I have been wanting to make this costume for a long time, and I really got inspired by Apelords work earlier this year. I am going to attempt to use the Cuir Bouilli or wet forming method that Apelord mentioned in his work. I have no where near the experience or tallent, but I am going to give it a shot. 
I wanted to do a torso body cast and use that to make a mold for the chest and back armor, but as the year went by I never got around to making that happen, so now I'm running out of time and I'll have to make a few short cuts. I ended up making a duct tape dummy torso, which I filled with expanding foam, to use a the base for sizing the armor.
Once I had the torso, I took a scrap piece of canvas I had laying around, placed it over the dummy, and outlined the shape of the armor using reference pictures. With the outline of the armor on the canvas I printed out the chest horses, tree and griffins to scale and tweeked the size of the chest to fit both my size and the scale of the pieces. Once I had what I liked I cut out the canvas chest piece.
I repeated the sizing for the back armor and cut out the canvas. I fit the chest and back pieces over the dummy and checked again for sizing. I tried in on also and I was happy with the fit. I'll be making the sided and shoulder straps a little long, then can trim them up once I have the armor formed.
I then cut the back piece out of 7oz vegitable tanned leather and soaked it in hot water till the leather was like a wet rag. Since I was not able to make the molds this time around, I used a plastic manequin that has nice muscle definition to use as the base for wet forming.
The back piece is drying right now, so I am crossing my fingers that is turns out ok tomorrow. If it goes well, I'll move on to the chest piece. If not ... :cry
Gator
I wanted to do a torso body cast and use that to make a mold for the chest and back armor, but as the year went by I never got around to making that happen, so now I'm running out of time and I'll have to make a few short cuts. I ended up making a duct tape dummy torso, which I filled with expanding foam, to use a the base for sizing the armor.
Once I had the torso, I took a scrap piece of canvas I had laying around, placed it over the dummy, and outlined the shape of the armor using reference pictures. With the outline of the armor on the canvas I printed out the chest horses, tree and griffins to scale and tweeked the size of the chest to fit both my size and the scale of the pieces. Once I had what I liked I cut out the canvas chest piece.
I repeated the sizing for the back armor and cut out the canvas. I fit the chest and back pieces over the dummy and checked again for sizing. I tried in on also and I was happy with the fit. I'll be making the sided and shoulder straps a little long, then can trim them up once I have the armor formed.
I then cut the back piece out of 7oz vegitable tanned leather and soaked it in hot water till the leather was like a wet rag. Since I was not able to make the molds this time around, I used a plastic manequin that has nice muscle definition to use as the base for wet forming.
The back piece is drying right now, so I am crossing my fingers that is turns out ok tomorrow. If it goes well, I'll move on to the chest piece. If not ... :cry
Gator
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