LadyDeadpool
New Member
So Sorsha has always been my favorite warrior princess growing up; I confess I away wished I had red hair like hers so when I was little so I could be her... :$
I've always been interested in building her, but the fact the movie is so dark and almost every shot of her is from waist up kind of made me head shy from starting without knowing what the rest of her costume looked like.
But I recently discovered (And I really shouldn't have been surprised becasue of the amount of things released for SW) that LFL did indeed release action figures for Willow! I promptly acquired the Sorsha one...and have since discovered it's not really that much help, but it was the prompt I needed to get started.
So I guess I'll update this post here as I go with how I've broken down her costume as I make it. That way if anyone else wants to build a Sorsha all the info for her costume as I've been able to determine will be in the first post and they won't have to scroll through the entire thing.
SOFT (non armor) PARTS
I always start with the pants and shirt base for everything. Sorsha's pretty easy. It's black pants, semi fitted but still slightly blousey around the top and a black shirt.
((I actually found all these photos on the internets, so if anyone knows who screencaped them/took them let me know))
With the release of the remastered edition, you can definitely see that in scene above Sorsha wears a really fine mail shirt...I'm opting not to make it since I'm still not convinced it wasn't made/worn just for this scene. Everyone else is also half dressed in this scene and it's the only time we see it, so unless you specifically want to do this version there's not a real reason to make it.
Basically, you never see the shirt she wears ?over her mail shirt? and under her chestplate, so that's as simple as a long sleeve black shirt for me (I have a friend who did Sorsha and she uses a tank top, so whatever works for you). I'll probably eventually make one myself, but I happened to have a long sleeves workout shirt in my closet that will be prefect for when I'm all dressed in black and way too hot.
As far as her pants, what you see above it pretty much what you get. It took me ridiculously long to find any shots of them, so plain black pants will work. I made mine from linen, though it looks like hers might be a bit heavier then that.
Oh! And this shot. ***THIS IS NOT SORSHA *** just as generic Nockmarr soldier
however, Sorsha dresses really similarly to these guys as far as boots, materials and pants, so it gives you a really good idea of what her lower half should look like.
BOOTS!
As far as I can tell in the blurry dark screen shots, Sorsha's boots are practical for a warrior princess. Flat sole (Contrast to all the warrior women of modern movies who have to wear wedges?), black leather, knee high, pointed toe. They pretty much look exsactly like the Nockmarr solider above. Practical.
It's almost impossible now days to find tall boots without zippers, so I ended up purchasing some 80's ridding boots and they work perfectly.
CLOAK
I've only just started the cloak, so I'll add to this section as we go. But for now, I can tell it's fuzzy as seen in these photos. Probably wool of some sort. I used "boucled wool" for mine becasue it has the right fluff to it.
BRACERS
You never see enoough of her bracers to know anything except that she has them.
I ended up using the last two pictures the most for references. It looks like she has half-shell hard bracers strapped on over leather full bracers. I have a better picture of her ridding off on her horse that shows the outline of the leather bracers, but it's the wrong file format to upload. (Sadness)
It also looks like the part of her bracers more toward her hands might be slightly raised or lowered from the rest of her bracers? It looks like that in the second photo there.
The straps for the bracers appear to be riveted on with four rivets, two on either side, toward the front and back as you can see in the bottom two pictures.
CHESTPLATE...thing.
Ok, so I'm still working on this one but I have it started.
It's kind of been these three photos I'm working from for now. I have a couple others of her lower half I'll add when I get there (and have actually figured it out).
So she's got a sweetheart neckline to the actual chest part of the plate, which appears to be metal and have a raised lip around the top. I'll get to the attachments at the top later.
Right now I'm working on the straps that go around her chest under the breastplate. They look like metal riveted into the plate. There are a pair of rivets in the center, and then another set about every inch and a half to two inches. I have no idea how it closes in the back...no pictures!
Right now, I can only count about 4 straps, then with the best reference photos I have, it looks like a 2 inch wide strip of leather around her waist which also forms her cod plate thing.
That's all I've got so far.
I've opted to do a combination of leather and plastic for her chestplate. The breastplate itself I am using a modified fencing protector covered in Terraflex, and the straps are leather which will be painted to look metal. I plan to cinch this whole plate like a corset in the back, so it's form fitting and comfortable (relatively), and I'm honestly baffled about how else to make it close. Metal straps would be too uncomfortable for a full day of wearing, plus leather will at least have a little give it.
