later.

So, here's basically the entire suit. At this point I needed to make the belt area, boots, gloves, backpack, sword and the new shoulders. You might see a bit of filler work done on one of the pieces.. You might also notice that it's WAY too much. I'd love to say that I learnt a valuable lesson here and realised that the less filler you can use, the better... But no. I keep using too much of it.
Kids, use as little filler on your foam as possible. You just need enough to hide the seams. Coating them in a thick layer will also hide them, sure... But you'll be coughing up white filler dust for a week after a good sanding session.....

Mockle, of course there's a suit! I'll edit the first post to add a photo of it

I wasn't lying about the filler. This is the aftermath of trying to fix the mess I made on the chestpiece. I had absolutely caked it in filler.. And that had to come off. Only one way, and that's by removing it manually with sandpaper!

One of my shoulders. Turns out that painter's tape is a great way to make a template for weird stuff. Here, I had to make a raised edge on the shoulder. I am absolutely useless when it comes to freehanding stuff, so I made a tape template and transferred it to foam. Worked like a charm!

Here you can see the raised edge that I made with the tape trick.

Time for filler! This isn't too bad, but still waaaay too much.

After adding the five studs to the raised shoulder rim, I coated it in 3 layers of PVA glue. First two goes on pretty thin, third is a bit thicker. I use a wet kitchen sponge to apply it, which helps spread it around properly. I used to use a brush, but that is just miserable compared to using a sponge.

Setting the shoulder away to dry, I decided to paint the chest. Using black(and a bit of blue) acrylic paint, I gave the chest a nice coating with a kitchen sponge. Once again it helped me immensely to combat all the usual problems one has when using a brush like brush strokes.. The sponge just uses a lot more paint since it absorbs it rather well

Oh, yeah. No space marine can walk around without his boots! I scratchbuilt these almost entirely and then threw away the templates... For some reason. They're flexible and helps add a bit of mobility to an otherwise rather immobile suit!

So yeah, I wanted to actually make my sword... Not knowing how to go about it, a pair of amazing friends said "Hey, you can buy a sheet of this insulation foam from us. It'll be perfect!" and sure, it IS perfect... If you've got the tools to work with it! I didn't. I had a bread knife.
But I figured that it was my best option and bought it. (still haven't paid for it, though...)
So we sketched out the sword shape and I started carving away....

One side of the sword is now free and it only took like 5 or six hours! Should've taken 10 minutes! My hands were cramping and I loved to hate this foam but GOD DAMNIT I would not be beaten by a sheet of foam! So I soldiered on!

Photo taken by my friends. They also did the "editing". Anyone who guesses what I listened to will win an internet high five.
This photo shows exactly how I carved tiny slices of foam away at a time, slowly getting to the core of that sheet. A messy solution, but it was the only one I could see....

So yeah! Sword shape is done! Time to make it cooler!

Giving it a bit of edge.. Not that foam will hold any sort of edge, but I need to maintain the sword illusion, damn it!

I inserted a PVC rod to use as handle and glued the everloving crap out of it to make it stick. A lot of vigorous shaking and swinging around and it hasn't come off. I am optimistic about this.

I still had one shoulder to finish, though. I had put it off, not knowing how to tackle the wings and feathers.. Then I remembered my good old tape method

I quickly layered the shoulder with tape and drew the design on it. Carefully lifting the tape off meant I had a workable template.

The pieces look strange on the table, but that's just because they're not on the shoulder yet

End result. I was quite pleased, even though I messed up a few times. I think it's to be expected though

At this point I was quite close to the con I wanted to attend and compete in.. So I had to start rushing it a bit. 2 weeks away and I hadn't even put on the full suit yet! So, on to painting and weathering! Here we see a boot get a good rub-down with silver paint to simulate wear and tear.

Most pieces are now basecoated and ready for weathering. I'm still missing a few pieces like the backpack and the belt, but the stress is killing me. I basically forget to take progress photos for the next 2 weeks .. But I did try it all on (minus backpack, since I only finished it 15 minutes before I had to be evaluated at the con ) and take photos!

