I was unhappy with the fabric that I initialyh chose, besides it being blue instead of the blue/gray that I was ideally wanting, also found that some of the refs showed the fabric itself having a texture. I liked that much more.
A friend had a bunch of foam sheeting from her job that they tend to just toss out, so she passed some sheets my way.. definitely not usable for finished pieces though.
Pinned sheets of it down to my dummy
then scrawled the layout on it, cutting it out afterwards.
the sides were taped together, snipped where needed and retaped. The foam helped see the curves better
After taping together tubes for the arms, I laid out the sleeves with a pen, and cut them out into
After everything was laid out the way i wanted, I went and made clean patterns for them.
Here's the final pattern set, taped together for final fitting and ready to transferred to fabric and sewn. There's an inner tunic that'll be buttoned, and the outer one that will receive similar treatment hidden on a seam in the front
the hood has been the toughest part to get right. I really liked robo's idea of pepping it, but since i don't know diddly about 3d i hoofed it by taping a general shape together, drawing the seams on there, cutting them out, and tracing them onto fresh paper and assembling. Then repeating the process to tweak it.
When its done, I'll scale it up and do a sewn mockup.
Silly me started in full scale using scrap foam a friend of mine gave me, since she works at a printer who normally tosses the stuff..., then realized that it might be a better idea to do it smaller to waste less material
this is the third assembly, and will need to do it again, because i messed up the middle panels
I cut apart the mini hood, and scanned it. After a quick adjustment to outline the templates on photoshop, i used a great program called
PosteRazor to chop up the images on multiple pages, since i don't have a large format printer (just an old school 8 1/2 x 11).
I wound up making two of these.. the first one was the wrong size
It was further modified.
Once I liked the design, It was transferred onto a foam material that a friend of mine has a ton of from her job. theres a little more tweaking to do in the back, but I'm completely happy with this for once (i always hated the other hoods)
A friend reminded me of a local fabric store that carries TONS of different fabrics, and I found a wonderful grey fabric that has a weaved design in it. I did a dye test with some royal blue, and it came out the exact color I wanted (on left). The middle one was soaked a little longer, and the right is some other fabric that I'll add into the outfit too add variation. The purpleish swatch was the earlier attempt to redye the other fabric.
I decided to line the inside of the hood with a blue fabric. Unfortunately, I realized that the coarse weave fabric that I liked was some kind of acrylic, which would be better suited for outdoor furniture or something similar. I ran to Joanns, and found at least a similar color. This was sewn together, turned inside out, and i ran along the edge with a stitch to flatten it out, making sure it would be hidden by the next stitch.
I used a zigzag stitch to do a sort of decorative "overlock" stitch along the edge. a friend recommended using wax paper to prevent the curling that can happen, especially on curves, but i adapted it a bit as to keep it from getting stuck in the stitching., apparently water soluble stabilizer would work nice too, but I'm a bit broke atm. I'll go back and handstitch the corners and other areas that are uneven.
Since I would be transferring the designs i drew onto dark fabric, i tried out some method i saw online elsewhere while researching embroidery.. I used a pin and poked holes along the edge of the design
and after checking it to make sure i have the whole outline done
i took a little ball of fabric and transferred it to the fabric by dabbing the pattern with talcum powder. it got into the holes nicely
after tracing it over with an ink pen (the lines will be covered anyways) the powder was easily swatted off
instead of using an embroidery ring, I stapled the fabric onto a spare photo frame made of a relatively soft wood. I haven't had much luck with rings, and the fabric kept getting loose.
I decided to do the masayaf logo for the tunic intsead of the assassins one, because after drawing up the latter and mirroring it, i felt pretty "meh" about it. Also went back and redid the coat tail design, because I liked the trailer version (more detailed), and laid out the buckle design. due to time contraints, I can't bring them into inkscape and clean em up real nice, but mirrored pencils will do fine.
I want to mold a bunch of stuff in one batch, so I tossed this clip thinger into the fray!
For the clips i tried out something a lil different. I did a base sculpt of the general shape, then baked it. After rubbing talcum powder on the surface of both the baked sculpt and some raw sculpey, I did a press mold of it
I created the raised edges by pressing them into the negative.
