So this is the first of several posts showing pieces and parts of this year's costume for Halloween. Earlier in the month I sculpted out my greaves, but they're cocooned in mold rubber and I'm holding off on pics of them until they look interesting again.
For now, this is the first step in making the shield:
In case it's not completely clear, this is just a big circle (31.75 inches in diameter, in accordance with the specs for the film) cut from a piece of 3/4-inch medium density fiberboard. Once it was cut I took a grinder to it with a flapwheel sander to round off the outside edge. Because this is supposed to look like Bronze Age craftsmanship, I couldn't just use a router and make a perfect edge. Instead, I needed to make it look like I eyeballed it.
There is also a significant amount of depth to the final shield. To sculpt this would take way too much clay, so I started by fleshing it out with some expanding foam. This started like so:
And ended up like so:
The cup in the middle of all of this mass was cut down to the prescribed 5-inch height of the shield so I can tell when to stop shaving this pile of foam down to the final shape. For the actual shaping, I used a simple combination saw:
Since the shields in the movie don't have a surface that looks like it was made of foam, I had to build a clay skin over the top of it to sculpt the details into:
The detailing process essentially involved smoothing the clay using various tools and a heat gun, then pushing dimples and dents into the surface using every sort of blunt instrument I could find in the shop as well as my fingertips.
The project took most of the day, but the end result was satisfactory. Believe it or not, there was no alcohol involved in this project despite the look on my face:
Of course, the more I look at my reference pictures, the more problems I tend to notice. The only thing I have yet to fix is the missing ridge at the top of the chevron in the middle of the shield:
I'll get to that today. Then the next step will be making the molds and cranking out copies in fiberglass. Then all I have left to do is paint it and run around in leather Spartan speedos. I haven't started stitching the Spardos together yet.
Stand by for further updates.
In a related query, could anybody else use one of my shields in fiberglass or cold-molded bronze? I haven't settled on a price just yet, but I'll be casting them next week if anyone is interested.
