Warcraft Human Soldier

Inspired by @kwalsh0000's fantastic build of the Footman from the new Warcraft Movie, I figured I could start my own thread (so as not to fill his thread will all my trash) for my build of the Footman from the 2016 movie "Warcraft" from Legendary Pictures and Duncan Jones.

We're a group of 5 guys making this, so sometimes some of them might hopefully pop in with their own contributions to this thread. I'll be documenting primarily my own effort, letting them go at their own.

Allright, here we go.


Based on the pictures from SDCC last year, we we're able to gain quite a bit of insight into how they look.
Turns out, there are two different kinds. We opted to call one the "Footman", and one "Royal Guard"
Luckily I had a buddy who went there, and I ended up calling him in the middle of the night (I live in Norway, so the timezones are a bit hard to keep track of) pestering him into hauling his camera down to the convention center the next day taking some nice high resolution pictures for me.
Note: The suit with the most "hands on" possibility is one of the Royal Guards, so its the best documented one, whereas the Footmen are only visible in the form of action figures, or on top of the Warcraft stand (seen above)

The "Footman" (FM): Main features differing from the RG is the "ball" shoulders, unadorned armguards, unadorned helmet, missing chest piece, and generally less detailing all around. Note, Picture for ref is the action figure, but its more or less accurate to the screen used one. Screen used features a kama with rounded edges.

The "Royal Guard" (RG): Large, rounded pieces make up the shoulders, unlike the "Footman" with the spheric shoulders. Lions on arms, much more details all around, cloth pieces are more angular and "angrier". Another big difference is the helmet, featuring a large extra "crown" and extra detailing. An extra chest piece has been added, on top of the chest from the FM. Back (not shown) also very different.

Also the shields and sword vary between the FM and RG, but those have to come later.

Personally, I dont care for the RG shoulders and helmet, but the detailing on the greaves, the angular cloth pieces, and the chest are much nicer on the RG than the FM.
Neither did the other guys involved, so it was quickly resolved that we would mix and match the best parts of both, and make a "supersuit" of sorts.
Based on this, @Kroforce (another member here, and part of our group) made a quick 'shop job out of the different pieces we all agreed on wanting for our amalgamation of the suits. Other things like increasing the size of the shoulders and such were also considered, and even added. This is warcraft after all, so big shoulders are a bit of the charm. V1.3 is the one we ended up going for, but this is still open for moderation as the project progresses.

I work part time at a industrial rapid prototyping lab, aka. I work as a 3D print machine operator, so I thanks to a very friendly boss, I had the possibility of getting the helmet printed for a very friendly price, and jumped on the possibility. A "quick" CAD model later, and we're in business! Note: The shoulders are still very WIP, so don't mind them.
I do all my modelling in Solidworks. Not the quickest way, but definitely the best for going the 3D printing route. Take it from me, I'm a professional.

Now, these are stupid big in the movie, but I scaled them down a bit, so we would look a bit more heroic, and less bubbleheady. These are now about the size of a small Street Judge helmet (for anyone who has one.) Much longer though.A bit lacking in pictures here, as this was done inbetween multiple other projects, but the short of it was:
Helmet was printed as two parts, the main dome, and the "mohawk". This was done to get the whole helmet into one machine, without having to cut up the structure itself. Afterwards it was mounted back in with glue and some taps, then smoothed on with some filler and lovely sanding. I stupidly enough didn't make any marks or keys so the ridge would go precisely where it should, but with enough eye-measuring, swearing and a bit of luck, it ended up where it should.
A couple of layers of spray filler to smooth out the printing lines in the nylon, sanding, then more spray filler and sanding followed, ending with two layers of black paint and wet sanding to get the texture silky smooth.

A bit of a stupid choice I made, was to print the helmet without any kind of visor, or anything to hold the visor in place while sanding (this was ofcourse done since I wanted to wear the damn thing as soon as it came out of the machine... Oh vanity!) Also, since the plan was to cast atleast 7 copies of this since we all want one, and some even more than one, I had to figure out a smart way to close the visor. Since I had the CAD-model, I modelled a insert to perfectly fit into the visor to be mounted when the main bodywork was done.