First test fit.. EVER. Nothing sits correctly and so on, but I felt pretty good.. Not that these photos will show that, though. All you'll see is a geek in immense pain, since I had to make a ghetto solution for lift in my boots... So in these photos I am standing on 4 bricks in each boot.
Now, these bricks were slightly rounded, so I had to constantly adjust my balance. They would wobble and threaten to throw me completely off balance so my legs would cramp up something awful. After about 5 minutes, I almost cried from pain and had to be pulled out of it
It looked good together, though.

All in all I stand about 220cm tall in the suit. I am 190 myself, so do the math


I made a short movie that shows approx. how much it takes to get in to a suit like this. All in all it takes about 5 minutes, less if the helper knows what he/she's doing.. My dad, who's the helper here, does not

It's not easy being a space marine. Any sort of step up and down will be incredibly awkward to walk up and down. Your legs do not respond like you're used to, so you have to adjust to that.. But here's my suit in motion! I show a bit of what I can and can't do. Mostly what I can't do.

So, yeah. The finished result! A lot more can be found on my facebook page, at www.facebook.com/durosarmory










Thanks for going through this thread and seeing what I made! There's still a lot to be done like proper rigging and detail works, but I am no longer in any sort of rush to make it. I didn't win the cosplay competition I was attending but I never stood a chance anyways. My friend with a lot more experience also competed as a Space Marine, and his just flat out beats mine.

He also didn't win, though. We got annihilated by an awesome Alice: Madness Returns cosplayer who had made 4 different dresses and changed during her show. It was glorious. Look out for the danish representatives at EuroCosplay in London, folks!

Nice work! Love the helmet! I am in the process of building my Space Marine, Grey Knight. Thank you for posting all the awesome photos! I will follow you on FB!

Neat. Your helmet looks good, so does the right shoulder.

Speaking of which... ever thought of shrinking the size of the shoulders/pauldrons? They look a little too large for the length of your arm.
Also, you feet look quite disproportionate to your body, maybe reducing those in length, as well as adding a bit of a heel. would improve your stance (you appear to be leaning forward) and help with getting around on stairs (and in some cases, uneven terrain).

Maybe add some weathering to the sword and the fabric. The helmet though like others mentioned, absolutely dynamite!

mikkonator: The sword and fabric will be weathered. I wanted a relatively clean setup for the competition, since it matched my reference photos a lot better. I'll cut out stress lines in the sword and paint them, and burn the fabric. I think I want to paint/sew a pattern of some sort on the fabric before, to give it a lot of detail. It's supposed to be master crafted, after all
Mithosphere: No, the shoulder bells can't be any smaller. Shrinking them will look strange. Trust me.
I will, however, use another trick to make them sit correctly. The chest/shoulder arrangement is currently sitting too low, which also gives me issues when I wear my helmet. By raising the whole thing, I hope to add 5-10 cm to my arms to correct the "T-Rex" arms.
I'd hate to do work on the boots, but I do see what you mean... Stairs will keep being an absolute impossibility, so that's not something I am very worried about.
Grimwood: Thanks I was thinking of making a Grey Knight as well, but I think my next project will be a World of Warcraft suit instead.

Did I mention the part where the group and I won an award for best craftsmanship at the cosplay show? We had an awesome show where the Dark Angel and I were about to fight each other like cage fighters then being interrupted by the Tau Fire Warrior.

The whole team with supporting german Imperial Guardsmen. They drive about 20-24 hours with full trucks to set up their stuff at a small anime con in Denmark. I love these guys so much.
Pretty much everything is made from steel. The Aegis line in the background is wood, but that's the only non-steel thing.. Lasguns, flak armor, even a god damned anti-air Hydra!

Great work...

Yeah, the German 40k guys are pretty much insane about it.

Rather, IIRC, there's one guy that does most of it.

OldSkoolEffects said:

Yeah, the German 40k guys are pretty much insane of it.

Click to expand...

Their gear is just amazing. Full steel flak armour, lasguns, heavy bolters, grenade launchers... Yeah, they are insane.. In the best possible way!

For some reason, the second video clip had been edited to show the exact same clip as the first. I changed them back, so now you can watch both the suit-up video and the video of me struggling to walk around.