Iron War Axe

Very excited to show you my work on the axe for my Stormcloak costume. It was tough to decide specifically what weapon to make from the game. Since it was to accompany my shield, two-handed weapons were out of the question. The concept art for the costume depicts the Stormcloak with a sword, but I really felt an axe better fit a Nord and Nord culture, as well as the traveling Stormcloak soldier. It's got that nice hammered texture and looks like it was made quickly for outfitting a soldier, which I liked.

Here's the finished project. The handle is made of wood, but the axe head is fiberglass over foam using the same process as my shield.

I found a nice branch in my backyard that had the correct shape needed. I sawed off the ends and sawed/sanded off the bark as it was very loose and wouldn't be good for the finished prop as it was.

I continued to sand it to fit some PVC which would be used as the cap for the axe.

Since the branch had fallen off a tree some time ago, I wanted to strengthen it to make sure it could take a bit of abuse as a prop (not that I'd be really hitting things with it :P). So I used wood hardener along the entire length.

I made some approximate measurements from the in-game render to draw out the shape of the axe head on foam.

Here you can see some of the sanding process.

I used an exacto to carve out the edges. I didn't focus on any of the texture yet, just creating the base shape to work from. I sanded the interior edge of both pieces to allow them to fit the PVC.

Like the shield, the foam here was covered in 3 layers of masking tape to protect it from the resin.

After applying the fiberglass with an extra layer of resin to work into, I used my trusty dremel to create that hammered texture. I also used the dremel to carve into the handle to regain that barky texture, and used a dark ebony wood stain to match the hue seen in the reference. I glued the handle on with hot glue, which I also used to seal off the top. It was painted with chrome spray paint, semigloss clear, and a bit of black and burnt sienna acrylic for the rust and weathering. The final step was sewing on the faux leather grip to the handle.

I'm very happy with the finished product. I only kinda wish it really was made of metal so it would make a cool clanking sound when I hit my shield with it!

Windhelm Shield

For my Stormcloak costume, I really wanted to make this shield. I love all the shields that represent the different holds, with their different colors and emblems. A lot of the Stormcloaks that go to war actually use hide shields and the like, since this is more of a guard's shield. But I couldn't pass this up, I love the bear design. Plus, it's the symbol of not just Windhelm, but the Stormcloaks as well. And when I get around to making the guard's helmet, I can go around as either a guard or a soldier.

So here's the finished piece. It's all fiberglassed over, and carved to look like wood; it isn't actually made of wood. That keeps it nice a light. I used a more brilliant blue than in the reference because the in-game graphics have more desaturated and blue overtones to set the mood of the game, which I can replicate in my photoshoot.

The back of the shield, painted to look like wood, with a comfortable leather handle cover, made from the same faux leather I used for the rest of the costume.

And here's a closer detail shot.

Alright, onto how I made it!

 Here's my friendly materials. The base was made of a single 1/2" thick piece of insulation foam, about 20" in diameter. There's 2 cardboard rings at the same size, width being 1". Finally a strip of thicker cardboard to go all the way around the edge which is about 3/4" wide. I glued these all together.

After that, I used 3 layers of masking tape all the way around to properly seal off the foam and protect it from the resin. You can also see the axe in this pic; I'll talk about that in the next post.

Here's the shield and axe fiberglassed over. I followed up with a layer of plain resin so I would have a surface to sand and carve into without ripping up the fiberglass cloth.

Since I only had 1/2" thick insulation foam, I glued two pieces together for the handle. I traced out the shape I needed, about 10" long, then cut it out and carved/sanded it into shape. Again, wrapped the whole thing in 3 layers of masking tape.

I stuck the handle on directly using fiberglass resin, and made sure there was enough covering over it in order to keep it strong.

Unfortunately I'm missing a few photos here - from the carving process, but I think it comes out more clearly when painted anyway. Using a dremel, I carved into the body to give it a wood texture as best I could. I used more rounded bits to carve into the rim to give it the hammered looking texture, as if the metal rim had literally been pounded at a forge. My little dremel had a lot of trouble getting through so much resin that I only got about 20 min. tops out of the battery before I had to recharge it again. I probably wore down the battery a lot on the project ^^;. But this process literally took a few months of work off and on. Once the shield was cleaned, I primed it all the way around with gray primer. Then I used a dark gray automobile spray paint with an extra bit of chrome shimmer for the metal, covered by a layer of semi-gloss clear to seal it (used on the handle too). Then a base layer of black acrylic on the wood, both sides.