The negative was baked to make a press mold, and pressed sculpey into it to make the positive, using talcum powder again to help keep it from sticking. It stuck in a couple of spots, so I went back and patched those before baking.
Here's the finished sculpt. I was wanting it to be a little rougher than usual.
Also decided to take a little break from staring at sculpey and worked on other bits!
Been itching to get to work on the bracer, so I laid it out yesterday.
The mockup was done in foam, since it behaves similarly to wet leather.
I may need to make some more adjustments to the size, since I have to add fur in there. Time to make it look like there's a long haired cat in the house
And the armor bits. this is a test run, as these may be a a bit small...
A friend of mine who works for a sign company nabbed some rejected Sintra signage from a fudge shop. I used a heat gun to shape the pieces, working from the center out to minimize curling. Sintra doesn't like compound curves a lot, but it can be done with enough working on it. I wore a sweatshirt as protection, and after heating the sintra, i laid it over a dome and used my torso and my forearms to work the shape into it. Areas were heated and pressed til i got the shape i wanted. Not the best tactic, but it worked for me.
The reversed edges were done by heating up specific areas and shaping those. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I'm relatively happy with the result.
I need to do two of these evil things (and people have been asking about getting the things) , and didn't want to tool them from scratch every. single. time. I tried out making a resin stamp back when I made Boromir's shield straps, since i needed to to repeat the pattern, and it worked pretty well.
Fevereon Props: LOTR- Boromir's Shield straps
So the same was done with these.
More scraping was done to get this as clean as possible. Using smoothcast 325, here's to hoping it can take all the abuse!
I tried clamping this all together like the straps, but even with a half dozen clamps, I couldn't get the amount of pressure i wanted.
So i went back, drilled holes into the support base, and bolted leather to it to keep it from moving. I then beat the embossing in with a hammer.
Here's what it looked like when it was removed.
I think i could get away with it as is, but I wanted it all deeper, so I went back and tooled it more. Cut it out and did the edging, and here's the current state of the thing before dyeing & finishing.
After studying the references, found that the thing is composed of 6 layers (and fur!) here is one of them, about halfway done. Still need to sculpt and cast the last two stamps. Needed to make sure the panels were sized correctly first before going through sculpting
The last coupel of days were spent working on sewing, bracers, and pauldrons!
I had to remake the large curved plate, because the other one was too small. I also shaped the mid arm plates, but will need to trim and shape these a little smaller to sit right.
The surface was scuffed with sandpaper to help epoxy adhere to it better
...and cut out the shape for the leather ( i cut it a little larger than the plate itself)
the leather was then wet and formed over the sintra plate. I used a pile of clamps to secure it, and scrap tagboard to prevent the clamps from leaving bitemarks on the leather.
I had found a while ago, that I could epoxy resin leather to things when its still damp, so I when it was partly dry, I glued it down to the plate & clamped it til it dried.
---------------------------------------------
Here's some of the pile of sewn panels for the acr sleeves. The one on teh left is sewn, then they were turned inside out. The stitchy swatch was a test because I'm still new at this, and needed to adjust the settings on my (sucky) sewing machine. I also am using a heavy thread for the embroidery
after turning it inside out, I carefully sewed the edge flat
The panels had a thick and a thin stitch sewn onto them, using the edge of the foot and other visual cues as a guide to align them straight
after the stitch was done, I pulled the threads to the back, tied them off, and snipped the excess. Trying to keep this as clean as possible!
Unfortunately, i had to hand embroider the little "tiickmarks" along the inside of the panels. blah. I quadrupled the thread up on the needle, to avoid having to stitch over each line multiple times. the edges were then butted together and sewn, making sure i sewed the inner layers together to hide the stitching.
Here's one of the sleeves completed, and will return to the other one a little later.
The stamps proved semi successful, but its a pain to use them. Here's one of the successful ones that didn't shift while beating it stupid with a hammer.
Heres the pile of plates, after I went back and tooled over the guides the stamps provided. bleh. These are not counting the strap bits & buckles made later. I wasn't happy with the color initially used, so I stripped off as much as i could with acetone, and redid it in Antique Brown, and do a thin coat of Acorn brown for the rest of the plates, since the stripping wasn't total.
