World of Warcraft - Paladin Judgement Armor Build

[Spectre NC]

Hi all,

Several months ago I put up a thread asking for pointers on armor design for a costume I was planning to make for Dragon*Con in Atlanta, GA. I got a few responses, and I appreciate those who did drop me a line. I had a lot of questions unanswered still, so I had to do quite a bit of experimenting. I ended up tight on time so I couldn't keep a progress thread on my work for you, but I kept photos and decided to record the whole thing in one post. I ended up finishing work at the hotel in Atlanta, and the costume was a big hit! Hopefully this guide helps others who are thinking of doing the same. I'm more than happy to answer questions as well!

To start off, here's a picture of the armor set I had decided to make:



As I stated in my first thread, I had no idea where to start when it came to making the armor pieces for my costume. I had the chestpiece (which included the hood and mask), belt, and skirt being made out of cloth by a friend, since I'm by no means good at sewing. That left the shoulders, gauntlets, and props up to me. Easy, right?

Not so much. I wracked my brain for ideas and finally started browsing through shops for inspiration. I couldn't settle on how to make the shoulderplates. How do I go about making this shape? It's not only a curved surface, but it's also bowled. I realized I had no way to make this that I knew of, so I started looking for something to use as a base. My first find was a large jug. I was able to mark and cut out a piece in the correct shape that I wanted for the shoulders:



New problem: This was still way too small. And I still didn't know how I was going mount them. So I continued looking. My girlfriend (without whom this project would not have been possible) was pushing me towards using football shoulder pads as a base. I had started off wanting to find an alternative because I didn't want to mess with having to hide the parts of the harness the shoulders didn't cover. She won me over in the end when she found a set used for a good price, and after looking them over we found that we could chop quite a bit off of the harness and still have it function properly. Now I had my base, but I still needed something for the plate itself. After many more trips to different stores, I happened to walk into the garden department of the local hardware store and there it was:



Thirteen inch plastic planter. I bought the entire stock (just in case). Once I got those home the real work started. I cut one of the planters in half and then cut the shape I wanted from the half. I ended up with a section that looked like this:



Gotta run for a bit. I'll continue soon!

 

[Rodrigo Ahern]

More, more

 

[Spectre NC]

Hi guys,

Sorry about the delay. I've had an unexpectedly busy past few days and haven't had the chance to sit down. Let's get back to it!

So as I said before, my girlfriend found an excellent set of used football shoulder pads to use as a base for the shoulderplates. Here's the pads as they started out:



After we got the pads home, I checked fit with the plate I had cut out from the planter. It left the perfect amount of room for what I had planned. So I turned back to the plate design. If you look at the shoulder design from the game, the edge of the plate is raised with a lip below the raised portion that is red:



I simplified the ridge around the edge by going to another planter and cutting out a smaller plate, then cutting out the center, leaving a 1"-1.25" border. This was glued on to the main plate and the inner edge sealed with adhesive. Here's the result with the red paint already applied:



You can see the offset at the top of the pic that's going to show the red lip around the bottom of the plate. Repeat the process a second time for the other shoulderplate, of course. I then also cut out two sections about four inches deep and slightly shorter than the main plate. These were lapped under the main plate to create the second joint you can see on the armor image. I then positioned everything on the shoulder pads and drilled two holes, front and back, on each pad and through the harness, which at this point had been cut down and spray painted black. Here's the result:



We positioned the plates on the shoulder pads with me wearing them and my girlfriend got to hit me front and back with a punch to mark the harness. She tried unsuccessfully to convince me that she didn't enjoy it.

I'm working on the next post now and will have it up soon!