So this is where it stands as of now. This will be molded in the coming week, and cast in multiple copies from Smooth On ONYX in the coming weeks. We're debating cold casting them, but aluminium powder is heavily regulated in Norway, since... well... you can make things that go boom with it.

I've been working on both the bracers, and shoulders, but these are currently so heavily WIP that I have nothing to show apart from some ugly prints, and a couple of crappy 3D models.

Will ofcourse be updating as the project progresses, however slowly that might be.
I have quite a bit of reference on this project, but could always use more, so please, feel free to share any pictures you come into.

Great work so far! I have to get me a 3d printer! That came out beautifully!

Can't wait to see more progress (and take some ideas! )

@kwalsh0000 when we're all done, you should pop over the North Sea, and help us invade Sweden or something. You're Irish, so you're as good as Norwegian already, so nobody will even notice!
I spent the evening tinkering with the greaves a bit, but I didn't really get anywhere, so I spent the time writing this thread instead.
As for 3D printing, its a great tool for some things, not so much for others, its all about the balance. I'd kill for some of your sculptingskills man! Kill some Orcs that is!

Very curious to see how this comes out. I spent a couple of months wearing this damn thing on the movie, and let me tell you - it was NOT comfortable.

Zeppo Cool man! I have a couple (hundreds) of questions, if you can answer them? Or is it some kind of NDA on them?
How tall were the boots? We've been trying to figure out if they are tall , like pirate boots, or short anklehighs.
The pants, are they two different fabrics in the front and back? Or some kind of extra panels?
And the chainmail; Ringlord has said they made strickly half-sleeve chainmail shirts, but in every picture I've been able to dig up, it looks like the sleeves are full length, all the way into the bracers?

A lot of our little group have a background in pretty heavily armoured costumes, both from Star Wars and Halo (surprise, surprise) so we're ready for the hardship!

The greaves, knees and boots were all mounted as a single piece that we slipped on as a unit and were built on a pair of vinyl riding boots like these:

I think the pants were the same front to back, but I seem to remember there being stretch panels on the inside of the thigh and through the crotch.

The hauberks were more 3/4 sleeve. The chainmaille only extended down to about mid-forearm, then the rest of the forearm sleeve was leather.

Awesome! I have a pair of boots just like that in the closet for some other weird project that got trashed. I do think we'll try to do that more like multiple kits parts strapped on, rather that a single, large part though.

Hmm, stretch panels would explain a lot, since we've been seeing different fabrics appearing from different angles. We'll probably go with something similar then.

Damnit, figures. I was hoping the hauberks were only halfsleeve, so cheap indian mail could be ordered to the lot of us, and still be somewhat accurate. I'm not to keen on spending my entire spring kniting another chainmail, so I might go for it anyway.

Really cool that you got to use the real ones, even though they were uncomfortable! I'm pretty sure I'll have a bucketload of more questions, so if you don't mind me picking your brain about it from time to time, it would be awesome!

I'll do my best to remember. We shot that 2 years ago.

Protocol, looking good so far.

Any chance you'd be able to share the Cad of the helmet? It would come in massively handy for a build I am doing - but mine is in foam. I'm struggling to get the shape right, and although it's not an exact match, the general shape would work for it. Obviously I'd want to convert the file to a pep unfold so I can transfer it to the foam form. If you could, would be greatly appreciated...

Dezziedc said:

Any chance you'd be able to share the Cad of the helmet?

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Sorry man, I don't share my models anymore after a couple of burns. This shouldn't be to hard to construct by hand though, good luck!

DId some more work on the bracers today. This is also based on a cad model, but I'm still working out how we're going to make 6 sets. Vacumforming or casting will probably be the go to method, although these shouldnt be to hard to construct with foam or worbla either.

Based on the pictures we've seen so far, the RG and FM have different bracers, with the RG ones being decorated with a large lionhead, and the FM bracers with some minor detailing. I do believe there is one blank version, featured on the 1/6 collectible.


I think the lion is a bit tacky, so I went with the Footman-version, seen in the middle here.
Doing the original modelling in Solidworks I had some problems nailing the shape and size, so I've made multiple version to get where I was finally happy. Nailing the size of these was a challenge, and especially since we are 5 guys with vastly different arms.

These are two of the first versions made. I missed in size badly on the first version, and I hadn't yet discovered the details seen on the Footman bracer above. The second version amended both, but I missed badly on the shape of the upper end and ended up making it pretty much impossible to bend the arm.

