NathanLange
New Member
With My Dwarf build V1 over, this is a thread to go over how i went about putting this together.
Above all i started off with finding tons of Reference, Be it the Fantastic Chronicles books from WETA, browsing around online, or others on the RPF who had made there own threads.
With it being my first full Foam build, i thought i better start off with the Shield and helmet to get used to working with the foam and figuring out how im going to do the detailing.
I went through the few scenes the Moria Dwarves appeared and found the shot in Mora when Thorin has one of the shields, making it possible to compare his height to mine and scale it up to match me. Ended up being about 75cm across at first. I initially thought getting the base Hex Shape would be simple but once i tossed in the fact its domed/pyramid, it threw off my measurements.
So i Bought one big piece of 5mm EVA foam, measured out the Hex flat and cut out the 8 triangles, laying them all out with the outer tips butting together. I then placed them on top of a Dome i had that gave it the subtle 3d shape i needed and taped the pieces together on one side. I found some Wood patterned Contact paper at my local hardware that i could use for the inside of the Shield.
To keep the gaps between the Armour still, I glued in Some foam core strips along each seam, These wouldn't be painted later but they pretty much wouldn't be seen so it wasn't so bad.
I next had to get the intricate, uniform Embossed (inside) and De-bossed (outside) designs on the shield. These would be incredible hard to do by hand so i talked to a contact i met at a medieval fair who had a Laser cutter to cut the strips out of MDF from a design i made, so they could be crisp and be a bit of a spine for the shield.
The pieces had sooty etch lines from the cutter, so i had to go through with needle files to scrape them all out and sand it back smooth. Then it was a matter of Gluing them either side of the Shield..
I then added Screw threads into the foam from the front, so the handle which i bent out of Aluminum, would have an anchor, which was then sandwiched between another layer of foam, so the edges would have the Step down which was in the reference.
I then went about adding a 10m foam edge around the entire shield, and triangles to cover the seams that had little details sliced in and opened with heat, Filled the seams, Added the tiny little triangles and began working on patterning the Face details from 2mm foam after drawing them up in photoshop with best of my ability.
This is a side by side after Plasti-dipping, with the Reference Photo.
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