 

[Spectre NC]

Part three:

While I was working on the shoulder plates, I was also working on the gloves. I realized I didn't have the time to figure out how to make them myself, so I found a set of real plate gloves on the 'net for a really good price (not sure if I should put any names on here, but I can give you more info via message!). When they arrived, they looked like this:



Fully functional and a surprisingly good fit (I have larger hands and was afraid the glove would be too small)(also, yes I'm aware the picture's blurry and I'm sorry about that! There was a smudge on my lens that was affecting focus, apparently). The plate covers the top half of the gauntlet and fingers as well as a loop entirely enclosing the inner forearm, and all of the plates are attached to a leather glove by rivets. I roughed up and cleaned off the gloves and after some very involved taping (more blurry pictures)



I applied a coat of primer



and then did some more taping. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the taping and painting process, but I basically had to spray a base of gold, then tape off the design I wanted and spray black on the top, then tape all of that up and spray red on the underside. If you have a look at the gloves you'll see that there is a wing design on the black on top of the glove. I made a similar design and tried to put cutouts on the gloves and then apply the black coat. The edges didn't turn out nearly as sharp as I wanted them to, so I ended up making decals out of contact paper that I sprayed gold, then applied to a complete black coat on the gloves. Here's a picture of the game design gloves and my design before I switched to the decals.



I wasn't planning on putting all of the detail into the gloves this year, but was shooting to get the base color scheme right. I did end up going back over the black section, but as you'll see, at the end, the design stayed the same.

Part four coming up!

 

[Spectre NC]

This one's a short section.

I wanted a prop to go with the costume but didn't have the time to experiment with making a weapon (that's one of next year's projects). I decided to make a libram. I wanted a large book but didn't want to carry around a 10-15 pound book all day. I was in luck. I found a cardboard book replica at a craft store. It was perfect, and best of all, it was light. I decided to go with a simple design. Brown cover and back, and gold spine with an image of a phoenix on the front. I did a double layer paint job again. First coat was completely gold, and the second coat was the brown with the areas to be kept gold taped or covered with the desired shape. Here's the result:



I wanted soft edges on this one so I just set the cutout of the phoenix on top of the book without taping down the edges. I designed the phoenix from scratch using a ruler and pencil on posterboard with tape applied to both sides for rigidity then cut it out with a hobby knife. If you'd like more details on the design, I'll be happy to help!

My girlfriend then designed a leather harness for the book with a loop on the spine so it could be hung from my belt. She used leather strips with a snap kit and two 3" rings. Here's her completed work:



So that completed the libram. The "pages" of the book were already completed when the book was bought so I didn't have to do any work on them (yay!).


That's all I've got time for now. I'll continue soon!

 

[Spectre NC]

Hi all, not sure if anyone has been following this thread. I apologize for the long delay. I had a death in the family after my most recent post and have been catching up with with everything since then. I promise I'll have the remaining posts ready soon, which includes pictures of the finished product!

 

[Snikt]

Sorry to hear about your loss. I just stumbled upon this thread and man, its awesome! As an old school WoW player, seeing someone tackle this is quite glorious!

 

[Spectre NC]

So let's see if I can remember where I left off...

The book was finished, the gauntlets were almost finished (I don't have any more pictures of them before they were fully completed, but I see I described what was done after the last picture... I think it's time to talk about the "leather" portion of the costume. This was the one part of the costume I didn't make because I have practically no experience with a sewing machine. I had a friend make the chestpiece and kilt, as well as the belt. The kilt was actually not a full piece, but rather panels sewn on to an elastic waistband. This permitted freedom of movement and cut down on weight and gave my lower half some breathability. I wore black leggings with the kilt to complete the illusion.

Although I didn't make the cloth pieces, I did pick the fabrics that were used. I can provide information if anyone is curious. I have just one picture of just the cloth pieces of the costume which was taken when I was trying them on for fit.



Don't judge anything just yet (no pun intended)! I only had the pieces on to ensure fit and didn't have anything adjusted properly.

At this point I was down to a few days before we were due to leave for Atlanta. I had everything ready except for the shoulders. Crunch time. I'll cover those in my next post.

 

[Hanzo]

I definitely cannot wait to see it!!

 

[Spectre NC]

Snikt, thanks for that. I'm doing my best to get to the finale at this point.

 

[Briciius]

OUH YEAH !! i've finally find it !!

A thread which is not talking about iron man armor !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goog luck for your build, Tier 2 paladin is one of the most beautiful armor in World of Warcraft .

 

[Spectre NC]

Okay, I've got a window of opportunity so I'll slip another update in here.

With everything else being as close to complete as it was, I was able to re-focus on the shoulderplates. They had been marked, drilled, and mounted onto the modified football shoulderpads and were ready for finishing. The first step was to complete the paint job on the base. Then I had to construct and add the librams.

