Skyrim: Khajiit in Nordic Carved Armor
- Thread starter Sedulous Studios
- Start date
Sedulous Studios
Active Member
Wow, thank you all! I haven't been able to do any more work on it (big deadline with my actual work) but hopefully next week I'll be able to devote some time to it.
Latest progress was actually on another pull of the mask for my friend. We're planning to be a group of at least three khajiit at D*C. Unfortunately we kind of messed up a bit (pulled it out when it needed another layer of dragonskin still, and now I'm having trouble getting it to lay flat in the mold so I can brush more layers on). Just newbie mistakes I think, I'm learning as I go here!
Latest progress was actually on another pull of the mask for my friend. We're planning to be a group of at least three khajiit at D*C. Unfortunately we kind of messed up a bit (pulled it out when it needed another layer of dragonskin still, and now I'm having trouble getting it to lay flat in the mold so I can brush more layers on). Just newbie mistakes I think, I'm learning as I go here!
Sedulous Studios
Active Member
I started the armor! I drew up the bracers and greaves on cardstock, scaled to me of course. I'm now cutting them out of sintra ($2 for a piece 4'x10" at a local shop, yay). Here's the first bracer cut out, now I have to file and sand the edges. I've never used sintra before but I'm really liking it. I've also never used the scroll saw, so my cutting isn't perfect but it will do. This stuff is so lightweight, it's going to be really comfortable relatively speaking. I didn't cut out the straps/attachments yet because I haven't decided how they'll hook on.
Sedulous Studios
Active Member
I put together the first bracer and one of the greaves. Pretty pleased with them so far! The individual plates are just stuck together with hot glue for now, but I'll affix them to one another in a more permanent manner eventually. I still need to figure out the metal-looking straps, but I should probably sew the undersuit first so I know how big I need to make them. I have the stuff for that as well, so I guess that will be something to start on soon.
Sedulous Studios
Active Member
A bunch of sanding and re-doing a couple of parts, plus cutting out the other side, plus more sanding, then some filler primer and paint! Parts are still not glued to one another, still no straps, and I've only done the base coat of paint, so no detailing/painted weathering yet.
Sedulous Studios
Active Member
Yep, all sintra. I really like it, it's super easy to deal with. Cuts nicely, sands and files easily, glues well, takes paint well. A layer of filler primer before the metallic paint filled in the porosity on the edges quite nicely, too. It's lightweight, so it should be comfortable to wear, and sturdy enough--especially since most of it has two layers for at least some portion of the part--that I hopefully won't have to be too careful while wearing it. Since I paid $2 per 4'x10" piece it was super cheap too, I've used less than two pieces so far!
Drac
Sr Member
Excellent thats good to know, I'm starting a build soon and have been wondering what best to use thanks for the info, and I look forward to seeing some more progress on yours, and I'm impatient so work quickly lol 
:thumbsup
:thumbsup
Drac
Sr Member
Its mostly referred to as Foamex board here in the UK maybe the same where you are?
I have NEVER seen sintra in my life. Nor have I ever heard of it. I guess it goes by a different name here, but I can't ever find it.
Sedulous Studios
Active Member
Spent yesterday at a Skyrim build party, vaguely working on this and mostly looking at weapon ideas and chatting. The breastplate is complicated; I started working on it and am not sure I'm on the right track. But we had a tasty Skyrim dinner! Nord mead, cabbage, bread, sweet roll, eidar cheese (aka blue cheese), green apples... yummy!
mdb
Sr Member
I have NEVER seen sintra in my life. Nor have I ever heard of it. I guess it goes by a different name here, but I can't ever find it.
Sintra and Foamex are brand names. Here I can most easily get Forex. It's expanded foam PVC if you are going to look for whatever is the brand nearest you.
Just had a quick look, yep you can get Forex in the Netherlands
Or look for schuimplaat pvf plaat if you want to widen the net a bit Back on topic. Nom! I got to play in the ESO beta weekend so now I kind of get the whole food in Skyrim thing
And bread and water skin and click click click And oops all the animals are able to be used for skins. And chase the chickens and steal food from the farmer!
