Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay

[WindPhoenix]

Since I still don't know what I'll do with the sword handle yet I decided to move on to the belt.



I always wondered the purpose of that belt. From the movie we can see it's a pretty wide belt with two straps and buckles in the back. However we never see the belt having to carry the load of any scabbard or holster. Having them simply for aesthetic purposes wouldn't make much sense design-wise. Then I thought that the belt might be there only to cover the attachments between the breastplate and the tassets/groin/butt plates but it still wasn't a satisfying reason in my book. The top of those plates seemed to be always covered by the belt no matter how the belt moved. I did some more research on armor design and found that the lower body plates on a samurai armor were attached at the waist by a belt. Bingo.



The plan is to make the belt and attach the lower plates to it with straps. It will allow for more mobility (sitting down during long convention days) and to remove the entire assembly easily when nature calls. The straps being in the back is not practical at all so I won't make it functional. The buckle in the front will be split along some decorative trims so they'll remain less visible.

As usual foam is my friend so I took some scrap foam board from my sword build, printed out the shape of the buckle and cut two shapes. Because I use foam board I need to reinforce the strip onto which the belt is gonna be connected to the buckles so two layers of foam board should do the trick.


I also needed to have the buckle split somewhere for easy removal. Here's the design I cam up with.

The dots on the wider piece are gonna be really strong and small magnets that will connect to magnets on the underside of the smaller piece. The bigger piece is also gonna be the one that will carry the load of the sword and scabbard.

And here's a shot of the herringbone weave I made for the belt. It's made out of 2mm craft foam strips. It needs to be dyed a blue color before attaching it to the finished buckle..



To be continued...

 

[WindPhoenix]

Here's a quick update on what I have made so far:


Not too bad

 

[WindPhoenix]

Toe caps are done. I need to do the construction on the gaiters:


Belt buckle done with base coat (awaiting the magnets for the locking mechanism):


Early version of the belt's back straps:

 

[WindPhoenix]

Just missing a couple of fake rivets:



Next on the build are the leather gaiters, paint and weathering, pants and gambeson/tunic.

 

[Moria Orc]

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Really loving your Erebor Dwarf build! I'm attempting the same costume but I've come a bit stuck on the pauldrons. Do you have a template that you are willing to share?

 

[WindPhoenix]

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Really loving your Erebor Dwarf build! I'm attempting the same costume but I've come a bit stuck on the pauldrons. Do you have a template that you are willing to share?

This is not exactly movie accurate but it's decent enough to work:



This is only half of the pauldron upper part (red in the diagram. You need to make two for each shoulder, glue them together and make a triangular part that's highlighted green in the following picture. From there you can build the other parts of the pauldron.

 

[Moria Orc]

Re: Erebor Dwarf Armor - first cosplay ever

Thanks very much! Really appreciate the help.

 

[WindPhoenix]

No problem. How much have you built so far?

 

[WindPhoenix]

From looking at the Dwarf battle at the gate of Moria, I couldn't spot any strapping on the side of the breastplate, so I decided to attach the front and back plates with neodymium magnets. The magnets needed to be small enough to fit in the thickness of the 1/8 foam. So I bought 200 with a 1/16 diameter and 1/32 thickness at the cost of $10. The magnets finally arrived from their 3-weeks long trip from Hong Kong. I knew they were really small but I was still surprised how small they were in real life.




Both side seams and shoulder seams were marked with the magnets placements. Pockets were drilled into the edge with a dremel fitted with an engraving bit. The diameter of the bit was the correct size for the magnets diameter. The magnets were then super glued inside their pockets in an alternating polarity pattern. This will prevent magnets from connecting to the wrong magnets on the other edge and having a crooked connection.



The connection is held strongly in place but can still be pulled apart for getting dressed and undressed quickly:

 

[WindPhoenix]

I'm in need of some advices regarding painting and weathering the armor. I've looked at many tutorials online and many painted armors as well. Some of them look very nice from afar but upon closer look they really don't look like real steel; showing clear brush strokes from the dry brushing techniques and having a "grainy" appearance from apply "dry" paint. Some are painted with a sponge and look very good too. Regardless of which technique I saw, they all seemed to be painted much darker than what steel would normally look like even with lots of weathering on them (comparing them with medieval armors displayed in museums ).

Also, on the issue of highlights, a lot of painted armors have the raised detailed areas really emphasized by a late drybrush of straight silver. It makes the details pop but in my eyes makes it a little bit too "unreal".

This is what I have so far. Base silver coat and a single darker layer which was either drybrushed or sponged and blended. You will notice brush strokes on the belly area when I tried the drybrush thing but loaded too much paint. I'll fix that later. I will have a brownish layer for the oxidation and the dark wash to darker the nooks and crannies, but how dark do you think the armor should be and still look like steel? And how would you do it?

 

[Gibbtall]

Fantastic work! Love the magnets, I debated on using them for my armour but was afraid of price and size of them. Sorry for not scouring all your posts for an answer but what did you use for the tiny repeating "heart" pattern? I ended up leaving it off my helmet, but it's also on the shoulder and chest piece too.

 

[Matt Kaz]

Loving your work, it looks awesome!

 

[Nobby]

I love the magnet idea

 

[Moria Orc]

No problem. How much have you built so far?

Hi there. It's been a few years now but I want to thank you (long overdue) for your help with my Erebor dwarf build. Once I got the pauldrons done it was pretty straight forward. Wore it our local convention where i met Daniel Falconer of Weta who gave me the thumbs up. He was quite happy I reference the concept drawing. He later signed my helm.
I've also had the privelige of being transformed into a dwarf by Warren Dion Smith of Weta.