MINE.
Leather Bracers: I used 3 oz tooling leather for these, dyed USMC Black, which I'll use for all the leather. They've been wet shaped to fit my arms (I have a "arm dummy") and the edges have been rolled for comfort. I decided to tool a little something into them before hand just to give the kit a little more detail. I came up with a simple design based of General Kael's chest circle-doo-thing, which you can kind of see in the last photo. They lace up the outside of the arm so the lacing is hidden under the metal bracer. Also, ick, the bracer in the last picture is the one I tried a new technique for shaping the wet leather that a friend had recommend to me and it did not turn out, so the edges look blch. I swear I'm better at this leather stuff then that!!
"Metal" Bracers: I work almost exclusively with Sintra, Terralex and Kydex, so most of the armor you see here is going to be a combination of those three. The basic shape I drew out while staring at the reference photos, and then transferred from paper to craft foam to see how it worked out. The craft foam curves similarly to sintra, so I usually do templates out of it first. Then I traced, cut and sanded the 3mm sitnra before shaping it with a heat gun. I added a little later of Terraflex (the tan part that looks like warbla) to the front for kicks since her bracers looked raised there.... Then I attached my leather straps with rivets on one side and Chicago screws on the other (so I can actually get them on and off). They're surprisingly comfortable. I may or may not have worn them all day...
Chest plate!
Still a WIP!
Again, for the actual breastplate part I used a fencing protector which I cut down and then covered in terraflex. I decided to cover it in terraflex rather then fill the holes in with bondo becasue terraflex will flex slightly with the protector when it gets strapped on, whereas bondo would snap off eventually. Knowing my luck, that would be right before I wore it to a big con...
It's currently attached around the back with the big velcro strap that came with it. I may swap that out eventually, we'll see.
Sorry for the slightly awkward chest plate photos...hard to take them and not look awkward? You can see it took me about 7 colors to get the right shape for the top.
There is a wrinkle in the terraflex under the right side, but that will actually all be covered with my straps. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out so far.
Again, it's very comfortable.
I am currently waiting for the dye on my straps to dry before I work on those. I'll update probably after I do more work this weekend.
~LD
I've always been interested in building her, but the fact the movie is so dark and almost every shot of her is from waist up kind of made me head shy from starting without knowing what the rest of her costume looked like.
But I recently discovered (And I really shouldn't have been surprised becasue of the amount of things released for SW) that LFL did indeed release action figures for Willow! I promptly acquired the Sorsha one...and have since discovered it's not really that much help, but it was the prompt I needed to get started.
So I guess I'll update this post here as I go with how I've broken down her costume as I make it. That way if anyone else wants to build a Sorsha all the info for her costume as I've been able to determine will be in the first post and they won't have to scroll through the entire thing.
SOFT (non armor) PARTS
I always start with the pants and shirt base for everything. Sorsha's pretty easy. It's black pants, semi fitted but still slightly blousey around the top and a black shirt.
((I actually found all these photos on the internets, so if anyone knows who screencaped them/took them let me know))
With the release of the remastered edition, you can definitely see that in scene above Sorsha wears a really fine mail shirt...I'm opting not to make it since I'm still not convinced it wasn't made/worn just for this scene. Everyone else is also half dressed in this scene and it's the only time we see it, so unless you specifically want to do this version there's not a real reason to make it.
Basically, you never see the shirt she wears ?over her mail shirt? and under her chestplate, so that's as simple as a long sleeve black shirt for me (I have a friend who did Sorsha and she uses a tank top, so whatever works for you). I'll probably eventually make one myself, but I happened to have a long sleeves workout shirt in my closet that will be prefect for when I'm all dressed in black and way too hot.
As far as her pants, what you see above it pretty much what you get. It took me ridiculously long to find any shots of them, so plain black pants will work. I made mine from linen, though it looks like hers might be a bit heavier then that.
Oh! And this shot. ***THIS IS NOT SORSHA *** just as generic Nockmarr soldier
however, Sorsha dresses really similarly to these guys as far as boots, materials and pants, so it gives you a really good idea of what her lower half should look like.
BOOTS!