I had already put the red coat on the lower lip of the plates as shown in the previous pictures, so my next task was to tape up the red and spray the raised section gold. I then let the gold dry and taped it as well, and sprayed the entire inner area of the plate black. I didn't have time to let everything set long enough, so I ended up having to go back and touch up the gold and red afterward, as the tape did pull off small bits of paint despite every precaution. After all of the painting was completed, I was ready for the librams. I'm putting a reference picture in here since I apparently didn't take an in-between picture after painting:



The librams were originally going to be constructed out of wood, but I changed my mind because wood would not give the smooth appearance of metal when painted unless I sealed and sanded everything first, and I didn't have the time for that. I switched instead to plexiglass, as I had a sheet handy. Looking back, I wish I had checked into different materials. Plexiglass is an absolute bear to work with when dealing with thicker sheets, and I spent a lot of time covered in plastic shavings because I had to resort to using my Dremel to cut all of my pieces. Definitely not the cheapest route I could have taken, but I was working with what I had at hand. I made a mockup of the librams using posterboard and then traced and cut out the shapes once I had sizing correct. The shapes were very rough cut, and I wasn't satisfied at all with them, but ended up making do. I pieced everything together with hot glue, then added more glue to the seams to fill gaps and hide rough edges. I decided not to smooth the glue out, which left a welded look for the pieces, which I felt should be acceptable in the Warcraft universe (engineering!). A couple pounds of hot glue later, I had the librams assembled:



Pretty sure those pieces of tape are still in place, but I couldn't tell you for sure. Also, for whatever reason, I fudged the design and put the libram pages angled in toward the spine of the book, instead of angled down toward the edges of the plate. I think it had something to do with it being four in the morning and trying to work on things from memory...

I sanded the plexi with some fine sandpaper and sprayed everything gold. I did some other touch up on other pieces (the gloves, I think) while waiting for the librams to dry. Soon as I could pick them up, I mounted them on the shoulder plate base pieces. After all of the measuring involved in crafting the pieces, I eyeballed the placement of the librams. They were secured to the base plates by a generous amounts of hot glue. I got lucky with the glue. It held fast for the entire con and required no further reinforcement. At this point, here's my progress:



And this is where I ran out of time. I had to pack. I threw everything together: all my tools, all of the building materials I could think to bring, paint, tape, drawing utensils... I was going to have to finish in Atlanta.

Up next: The mad dash to the finish in Atlanta. Stay tuned!

 

[Spectre NC]

So we're getting close to the end. I realized after looking over everything that I'm going to have to split posts again.

We got down to Atlanta on Thursday (Lucky for me we planned on getting there early) and I got to work as soon as we had checked in and gotten unpacked.

So I had settled on using the football shoulder pads, and they worked great at holding the shoulder plates. But I still had the front of the harness to deal with. In the game, the design doesn't have much covering the chest portion of the armor, so I had to improvise a bit to hide the rest of the harness. In my earlier post, I showed that I drew a phoenix design on the libram I was using as a prop. I had started out thinking I would make a multilayer chestplate out of foam to provide coverage. Since this portion of the armor would be my own work, I decided to get a bit creative with it.

The foam I chose to use for the chestpiece is stuff a lot of you may be familiar with, especially anyone who's crafted a set of N7 armor. I picked up some interlocking foam floor squares from the hardware store:



The tiles are made out of a material called EVA foam, which is very dense, almost to the point of being rubbery, but still pliable and easily cut. One side is a rubberized textured surface, but the bottom side of the tiles are unfinished. Once cut, you've got a smooth, shapeable form.

I started the process by designing the armor "plates" on poster board, then cutting them out. The pieces were made to lap over one another from top to bottom. Here's the beginning of the design:



and a picture of the templates transferred to a tile:



The foam is very easily cut with a hobby knife. Just make sure that a) you have plenty of blades, and b) you have a soft surface underneath the foam you're cutting. The blades can dull pretty quickly, and you'll break blade tips and end up with ragged edges on your cuts (at least in my experience) if you're cutting on a hard surface. I just put a second tile underneath the one I was cutting, but a self-healing mat would work as well.