Sedulous Studios
Active Member
I thought it might be time to pick a weapon and get started on it. The first time I'm planning to wear the armor is at a local fantasy/ren faire sort of thing, and I wanted a big weapon for that--a battleaxe or a two-handed sword. After contemplating it for a while, I think I want to go with this one:
I used my projector to blow a nice side shot of the battleaxe up to the size I want it (based on the in-game scaling, mostly--it's hard to be precise, so I also looked at a big 6' dowel rod I have and tried to determine what would feel right). Then I traced it onto some big paper, leaving out the length of the shaft and just measuring that part (with feet for scale!):
I think I'm going to make this mainly out of sintra too. I like the stuff!
I used my projector to blow a nice side shot of the battleaxe up to the size I want it (based on the in-game scaling, mostly--it's hard to be precise, so I also looked at a big 6' dowel rod I have and tried to determine what would feel right). Then I traced it onto some big paper, leaving out the length of the shaft and just measuring that part (with feet for scale!):
I think I'm going to make this mainly out of sintra too. I like the stuff!
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Sedulous Studios
Active Member
The axe is assembled, but I don't have photos yet. It went together pretty well. I still need to skin it out and detail it, though.
I did a test with flocking on Dragon Skin. I'm going to do this across the bridge of the nose for the very short hair there, and I think I'll do it across the rest of the mask too to provide a base under the punched longer hair and to give me color guides as to what goes where. I'll brush Dragon Skin onto the mask in the area of each color, flock it, and let it cure before doing the next color--on the sample I did it all at once, so some of the colors got a bit mixed.
I did a test with flocking on Dragon Skin. I'm going to do this across the bridge of the nose for the very short hair there, and I think I'll do it across the rest of the mask too to provide a base under the punched longer hair and to give me color guides as to what goes where. I'll brush Dragon Skin onto the mask in the area of each color, flock it, and let it cure before doing the next color--on the sample I did it all at once, so some of the colors got a bit mixed.
Sedulous Studios
Active Member
I'm calling this my Nordic Battleaxe of Lightness:
"Of lightness", because it's mostly sintra and therefore much lighter than you'd expect. The most difficult part to figure out was how to make a hexagonal shaft, which I did with strips of styrene over a dowel and then backfilled (sort of, as much as it would run down it) with Smooth-On Onyx. This involved math to calculate the correct strip widths, which I was quite proud of myself for doing. Yay early high-school math. My math troubles, slight assistance from my roommate, and celebration over my success caused my roommate to comment "And she has an engineering degree!"
I did some things in kind of a stupid way--there are way more pieces to the axe head than I really needed, as I should have combined the pieces from both sides--but I think it works. The blade is set into a slot in the handle and secured with super glue/baking soda, then backfilled with some crappy onyx (that I left sitting out for a couple of days and foamed quite impressively when I mixed it and poured it in). I still need to clean everything up, put the blade edge on a couple more places (the main blade edge is on, and that's styrene), add the detailing, add some more hexagonal pieces, and do the butt end of it. I think I'll sculpt that out of Apoxie Sculpt.
"Of lightness", because it's mostly sintra and therefore much lighter than you'd expect. The most difficult part to figure out was how to make a hexagonal shaft, which I did with strips of styrene over a dowel and then backfilled (sort of, as much as it would run down it) with Smooth-On Onyx. This involved math to calculate the correct strip widths, which I was quite proud of myself for doing. Yay early high-school math. My math troubles, slight assistance from my roommate, and celebration over my success caused my roommate to comment "And she has an engineering degree!"
I did some things in kind of a stupid way--there are way more pieces to the axe head than I really needed, as I should have combined the pieces from both sides--but I think it works. The blade is set into a slot in the handle and secured with super glue/baking soda, then backfilled with some crappy onyx (that I left sitting out for a couple of days and foamed quite impressively when I mixed it and poured it in). I still need to clean everything up, put the blade edge on a couple more places (the main blade edge is on, and that's styrene), add the detailing, add some more hexagonal pieces, and do the butt end of it. I think I'll sculpt that out of Apoxie Sculpt.
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