My newest version (v.4) is pretty much spot on where I want them to be. I'm not one hundred percent sure about how the top part is in the originals, since every picture I see looks just a bit different, so I ended up with a bit of a stylized version. My own "flare" if you will.


I also finished the sizing and shape of the undersize of the bracer. This is acutally one of the trickier parts, since this is a much deeper part, so it has to fit much more of the arm inside. I believe I've found a good size now, not to big so as to look clumsy, but still roomy enough for the guys amongst our group with monster arms.

Thats todays update. Project is going slow, but atleast its moving. Helmet is moving from molding to casting next weekend, so expect some updates then.

Hey, no problems Protocol - I understand. Thanks for getting back to me.

Damn you! They look amazing, I might aswell bin mine now

It was more like this

kwalsh0000 said:

Damn you! They look amazing, I might aswell bin mine now

Click to expand...

I think yours are more accurate though, like Zeppo illustrated above. Mine ended up a bit to rounded at the top, but I kinda like them that way, so I might just keep it.


I did finish off one of my prototype bracers yesterday, just to see how they would turn out. Sorry about the horrible picture quality here, but they were taken at night with my crappy Samsung. Some quick airbrush and a little light leatherwork, and I had one completed bracer to show of. Suprisingly comfortable to wear too. The glove was just a random gauntlet-style glove I had lying around from an earlier project.

Wow it looks great as a finished piece. Love it!

May i ask what 3d printer you used? Seeing the prints has inspired me to look into getting one

kwalsh0000 said:

Wow it looks great as a finished piece. Love it!

May i ask what 3d printer you used? Seeing the prints has inspired me to look into getting one

Click to expand...

Hey, thanks man! They turned out pretty good for a days work.

The thing about 3D printers is that even though everyone keeps on ranting about needing the best possible resolution and the quickest and smoothest machines, mostly, it doesn't matter squat. These bracers are made on an old china copy Flashforge Creator. These machines aren't anything to write home about, but they to the work, and they do it pretty well. Amazingly little maintenance is also a good reason. I run 3D printer industrially for a living, and we have 10 of the Ultimaker 2s we rent out to student, so I have way more maintenance than I care for through work already, so what I look for in a home-machine is being able to print without having to fix my printer every three builds.
If you're looking for something quite cheap, with a workhorse capacity and low maitenance, I would actually recommend one of the Flashforges or the Wanhao printers.

The thing is that since you do a lot of bodywork on your pieces afterwards anyway, the resolution doesn't really matter if the piece doesn't have millions of details anyway.
The bracers were printed in an astonishing (not) resolution of 0.2mm with a speed of 80ms/s which isn't neither fast, nor particularly detailed.
If you ever have any use for something super-resolution high quality, you can always get it printed industrially anyway, like I did with the helmet for ease of assembly.
If you need any 3D printer advice, feel free to send me a PM, and we can discuss it a bit more

Thanks man!

That is some great info and much appreciated. I won't clog your thread anymore but may take you up on the PM but as it stands the Flash forges and Wanhao are great printers for great prices from the research I have since done. Thanks again and can't wait to see more progress!

This is looking great so far. I'm excited to see it put together!

Its been a while since my last post, since nothing much has happened to the project sadly.
Due to time-constraints, the helmet was outsourced for molding, but along the way, there was a bit of a mess-up, and the casts all come out dented as hell. Since I study full time, and have a lot of different obligations, the project kinda halted to a standstill, due to having to fix the mold.

I still haven't found the time to do that, but I did take the time to clean up, and paint one of the d-grade casts today.
Everything was based in chrome spray, then the edges were masked of, and painted with some golden airbrush paints from GW.
Weathering done with an airbrush, and some black paint.

Great work Protocol, I am also looking to start on this armor, the royal guard being the nicer, well I'm certainly not going to tackle King Llane armor
I'm starting on the inside out, easiest step the ring mail shirt. Always wanted one anyway and handy for other projects. I just picked up 5 spools of galvanised
garden wire in Aldi (15m x 2mm) at 1.99 Euro each, nice and shiny, shinier than electric fence wire. I'm following the video below as a guide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IlHjMa74UE