The one obstacle of using foam is finishing it. It soaks paint up, and isn't the very smooth surface you'd expect metal to be. Several of the sites I researched showed how to seal the surface and sand it smooth before painting. I decided to take a different approach with less dry time. I bought a roll of contact paper and 3M spray adhesive. After I had the plates cut out, I sprayed the smooth side with adhesive, then smoothed contact paper over the adhesive. I cut tabs from around the plate, then wrapped the contact paper around to the textured side of the foam. I secured it all with Gorilla Tape. Here's a progress shot:



And a completed piece from the back:



And front:



I used thumbtacks to simulate rivets, and added another coat of paint over the top. Put the plates together and my work is complete:



I measured the distance for the holes I drilled to attach the shoulderplates to the harness and poked corresponding holes in the chestplate, as seen in the previous picture. Only thing left to do after that was pop them onto the bolts I used to secure the plates, and voila!



Hey, things are finally coming together! I just might get this finished soon!

 

[Spectre NC]

All right, time for another post!

I realized after I posted it that I had skipped a step in the final shoulder/chestplate construction: The swords that sit on the librams on the shoulder. A certain craft store that I made several trips to during this project, being the good Christian company that they are, carried no toy swords or daggers suitable for my project. But they did have plenty of crosses. Including this one:



Perfect dimensions. Pain in the butt to cut because it was layered cardboard, essentially. I was forced to use the Dremel and put up with the burning smell. But I got it done, and I only set off the smoke alarm once! I covered the swords with contact paper as well to mask the sloppy edges, then spray painted them out on our balcony.

I used two squares of plexiglass to make the scales that sit at the front of the shoulderplates. Spraypainted them gold first, then covered them with painter's tape (the good kind, usually comes in a green color) and cut the scales and border out with my hobby knife. I then peeled off the tape around the design I drew and painted the negative space red. After it dried, I peeled the rest of the tape off and was left with the red and gold scales. I was in such a hurry at this point that I don't have pictures of the ornaments separately, but you can definitely see them on the finished product.

I also added a small sword ornament to the chestpiece right below the neck (very, very loose resemblance to the original armor). The symbol was cut out of white contact paper and applied to a piece of foam that I cut, covered, and sprayed at the last minute.

Time to make a test run:



Oh yes. All systems go...

 

[glassfox]

this is looking really amazing! i love blizzard games, especially WoW and i want to make a paladin myself at some point
if you're stuck on materials, try Worbla! although its expensive, it works really well for this kinda stuff. i recently made a Barbarian from Diablo III (another Blizzard game) completley from Worbla and it worked really well

 

[RvanAken]

Looks great.

I remember seeing an all metal version if this armor somewhere, if I remember where I'll post the link.

-R-

 

[EoL]

This looks phenomenal so far! I miss playing WoW so much and would love to pursue a project like this! Will definitely keep following!

 

[Spectre NC]

I appreciate all of your patience with me, as this has taken me way longer than I expected to finish. We've reached the end of the build pictures and I now present to you the finished product:



I do have a few more things to point out that I didn't have separate pictures of:

-The "gems" that hold the scrolls are made out of air-dry/bake in the oven clay. They were painted red, then a layer of red nail polish was put over the top to add depth.

-The scrolls themselves are not random characters, but are actual runes translated and drawn by a talented friend. I'm unsure which alphabet he used, but they look wonderful (I believe they are Norse runes but didn't want to say for sure). There are two phrases on the scrolls:

-"I am the Hand of the Light, the Sword of Justice, the Fist of Retribution"​

"The Light is my shield, the Strength that holds me up, the Beacon that guides me through shadow"​

-The chains are real and are held on by belt loops on the waist piece and secured by a carabiner hidden under the overlay.

-The gold signets attached to the chains are the same clay used for the gems, with a piece of chain embedded in the clay to hang them.

Many thanks to everyone who's commented and read this thread. And I'd like to mention again that I'm more than happy to answer any questions or take any suggestions for future projects. Part of this year's agenda is going to be adding the details to the costume that I had to leave off this year, and further improving the shoulders.

Here's a closeup: