Sorsha (from Willow)

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.

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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.
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((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 45546_33.jpg
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.
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BRACERS
You never see enoough of her bracers to know anything except that she has them.
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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.
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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...

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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. :p
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.
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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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Oh my god when I was a kid I thought Sorsha was gorgeous! Totally subbed, cant wait to watch your progress, and I look forward to you completing it!
 
Oh my god when I was a kid I thought Sorsha was gorgeous! Totally subbed, cant wait to watch your progress, and I look forward to you completing it!
Haha, me too! :D Thank you!!

if you don't mind me saying you kinda look like her so your off to a good start

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You know my brother said almost the exact same thing to me when he saw my WIP on the book of faces...It must be true! :D

Ahh, I love Willow so much. Going off your past work, I have total confidence this is going to be fantastic. Keep at it!
:$ Thank you! I'm hoping so!!

This is great and thank you for sending me down the rabbit hole to find this on Blu-ray :)
You are so welcome. ;)

****

Alright, so as promised, I did do a lot of work over the weekend on the chest plate. I promptly tore it apart again becasue I think the sizing was wrong and I was not pleased...and now it's sitting in a box of shame until tomorrow when I have deemed myself un-annoyed enough to pick it up again. (Plus this week has been busy so far)

But here's what happened!
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So first I did some vertical straps down for stability. All the straps get riveted into these and the codplate/thing/strap thing/weird belt stuff will all get attached to them. Stability!


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First and second rows.


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All four original straps attached. They're definitely too long, they should be ending above the bottom of my rib cage and these were resting on my hips. It was surprisingly comfortable though. That was a nice surprise.

But yeah, then I tore it all apart and ended up having to remake all new strips/straps what have you. I dyed them Monday, so hopefully things are ready to roll once I figure out my hole problem.

But here are the new strips. Much better sized!!
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So pretty much at the moment I have to figure out how to fill in these (old rivet holes) holes with something that will be stable enough for the weight of the rivets/straps/belts that will eventually hang from them, and flex as the chest protector curves around me even more when laced up. I've got a couple ideas to try (suggestions are welcome too!) and worse case scenario I cut off the bottom of the chest protector at the line there and just make the new leather straps flush with the bottom.
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But, in other news, I have ordered my wig...I had a really hard time matching colors for her hair and - to be honest - I'm really thinking of just dying my own hair to match Sorsha's...but hopefully this will work (after styling) for starters.

And I found some boots to order that will hopefully be perfect for what I want. If those show up soon I might start on her shin plates before attacking the chest plate again. We'll see! :)

Probably more before or during this weekend!

~ LD
 
It's been a while since I updated, but I've been busy. :D

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Here's where I ended up with the chestplate strap things. It took me 3 tries to get to a point I was happy with them, and that's mostly why I've been silent. They're kind of key points to the costume and there was a lot of measuring, frustration and not-working-correctly going into them, but I think I'm finally happy! They'll eventually end up weathered steel color like the chestplate itself, don't worry! ;) We're going to give everything a black base coat to start with anyway before painting becasue she's so dark.

I've picked up the stuff to do the straps and padding on the shoulders of the chestplate as well, so I'll be working on that as soon as I get done adding her cod plate to the bottom of it, which is where I am now.
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With my fancy moose PJs.
I still have to do a fair amount of refining to to the codplate when I attach it, and some tooling (and dye, obviously) but that's the general idea. She wears her sword/weapons belt across it the entire movie, so you don't see much of it, but there's also a couple long leather strips that hang from it and some round metal doodles. Don't ask me how long I stared at my computer screen to figure that out! :lol

But in other exciting news, I have made the chainmails!
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The silly random non protecting loop of mail that Sorsha wears around her neck! I love it though. :rolleyes

I opted to go with plastic rings for medical reasons (I have to *try* to avoid putting too much weight on my right shoulder....try being an optional word, right?:p) I honestly never would have considered it except that the mail in Lord of the Rings looks so good and it was mostly plastic too. I'm really glad I did though, it's still almost two pounds even being super light plastic. I couldn't possibly do aluminum AND armor AND the weight of the cloak and quiver!
It's actually super sturdy too, like they use it for hard core LARPing this stuff and it holds up being banged into and wracked on, so I feel pretty confident it'll be fine on my tiny little useless neck loop. :lol
The only thing is I think I got my rings too small, after putting it all together. I think her's are probably 1" and I went with half inch, but is anyone really going to know besides me??

Anyhow. That's been most of my past week. I did get my boots - Vintage 1980's ridding boots - I still think it's funny calling them "vintage" becasue common it wasn't that long ago!! But they fit great and are pretty much perfect for what I need --
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And I just got the wool in for my cloak today! It photographs kind of light grey/grey black? but it is actually full deep black and it's lovely. It's surprisingly soft and cuddly so I'll be snuggling up in it when I'm not out chasing down Pecks and Sacred Princesses....:cool
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Oh! And I did a make up test for Sorsha for fun.
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I'm not 100% happy with how it turned out, but that's what practice it for, right?

~LD
 
More posts! More progress! More Sorsha stuff!! Yae!! :D

Um. Where did I leave off? So I got the codplate shaped and attached to the bottom of the chest plate. It's actually pretty comfortable.
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Behold my brother's fabulous picture taking skills! :wacko Everything still laces up the back as you can see, just like a corset.

Next I attached the little strips of leather she has hanging down from under the codplate. They're super hard to see and don't show up in most shots, but I got the rough shapes figured out. I used 1.5 oz garment leather and just sewed them together and turned them then attached.
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Basically they're elongated triangle shapes. I actually have a third set on the backside, but you never see those.

And then I did the velvet pad for the shoulders and the straps for the top of the chestplate.
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So basically the velvet pad it just designed to keep the cloak in place and give me a little padding on the shoulders with all the things hanging on it (plates, cloak, quiver).
The straps are canon, you can see her wearing those with the little wooden or metal tabs in some shots. She actually has a couple sets of these tabs (I'm not sure if they're metal or wooden, they seem to change shade from shot to shot so it's hard to tell).

And for the chestplate, I did the little circle things she has hanging from her waist. They almost look iridescent in photos, maybe mother or pearl or something?? The best I can tell from all the photos is that she has an uneven amount, three on one side, five on the other.
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And then I did up her cloak. It's self lined, so I feel like it might be a bit thicker then hers, but I'm not sure. I hadn't finished the arms in this photo yet, but I wanted to throw everything on to make sure it looked right before I finished it completely.
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So I'm currently working on the plates for the arm and the shin plates. I should have some more progress for you in a week or so. :)

~LD
 
looks great so far.

but i am afraid you made the chainmail in wrong direction. that is why it looks off.

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is yours

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how it is in original piece

if that makes any sense? i mean you made the piece wider and closed it instead of making it longer and closed it. so weave should be turned 90* to make it look like the original
 
Holiday season kept me busy, but I am back with quite a bit of progress for you guys. :) This will probably still be just a quick update (lots of pictures not many words) becasue....busy....

looks great so far.

but i am afraid you made the chainmail in wrong direction. that is why it looks off.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
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is yours

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how it is in original piece

if that makes any sense? i mean you made the piece wider and closed it instead of making it longer and closed it. so weave should be turned 90* to make it look like the original
Yes, I think that makes sense, or I think I understand what you're saying. Not sure I'd make it any thinner at this point, though, becasue it just fits over my head now. I might go back and add some more to make it longer then when I have time.

Alright, where were we? Ok, so I did up the shin plates.
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They're 3mm sintra base with another later of sintra around the edges, strapped on with leather straps. And of course the pretty rivets. :lol

And I did the shoulder plates:
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Again, sintra, It's attached on a velcro strap that runs inside my cloak sleeve around my bicep.

Quiver/Arrows.
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Sorry, this appears to be the best photo I have at hte moment and this was WIP. There's actually a pocket on the bottom half of the quiver that the bow sits in (when she wears it for all of one scene!)
The quiver is leather, wet shaped the arrow "tubes" and the pocket which is not in this pic. It attached to D rings on my shoulder pad under my cloak via hooks on the backside.
The arrows are wooden dowels I cut down to size and shaped at the top. Since I've had really bad luck with my feather fletched arrows and traveling to events, I decided to try something different and maybe more durable for Sorsha and did up some fletches in terraflex. The cardboard bow is a stand in for now: I'll build her actual one when the wood workshop warms up in May. :lol
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So, kinda what I did for the fletches.

I got her wig right before Christmas and at that point I did put everything and did another makeup test to see how it looked.
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Pretty happy with everything at that point. :$

Since then I've made the two other shoulder plates:
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Big picture so you can kind of see how they attach.

And I styled the wig.
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I totally didn't realize how much hair she actually had until I started looking at all my reference photos to style it. I will say I'm a bigger fan of Sorsha now then I ever was before becasue the costume designers put so much effort into making her look like a warrior, not a perfect pretty princess.

And I did get my helmet base in....Turns out I wasn't the only one who liked it. :lol
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I've already cut down the helmet dome in a couple places to make it more screen accurate, but it's basically just a place to start. I added the leather flappy thing this afternoon, but no pictures yet. Next time!

And the armor is all in the process of getting painted now. Weapons will probably wait until later April or early May when the workshop warms up again. So I'm kinda close to the finish line more or less! :)

~ LD
 
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