Gondor Tower Guard

[bromancis]

Hi all!
This is my first post here on therpf. This will be my second costume I'm trying to make but the first one I'm going to keep progress on.
First of all english is not my first language so there might be small errors in my language here and there.
But to the point, I want to make a Tower Guard armour set. I've always been a big fan of Lord of the Rings (LotR) series and characters.

So for the start this is the best refrence picture I have for my project.

Lost my first few progress photos due to phone crash....

But haven't made it so far yet so not tha tmuch of a lost.
First thing that i started with was the legs/skirt (or what you want to call it).
I decided to go with a black piece of cloth as the under layer and then white cloth for the white on the legs.
I couldn't find a gold/yellow ish piece of cloth with some black on to sew on as the decorations you can see on the white edge.

Not sure if I'm going to make a small chainmail for lower part of the legs. Just under the gold line.

Having a small problem about the chestplate and have no clue by now how I'll make it. Not so fancy about making it in steel but want to make it in fiberglass if possible.
So if you have any good idea how I can make it please share

More info about my build will come later on

 

[wolfcalibur]

First of all, Welcome to the RPF. Also You have chosen a great armor, I have been wanting to do that costume for years now but never got around to it, if I were you I'd do the chainmaile its a lot of fun but time consuming, if you can't do the maile just use a thick wool jumper painted silver, it looks the same from a distance.
I look forward to seeing the finished suit

 

[bromancis]

Started with a piece of black cloth and cut out the shape on the skirt. Then i sew around all the edges to prevent small threads to come lose.
I stitched on the first gold stripe just about 1/2 cm from the center line to have a small gap between the other one.
Then I cut out the white piece and put it on place with needles.

 

[Riceball]

If you haven't already, I strongly recommend you pick up a book called The Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare - An Illustrated Guide to the Battles,Armies and Armor of Middle-Earth, it has a lot pictures of the various weapons and armor seen in the 3 movies with breakdowns of many of the components, I think it would be a very useful reference for you.

 

[bromancis]

Finished the leg part today and i'm quite happy with the outcome. Just need to add the chainmail part or if i go with a
thick wool jumper dyed silver.


Also started on a 2nd age gondorian shield today. That will come together with the costume.

And might have a plan for the chestplate. First I'll make a mold of my torso with plaster (is that the right word? The thing you have on when you break a leg or so)
Then somehow form the chestplate out of the mold and cover it with glassfiber to make it strong. Might do the same with the helm later on.

 

[CelticRuins]

Can't wait to see the outcome of this! I don't think I've ever seen anyone do a tower guard!

 

[bromancis]

I started off by making a sketch on a big piece of paper. The shield will be about 40" high and 20" inch wide.


I traced the sketch to my planks.


This is how it looks like when cut.

 

[bromancis]

I used planks like this that fitted in to eachother and made it easy to give the shield a nice curve.


This is is the upper part of the shield and you can see how the planks fits to eachother and
how easy it's to give it an even curv.


*edit*
Maybe found a way to make the plate and will try it out tomorrow.

 

[bromancis]

Made this mould of my torso out of plaster. Tomorrow I'll try to use mud/clay to sculpt the chestplate which
I'll later cover with glassfiber.

 

[bromancis]

After making the mould of my torso i tried my best to shape it into the chestplate with mud.
It was not easy but i did as well as i could and I'm quite happy with the result.

After sculpting I started with the first layer of glassfiber. Gonna put on maybe 3-4 layers of glassfiber to make
it sturdy so it wont break when moving.


And for this little adventure I used 18 meters (54 feet) long and 7 cm (almost 3 inch) wide plaster strips that you
just apply water and and they harden. It was enough for about 2-3 layers on my torso.
For sculpting I used 4kg (4 lbs) flower mud. (That is what they called it). I used it since it was way cheaper then
real sculpting mud.
Not sure how much glassfiber I'll use. But so far with about 3 layers I have used about 2 square meters. (18 square feet)

 

[bromancis]

Today I made a support stand for the curve that goes out on the chestplate. I had some EVA-foam leftovers that
I cut out and curved with a heatgun.



The result wasn't as good as I hoped for but it will do. Now I have alot of filler and sand papering to do
before I can start paint it.



If you have any quiestions about how I'm doing things just ask and I'll do my best to answer