Skyrim: Stalhrim Armor

[ZoeAdvance]

Hey RPF, this is my first time posting on this site, but I'm in kind of a pickle.

I'm a big fan of the Elder Scroll series, and once Skyrim launched Dragonborn with the Stalhrim armor option, I was pretty impressed. I think the entire set is beautiful, and I've been meaning to cosplay something from the Elder Scrolls for a while.

You see, I've been cosplaying for about 7 years now, and, in my opinion, I'm pretty darn good at it when it comes to outfits and sewing. However, I've never attempted a set of armor before. I have no idea where to even begin with something like this, though I'm more than willing to do as much as possible to make this look really good. I don't want to cut corners and end up with a really awful set of armor that looks like something slapped together in a few nights.




This is the set of armor in question. Unfortunately, I don't have a back view picture for you guys to reference. I was assuming that the underlayer that seems to be a quilted pattern will be an entirely separate garment all together, as will the gauntlets and the boots. Other than that, I'm utterly clueless.

What would be the best course of action here?

 

[SmilingOtter]

Welcome!

A lot of folks here get good results from pepakura and/or foam. Though the coloring of the armor is a bit odd, the shapes are simple enough that you should be able to do them out of steel/aluminum if you wanted.

 

[fallimar]

Hiya!

Yay for more Skyrim armour builds
I can't give any concrete advice, but I'd definitely try either pepakura or foam as SmilingOtter suggested above, both methods can give very nice results, and there are mounds of threads around here giving great instructions.

As an Elder Scrolls nerd, I know a little about stalhrim - magical nonmelting ice basically, so you might want an icy effect rather than matte paint - perhaps making moulded "ice" panels with clear casting resin, maybe pigmented slightly with a little swirly pale blue? If not that, vacuformed plastic might do the trick too. I dunno, just throwing out ideas!

Good luck!

 

[SmilingOtter]

Cool - I didn't know what that material was. If I were doing it, I'd look for sources of clear plastic, paint the back side, and sand the front side enough to make it translucent. Good luck, and post pics when you get started on it.

 

[ZoeAdvance]

I'm thinking that the pepakura designer is going to work wonders when it comes down to the plate design. I'm also thinking that foam is going to be a great alternative to plastic in this sense because I don't want this set weighing a ton. It already has a lot of components that are going to make it plenty heavy enough.

So after I get my foam pieces cut out, what would you say would be the best way to get that shiny look besides vacuum sealing it with plastic or resin? I can use those too, but both are a little bit harder to work with and I don't have those materials ready at my disposal.

I've done a technique before where I painted a matted helmet over with gloss to give it that shiny effect. If I painted the foam first with the pigments I wanted, and then went over it with the gloss, would it have the same effect or will the foam absorb it?

 

[fallimar]

I love foam for building! I did a quick two-week jobbie on a few pieces of the nordic carved armour set to wear to supanova this year. Foam is fab, but I found that without hardening it's too squishy to hold up for more than one or two wears. You've got to seal it with 5-6 coats of slightly thinned PVA glue before painting it anyway, it's far too flexible on its own and won't hold paint. I just did that as I had no time and experience with resins, but a heap of members on here are really good at hardening foam. The method I'm currently trying to learn uses coats of brushed-on resin to harden the foam and give it a nice surface. I've only just ordered the resin, so I've not tried it, but if it works it should be great for my upcoming costume projects, which include redoing the nordic carved armour and finishing it completely

 

[ManitobaMando]

Are you familiar with working with sintra and doing hand shaping via a heat and strip gun? If so, I would recommend using clear acrylic for the actual "ice" armor parts, if only due to the fact that you can paint it to give it the appearance of ice, being able to "frost" the edges and such, and give it that still "see through" look. If you wanted to deviate a little you could mold the parts needed for the armor and give the surface a little more texture than leaving it flat as well. All depends on how much time and effort you want to put forth.

 

[ZoeAdvance]

I'm not too familiar with sintra, but I have several friends who are and have used it for other costumes and armor. If I needed help, I'd know where to find it. However, I think the foam and resin will work better for me personally, as this will be my first set of armor and I don't want to mess up something a little more expensive than foam if I have to do something over. I'm still a full time student and budget will be somewhat of an issue here, though I've planned it out to where I have enough money for the materials and a little extra in case I make a mistake. But, it's still not enough to have big error room.

My other constraint is heaviness and mobility. I'm only 5' 5", and I've ever carried around so much weight on a costume before. But, I've used foam before and have had great results weight wise with that.

My next question is how to carve the foam for this. My other projects were small and detailed enough to where I could use and exacto-knife, but this seems a little more involved than that. Would a box cutter work?