As far as I can tell in the blurry dark screen shots, Sorsha's boots are practical for a warrior princess. Flat sole (Contrast to all the warrior women of modern movies who have to wear wedges?), black leather, knee high, pointed toe. They pretty much look exsactly like the Nockmarr solider above. Practical.
It's almost impossible now days to find tall boots without zippers, so I ended up purchasing some 80's ridding boots and they work perfectly.
CLOAK
I've only just started the cloak, so I'll add to this section as we go. But for now, I can tell it's fuzzy as seen in these photos. Probably wool of some sort. I used "boucled wool" for mine becasue it has the right fluff to it.
BRACERS
You never see enoough of her bracers to know anything except that she has them.
I ended up using the last two pictures the most for references. It looks like she has half-shell hard bracers strapped on over leather full bracers. I have a better picture of her ridding off on her horse that shows the outline of the leather bracers, but it's the wrong file format to upload. (Sadness)
It also looks like the part of her bracers more toward her hands might be slightly raised or lowered from the rest of her bracers? It looks like that in the second photo there.
The straps for the bracers appear to be riveted on with four rivets, two on either side, toward the front and back as you can see in the bottom two pictures.
CHESTPLATE...thing.
Ok, so I'm still working on this one but I have it started.
It's kind of been these three photos I'm working from for now. I have a couple others of her lower half I'll add when I get there (and have actually figured it out).
So she's got a sweetheart neckline to the actual chest part of the plate, which appears to be metal and have a raised lip around the top. I'll get to the attachments at the top later.
Right now I'm working on the straps that go around her chest under the breastplate. They look like metal riveted into the plate. There are a pair of rivets in the center, and then another set about every inch and a half to two inches. I have no idea how it closes in the back...no pictures!
Right now, I can only count about 4 straps, then with the best reference photos I have, it looks like a 2 inch wide strip of leather around her waist which also forms her cod plate thing.
That's all I've got so far.
I've opted to do a combination of leather and plastic for her chestplate. The breastplate itself I am using a modified fencing protector covered in Terraflex, and the straps are leather which will be painted to look metal. I plan to cinch this whole plate like a corset in the back, so it's form fitting and comfortable (relatively), and I'm honestly baffled about how else to make it close. Metal straps would be too uncomfortable for a full day of wearing, plus leather will at least have a little give it.
MINE.
Leather Bracers: I used 3 oz tooling leather for these, dyed USMC Black, which I'll use for all the leather. They've been wet shaped to fit my arms (I have a "arm dummy") and the edges have been rolled for comfort. I decided to tool a little something into them before hand just to give the kit a little more detail. I came up with a simple design based of General Kael's chest circle-doo-thing, which you can kind of see in the last photo. They lace up the outside of the arm so the lacing is hidden under the metal bracer. Also, ick, the bracer in the last picture is the one I tried a new technique for shaping the wet leather that a friend had recommend to me and it did not turn out, so the edges look blch.
I swear I'm better at this leather stuff then that!!"Metal" Bracers: I work almost exclusively with Sintra, Terralex and Kydex, so most of the armor you see here is going to be a combination of those three. The basic shape I drew out while staring at the reference photos, and then transferred from paper to craft foam to see how it worked out. The craft foam curves similarly to sintra, so I usually do templates out of it first. Then I traced, cut and sanded the 3mm sitnra before shaping it with a heat gun. I added a little later of Terraflex (the tan part that looks like warbla) to the front for kicks since her bracers looked raised there.... Then I attached my leather straps with rivets on one side and Chicago screws on the other (so I can actually get them on and off). They're surprisingly comfortable. I may or may not have worn them all day...
Chest plate!
Still a WIP!
Again, for the actual breastplate part I used a fencing protector which I cut down and then covered in terraflex. I decided to cover it in terraflex rather then fill the holes in with bondo becasue terraflex will flex slightly with the protector when it gets strapped on, whereas bondo would snap off eventually. Knowing my luck, that would be right before I wore it to a big con...
It's currently attached around the back with the big velcro strap that came with it. I may swap that out eventually, we'll see.
Sorry for the slightly awkward chest plate photos...hard to take them and not look awkward? You can see it took me about 7 colors to get the right shape for the top.
There is a wrinkle in the terraflex under the right side, but that will actually all be covered with my straps. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out so far.
Again, it's very comfortable.
I am currently waiting for the dye on my straps to dry before I work on those. I'll update probably after I do more work this weekend.
~LD
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