Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild (update 7-21)

fevereon

Active Member
Because contrary to popular belief, I do like things other than Assassin's creed :D



I know its a bit late to the party, but eh. Discovered the joys of skyrim :) I wasn't playing it when everyone else was, because I'm more of a spaceships n' guns & PEWPEWPEW girl, but seeing as I had already turned over every single rock and opened every locker in both fallout 3 & NV, was looking for another place to explore in the " hmmmm i think I'll go THAT way" style. A friend said, Hey, Elder scrolls plays like fallout! and I went out and snagged it the next day :D

Besides running into one of the "arrow to the knee" guys and finding it rather anticlimactic (and the internet meme considerably more lame), but discovering that "Fus Ro Dah" is really fun when you use voice commands via Kinect (when they work lol) , there was another huge surprise...

ALL OF THAT ARMOR! OHMAGERD


It took a bit to decide which armor I wanted to costume the most, because each one had their cool bits, and not so cool bits, but I didn't want to be a mix-n-match Dragonborn. The weapons may be another story though!

SO after playing, I decided on the Nord Carved armor :D (dragonborn DLC)
frontbackref.jpg


BECAUSE THERE IS A BEAR HAT
bearhatref.jpg



I started out by making bracer plates, because I was eager to try out EVA foam armor. It was fast, but hardening it is a pain in the bumside. The following image is one that was made from eva foam, Sintra, and tagboard. It was coated with some smoothcast 325 I had laying around, and sanded since the coating was pretty awful. I'll be writing up a post regarding that experiment as I begin building the rest of the armor, but in the meantime, here's a plate :D

bracerplate.jpg


So far, I have the gambeson and arming pants made,

I wanted to try out quilting, and to work on improving my sewing overall.

For the gambeson, I was able to put my old Assassins creed undercoat to use, and used it to help in making a new pattern for this one. The tunic was designed to help flatten my chest somewhat, so I used much of it again, since I'm making the male armor (the chestpiece of the female armor looks really BLAH)
arming5.jpg


I'm using linen and (i think cotton) batting. I sandwiched the batting between linen, and used fabric tacky spray to hold them in place when stitching.
arming1.jpg


The lines were laid out directly on the fabric, and I ran the whole lot through the machine. It took much longer than I had expected, but hey, live & learn neh?
arming2.jpg


Here's more of the stitching done, and of course, once those lines were stitched, it was on to the crosshatched ones!
arming3.jpg


Here is a before and after set of sleeves!
arming4.jpg


Here are the pants completed. I added an additional lining to prevent chafing from the texture of the quilting. I also made some trim and hand sewed it along the inside and outside of the legs. Instead of a zipper, I sewed in velcro, then added line 24 snaps.
armingpantsdone.jpg



when I tried everything on, the tunic fit great, but the pants were ultra tight, and I barely managed to squeeze in them (diet time! ) . So instead of showing a photo of what appears to be a painful arming pants wedgie (which was surprisingly -not- uncomfortable despite it clearly being a wedgie) , here is the gear on my fiance, who likes to either make silly faces or feign annoyance when I take photos of him during test fittings :lol

armingcoatandpants.jpg


I hope to fit a cooling vest in there, because this thing is a toaster oven
 
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Re: Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild (with mix-n-match weapons!)

Damn, that's looking so cool! Mine is all dodgy by comparison. Great work on the undersuit, I'm redoing all of mine once I've got time. Well... Now that I have time! :)
Good luck, I'll have to check in every now and then. Giving me so many ideas :D
 
Re: Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild (with mix-n-match weapons!)

that will be awesome you got one more suscriber :)
 
Re: Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild (with mix-n-match weapons!)

looks class man cant wait to see the rest!
 
Re: Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild

Wow, that is looking sharp, especially the sewing. The pants don't leave much to the imagination. Can't wait to see how this turns out.
 
Re: Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild

Fantastic build so far, I wish I could sew so I could make fantastic pieces like this. How long did that take to actually sew?
 
Re: Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild

Thanks guys! Muttvader- I think it took around 5 days to figure out the patterning, testing, and construction. The quilting took longer than expected though, I'd hazard a guess that around 2 of the days were spent quilting the thing (hence putting off quilting the chest and back of the gambeson til later )

On the "fit into this thing" front, I shaved off about 2 pounds, so far just by cutting out high calorie drinks (juices/beers)!

Laying out the codpiece & leather panels for the upper arm between projects, and I have a big ol' faux bear fur rug that's going to see a pair od scissors this week.

Weathering on the whole shebang will be done once all of the parts are done, though refraining from doing so is an extreme exercise in self control :lol
 
Re: Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild

Love the work you've done so far this is probably my favorite armor from the game
 
Re: Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild

Here's a little more work done on the carved Nord gear, while watching Disney's Brave. This codpiece was made using sintra that was heated and bent using a heat gun, and tagboard that I beveled with an exacto knife and glued on for the accents.

The longer panel floats at this time, because i just think its funny to have a dangling codpiece, but it might wind up being permanently fixed when all is said and done XD

codpiece.jpg
 
Re: Skyrim: Carved nord armor scratchbuild (update 7-7)

Robot Privateer- Yeah, I heard of those guys! I'm kindof topheavy, and I'm not sure if i would even fit their largest size >< I'm looking to make my own custom binders though, and the tunic does enough of a job of squishing em' in.

Been busy with commissions, but here's a quick photo of the codpiece for my skyrim outfit!

I used rustoleum stainless steel paint, then rubbed it down with aluminum powder and drybrushed in the areas with black acrylic paint. This is the base painting, and when the rest of the armor is completed, it will get more realistic weathering!
codpiecepaint.jpg
 
Loving this thread! I'm also working on this armor for this year's con and the pics you posted at the beginning are the best reference I've found, thanks!
 
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