 

[Vrogy]

I'd recommend you use foam here. Hand-pattern it, it's all very simple shapes.
If you use thicker foam you'll be able to whittle away at the surface to get the chipped pattern it needs. From there, I'd airbrush in the soft blue hues, varying by 'depth' up to lighter peaks, maybe dry brush the peaks with white and light blues.. I think you can fake the icy look with paint. Foam's really cheap, too- thick stuff is about 10usd for 16 square feet, and you can seal it with elmer's glue.

As far as carving techniques.. I've only messed around a little bit with foam, but I'd try to draw or sketch out the peaks and valleys on the raised stahlrim panels, then saw from those peaks down with a long, sharp blade, sort of following it at one side, keeping the tip near the deeper areas. I think this may result in some choppy cuts, so maybe cleanup with a large, rounded sanding bit would be nice, something like a 200+ grit 2"+diameter ball might work.. or you could just be nutty and do it all by hand.

There's also the possibility of putting down some thin strips at the high points, then gluing and heat-forming some of the really thin craft foam over it, so most of the shape is created just by the drape of the material.

Check out fev's nordic carved armor undersuit for a pretty decent, if laborious, way to make that part.
http://www.therpf.com/f24/skyrim-carved-nord-armor-scratchbuild-update-7-7-a-189367/

As a stylistic choice... I really hate the Stahlrim helmets. The heavy one might look OK if the eyes were backed with a dark material, or the face were covered. It's also plausible in the game to go without a helmet. It could be that with hair streaming around the edges of the helmets they could look OK. They seem oversized, too. Meh.

Here's some large composites of the models. You can look at the originals to zoom in, too, just right-click them.

stahlrimheavy_female_compall by vrogy, on Flickr


stahlrimlight_female_compall by vrogy, on Flickr

 

[kiohazard]

Hiya!

Yay for more Skyrim armour builds

As an Elder Scrolls nerd, I know a little about stalhrim - magical nonmelting ice basically, so you might want an icy effect rather than matte paint - perhaps making moulded "ice" panels with clear casting resin, maybe pigmented slightly with a little swirly pale blue? If not that, vacuformed plastic might do the trick too. I dunno, just throwing out ideas!

Good luck!

Might I suggest a thick piece of plexi-glass, rough ground then smoothed to suggest ice, with a light blue piece of "EL-wire" behind it to give it a "magical glow"? You could defuse the light with a soft piece of cloth. I, too, am only throwing idea out at 'cha!

Looking forward to what you come up with!!

 

[Pesmerga]

This could be an epic build. Challenging, yet epic

 

[ZoeAdvance]

I also hate the helmet, but I've already got an Aetherial Crown made that looks really good with this armor. So I was just going to go with that because it's still lore friendly and aesthetically pleasing.

And thank you very much for the info, that is really helpful advice. I'm definitely going to go with foam for this, and I think I'll use the airbrush technique for painting as well. I will probably do a gloss over it for that shiny look, as well as to seal it in so moisture won't creep in over time, or at least stunt the progress of deterioration.

 

[ZoeAdvance]

Might I suggest a thick piece of plexi-glass, rough ground then smoothed to suggest ice, with a light blue piece of "EL-wire" behind it to give it a "magical glow"? You could defuse the light with a soft piece of cloth. I, too, am only throwing idea out at 'cha!

Looking forward to what you come up with!!

I was actually considering doing an EL-wire in it, however I don't think I'd be able to wire it correctly and have the batter pack tucked away somewhere (due to just lack of experience), not to mention the fact that my budget it tight enough to where I don't think I'd be able to afford an entire armor's worth of EL-wire.

However, after I finish this set, I am probably going to start another costume that does include EL-wire. I'll post that thread when I get started on that.

 

[Sidewalker]

This looks awesome! I can't wait to see what you come up with. I just posted my Dovahkiin build. It's good to see more people doing Skyrim costumes. Aside from my GF and I, I've seen a bunch of Nightingales and a couple more Dovahkiin, but that's all so far.

 

[Yrien]

The quilted underlayer appears to be a gambeson-type of garment. I wouldn't make it an actual gambeson because you will die of heat in it, lol. Though you may need some padding in the garment to make it have the right "look". A quilted piece of fabric isn't going to look like a padded gambeson.

I'm very interested to see what you do with this build! It's a really interesting concept. I don't have any suggestions for making it luminescent, but I do think it's a good idea. What about looking at some of the Tesseract/Cosmic Cube builds to see how they've done the lighting? The ones I've seen have some pretty good discussion about how to make small, diffused lighting packs. I'm not sure how well those ideas would work for something of this size, but it might be worth having a look.