The silver was Testor's silver enamel. Which surprisingly didn't dull when I sprayed Saddle-lac on there. I still would lke to find something that doesn't rub off after time.
I rubberbanded everything together, to lay out the positioning of the holes I need to punch. Since this would be curved, I can't lay it flat, punch holes, and expect the thing to nicely wrap around a forearm.
The underside wasn't the prettiest, since I remade two of the plates, and the holes were set differently. Thankfully this will all get covered by plates and none of the boffed holes appear on the inside of the bracer (yay!) Also changed the innermost layer out from a piece that was too thin(the plain bit thats cut off at the bottom of the photo). The raw edge on one of the plates was where I tried chopping out leather that would be unseen, after a template revision.
Here's the first one assembled, it just needs fur! I have the faux fur, but for the bracers I may get some rabbit from Tandy next time i go. The pelts are cheap, and they'll withstand the abuse better than faux (I noticed the hairs got a lil stretched out and curly where it was rubbing up against my wrist, like an overcombed barbie doll)
after dying the bracer (well, the panels i had done anyways), I sewed some fur down to it.. it took forever though, because it meant constant combing to keep it from getting jammed in the thread. Clamped the panel to two pieces of wood to make it a lil' easier to handle. maybe stabilizer for the next pass at this?
and a test fit of the panels done so far. Need to sculpt & stamp the last two plates.
quick general pic of what's done s far, pinned everything to my dummy. At this point, its a matter of replacing all the patterns with actual fabric and leather.
The outer tunic is almost done, need to sew the left sleeve embroidery, attach it, and do the edging around most of it with the machine. Hand sewing.. boooooo! One of the small swirly panels at the bottom went AWOL, and as soon as I find it, that'll get stuck on too.
Here's all of the inner panels for the outer tunic.. pinned interfacing to everything, and that'll get sewn down. The outer panels will be pinned on next, then sewn, turned inside out, and sewn again (like the sleeves)
Because the belt would be a big pain to wrap around (and have it stay in position) I'm using an approach thats similar to a cumberbund.
Got some pleather at Joann's which had a good thick weight to it, and sprayed the non pleather side with Super77 adhesive
I had found a nice red/orange fabric at Mary Jo's in May, and bunched it up onto the tacky pleather to give it a wrapped look as best as i could.
the hooks were sewn down to side of one side of the belt. I found that I boffed this (the sash needs to be attached here) , and had to remove them >< I also found soe black strap connectors as well, so they'll be changed out for black in case something manages to peek its head out.
And here's the wip so far, after folding all the edges in and handsewing them to the pleather on the back. Still need some grey bits on the sides, and will sew these down when I find fabric that I like enough! The hooks and clasps need to be redone as well
And the tunic was revised. Since i wanted to be able to interchange the panel on the front between the masayaf logo and the assassin one, the earlier design would have been a pain to interchange, and was a pain to secure to begin with (remade the panel, and have it zipper up. (totally not period, but meh)
I seamripped the front panels (1 on right) and replaced it with the new ones (1 on left)
The zipper runs right in the middle, and was pretty easy to install, though i couldn't find my stupid zipper foot bluh. This could make for a pretty cool vest during non cosplay time XD
and the panel will either snap or hook onto the front! Muuuuuch easier to change out! (and putting on the vest is really easy as well! )
So, I really liked the doublet/vest to wear it as day-to-day hoodie when done, so didn't want to directly attach tails to it. Here's a couple pics of the hood, and i'm 95% happy with it! The middle panels are a more rigid interfacing, which is helping it keep its shape. the rest is interfaced with a softer form of interfacing.
Last night i took out the whole ACR skirt/tails thing. I decided in the end that I'll be making a separate "skirt" that has all of the tails and sashes on them. he tails and such were pinned to the inner tunic of my dummy, put the outer doublet on it and used a chalk marker thinger to lay where the doublet ends.
After taking everything off the dummy, I put it on my fiance to make sure it all sat straight, and safety pinned a fabric sash to it. After unpinning (the straight pins) I seed the tails & dangly bits sash to the sash.
It all got sewn down, turned over and sewn to a tube like- shape there. I used an old raggedy belt to put it all on.
