Imperius : Archangel of Valor (Diablo 3)

Shooting for the stars on this one. I fell in love with the armor design immediately when I started D3, after a lot of thinking and planning.. I decided to try my best at doing a recreation justice.
I will be attempting to make the armor look like the cinematic version as closely as possible (all that extra detail), but to get a solid base to work from I ripped the ingame model of Imperius to use for scale and probably pep work.



EDIT:: Costume is completed until I tackle the wing mounts! I Debuted the costume at Blizzcon 2015 and managed to place in the Costume Contest. What a hell of a weekend!

Take a look at some pics I got of the suit on Friday.




Thankfully they appear to have made the ingame model almost exactly the same as the cinematic one shape wise - score for me.
After ripping the armor apart and scaling it to my height (5'10", so final height of 6'3") I decided to first build Solarian, the spear Imperius uses in his confrontations with Tyrael and Diablo. I am basing it off of the model below

This model has both the open and closed versions, though the closed version only has one blade and it doesnt close at the tip.. hmm.. I decided to just make the open version used in his confrontation in act IV.

I .. am trying something new. I got a nice chunk of expanded PVC (Sintra/Komatex) at 3/4th inch thickness, and cut the shapes out of that stuff with a bandsaw and willpower.

The spear is scaled to the same scale I'm setting the armor too, and should match it perfectly. This means the spear will be about 6'8" when completed, for my own sanity I will probably cut that down to 6'5". Just these blade heads are over 2 feet long all ready. Awww yeah.
Traced on my guides for the edge, and got ready for a long day of sanding..



A couple hours of random orbit sanding and angle grinding later.. this stuff was a lot tougher then I expected and it took ages. I still have some cleanup to do to even out the edge, and lots of cleanup everywhere else, but not bad for a first run. Will be doing the other blade today - hopefully the finished look will be worth the extra effort here.

Re: Imperius : Archangel of Valor (WiP)

Huge Fan of Angels in general. This is going to be bad ass!!

Re: Imperius : Archangel of Valor (WiP)

Hopefully it won't disappoint, Hanzo.

Sanded down the other blade half today and cleaned up a bunch of little problems with the edges/made everything straight. I need to get some primer on these so I can see the darn things, white was a poor choice.






These things are actually worryingly sharp, I might have to blunt then down if I ever want to.. you know.. bring them out in public. Starting on the rest of the spearhead soon.

Re: Imperius : Archangel of Valor (WiP)

Looking good. I'll be watching to see how this comes along, good luck!

Re: Imperius : Archangel of Valor (WiP)

Seeing your previous work, I know this will be...EPIC.

And I rarely use that word.

Re: Imperius : Archangel of Valor (WiP)

Thanks Crabra!

Started on the middle part of the head today, going to be sculpting the 8 pointed star onto that middle section. The inner blades will probably be 1/4th inch Sintra.

Re: Imperius : Archangel of Valor (WiP)

crabra comander said:

Seeing your previous work, I know this will be...EPIC.

And I rarely use that word.

Click to expand...

After looking at your facebook page I'd have to say Crabra has the right word "EPIC".. You do great work..

Re: Imperius : Archangel of Valor (WiP)

I like your style, Spartan! Thanks for the compliments!
First off, some reference shots (Oh what I would have done for a clear side profile shot .. alas)




Not messing around with the detail on this one. Using screenshots from the cinematics I drew up this pattern for the head detailing. This is going to be.. interesting.. to make, as the spikes will be curving down the sloped sides of the round bit.




More progress soon!

Let the detail work begin!
.. I think for my own sanity I am going to try casting this piece when its done.. because the idea of making two of them is a bit soul crushing.





Anyone have a recommendation for "babys first casting kit" style stuff? I could just go straight to the smoothon stuff, but hmm..

Wow! Awesome build. Can't wait till to see it completed.

Thanks for the compliments everyone! I'll be sure to do him justice.

Some minor progress, was working really a lot this week.



One of the inner blades, this is about 4 inches long. Made out of a single piece of 1/4th sintra, sanded to shape.

Not quite as minor progress update, been working all day today.


Trying out an idea I had with the star shape, I was initially going to use a styrene flat base and build a framework and then apoxie sculpt the shape onto the star.. but I decided to try something else after staring at it for awhile.



Mission mostly successful! I was able to sand the sintra down into a nice edge creating the 3d effect I wanted. This did not take a small amount of time.




Cut out the center with an exacto (urgg) and started sanding the little teeth to shape, they fit quite nicely in the little spots I cut for them. There is a lot of cleanup to do on this part before I (probably) cast it, but I'm optimistic it will work for what I need =D
This is by far the busiest weapon I've ever attempted.

Looks awesome. An Imperius/Tyrael duo at a convention would be great.

Casting something almost seven feet tall is going to be a huge mold, or would you cast each part individually?

I would only be casting the star shaped piece and possibly the disk it rests ontop of - certainly not the whole thing.

Omegadjinn said:

I would only be casting the star shaped piece and possibly the disk it rests ontop of - certainly not the whole thing.

Click to expand...

That makes a lot more sense.

Keep up the good work, I love this project.

Man I cannot wait to see this.

Made some good progress this morning. I finally finished sanding the star/mount to a place I'm happy with, and since I didn't have any silicone to make a mold or money to buy said silicone.. I tried something new and made a high heat 1mm pull of both objects.



I then cut a rough circle around these and unceremoniously poured the cheapest fiberglass resin I could find into the "molds". I did this twice and...



Rough and ready! After a bit of cleanup sanding and tinkering, I throw a coat of primer on them.



I also added the detailing to the blades, as there is a raised ridge and a wing shape coming out of the bottom in the cinematics.. I havent finished sanding this bit down yet but its very close. I am pretty excited by how this is turning out.




Tonight I'm going to finish sanding it all down and prime the whole thing.. then tomorrow I get to attach the blades and everything else to the spears shaft - it will finally come together tomorrow! HURRAH.

beautiful work!!!!!

This guy drew my attention as soon as I saw him in game as well. A rl combo of him and tyreal would be phenominal.

Excellent.

When you say high heat 1mm pull, do you mean with a vacuum table? I never though about making a mold like that, but for shapes that it'll work for that would be a great quick and dirty solution.