It buckles in the back, and though the sash turned out a bit short, it should work fine for the costume, since that are will be hidden under the doublet.
I later went back and attached it directly to the tunic. the bett was digging into my hips
With the exception of the lower skirt design, there's been at least 2 variations of all of the embroidered parts (between preview walkthroughs, the cgi trailer, promo art etc), so I'm picking the ones I personally like the most vs. sticking to one variant)
As I have time, I'll embroider right over the sharpie, but in the meantime, it's an okay placeholder.
Again with the faux fur from Mary Jo's.. I didn't want it to me all floppy, so I made a base out of craft foam.
The top got a nice thick coat of Super 77 spray adhesive, and the fur was laid over that. The underside was covered with adhesive backed felt, and i trimmed it so the felt is stuck to the fur backing around the edges. Its pretty dang stubborn stuff, so that'll keep the fabric from fraying around the edges.
I may wind up doing this over, cuz it was rushed and doesn't sit just how i want it, but at least it was quick and easy to do!
Did the straps for the straps for the pauldrons and such, though I never found where the 3rd mystery strap goes. It wound up getting pinned to the tunic for the convention, and I'll figure it out now that the con is over.
Sculpted the metal bits for the pauldron flat, then molded it, and cast it in smoothcast 325
The rerebrace was made with a sintra brace, with leather formed over it. The straps were bolted on, and the cast bits are glued on.
The hook for the blade and the disk for the belt and back of the pauldron rigging were sculpted while on the pre registration line, as well as partial bits of a couple other bits. These were complete by the time I got home, so they were baked, sanded, dropped in silicone, and cast before I went to bed.
The hook got a little spring on the inside, which is design to help it pop up, and the sides will come into contact with the sides of the casing when retracted, which will return it to its locked position. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to finish it off.
Wound up staying home on Friday, because too much needed to be done. Amongst the work was the boots, which were a bit of a speedbuild. I got the greaves partially done at least.
rubbed the boots down with some acetone to strip the finish, and dyed it darker
Sketched out the plans, and tooled them as fast as possible.
They were dyed, and the trim painted silver. These will most likely be redone though, in a similar fashion to the rerebraces. I'll probably use vitaflex or some other urethane rubber, since that's easier to glue down than silicones.
After sewing I wet the seams and used a block as an anvil of sorts to flatten the inside
This was photographed out of order, but here's a couple photos of the progress.
The outfit was VERY hot, and between that, being hella tired, terribly sore feet, and needing to offer it up to the laundry gods (made everything machine washable yay! ) i spruced up my ac2 gear and wore that on Sunday instead. If i can find some convention photos of the ACR outfit (its current state) I'll post them.
Wound up meeting up with old con friends who were used to looking for a white hood lol. Fun times were had before we had to get home..
The evening ended with finding out that my van got booted
The problem got fixed, but we call templar shenanigans
Apologies for the (severe) lack of photos here. I sculpted the disk and one side (since the sides are symmetrical), then molded and cast the parts in resin. After casting them, I sprayed black paint on them, wiped as much as I could off, and rubbed silver powder on them to bring the edges out more.
This is decorative, and is bolted on with chicago screws, whose heads were embedded into the back of the cast.
Because this gear was already assembled, I couldn't use the tambour embroidery technique that I mentioned a while back, and wound up just hand embroidering it instead. Over the last couple weeks, I've been sittign around working in this.
and done!
I did the in game logo, and though I planned on making a second panel with the masayaf logo, I don't know if I want to do all the embroidery thats on the rest of the panel again as well :\
Also got a beard, but it still needs more trimming. Here's what I have so far on my dummy
In order to cut back on the sweltering layers, (and cut down oon the time it takes to ""gear up" by avoiding having to wrap things) I made a dickie for the neck instead of having to wrap the scarf. SLip it over the head, fluff it, DONE.
To complete this look, add pipe & monocle ( my wonderful fiance modelleed the dickie!
a week on the couch stabbing myself with needles, and the embroidery on the hood is finally done (who am I kidding here, the back needs embroidery too
)
so um, there ya go. Hope to do a bunch of weapons on this as well, but that'll be down the road