With the black layer in place, I built up the brown wood tones. The black underneath was used to accentuate shadows. I mixed several different browns to build up the wood, using a cut piece of firewood I had for reference.

On the front of the shield I painted the browns all the way across, even though a lot of the front is blue. The reason is, since this is supposed to be a guard's shield, it would probably be made as quickly as possible. The blacksmith wouldn't take quite as long on something like this as he might the Jarl's own shield. So this means the painting job would be a little more crude, as evidenced by my reference image at the top of this post. If that's the case, you're likely to see bits of the wood underneath the blue paint too, so that's why it needed that base layer of brown right the way across. Admittedly though, since I knew mostly of it would be covered up, I painted it a bit more quickly in a solid color, somewhat transparently.

In Photoshop, I took the shield reference and blew up the bear design to the approximate size I felt it needed to be for the shield (15.5"x12"), and cleaned it up a bit. I printed it out onto a few pieces of paper, taped them together, then used stencil film on top to cut the design out. Once ready, I taped it onto the shield and painted it.

The final step was to spray some workable fixative on the front to protect the paint job, and sew on the leather handle. And that's about it! It took a while but I really enjoyed the process, and even though using real wood may have been easier so I could skip that whole long ass carving step, the shield benefits from being very lightweight yet still durable. Looking forward to doing more props like this in the future!

Butterbeer and the Monster Book of Monsters!

Is the blog overdue for an entry? I'd say so. I've desperately been trying to finish up my Stormcloak costume for a photoshoot and documentation here, but free time for cosplay work is found few and far between my real work as of late. It will come though.

But in the mean time, here's some fun I had this holiday season!

Butterbeer! So delicious! It's all foamy and yummy and cream soda-y but butterscotchy too :B And fillllliiiiing. You feel like you'll have to roll around the room after this. Here's the recipe I used: http://www.squidoo.com/universal-studios-orlando-harry-potter-butterbeer-recipe

In addition, one of the Christmas presents I worked on at the end of the year was the Monster Book of Monsters!

It was incredibly fun to make this. Not made to be an exact replica, it was created entirely from extra cosplay materials I had lying around (aside from the Canson Sketchbook bought for it specifically).

I started off by making the overall cover from craft foam sewn together, fit specifically to the sketchbook.

I used some Christmas wrapping ribbon for the tongue which is glued directly to the inside of the cover. I used Sobo glue to adhere the faux leather (from my Stormcloack costume) to the craft foam. The eyes and teeth were cast in hot glue from negative molds I carved into paper clay. Considering I didn't make a positive to start with, I'm quite happy with their outcome.

Afterwards, I adhered faux fur to the leather, plotting where the cleared areas would be for the writing, and anywhere else. I was also careful to cut the spider-leg-like parts around the edges, which are better seen in the first picture. At this point I roughed the leather up a bit (not in an interrogation room) with sandpaper.

The cover was then taken off the book so I could paint the fur the appropriate color (it was originally white). To do this, I used watered down brown fabric paint. I think I had about a 1:1 ratio. It took a while - the water was absorbed quickly by the fur and cotton binding underneath, so I kept having to mix more as I slowly spread it across. Once covered, I let it dry by fan, then used some black paint, sometimes watered down, for detailing and blending the transitions between leather and fur.

One of the most difficult parts was to properly get the fur adhered to the curved contours of the eyes, and stay that way till dry. I pressed down on the fur using a popsicle stick in between each eye to do this. In order to deepen the effect, I brushed some black paint there (not enough to blot, just enough to fade out). The eyes were painted black too, with yellow for the irises. The teeth and gums were done in acrylic paint. Both the teeth and eyes were covered in High Gloss Varnish to give them that wet look.

I didn't have any gold paint that had a nice reflectivity to it, so I mixed a goldish tone in acrylic, painted the words on, then lightly brushed white on top of that to make it appear to be reflecting higher amounts of light. This was also varnished over to exaggerate the effect.

The last stage was the belt, which was simply sewn together from the faux leather and built onto a buckle I already had. This was roughed up with sandpaper too.

The final result is a fun twist built around one of my favorite things from Harry Potter. Once the fur dried, it no longer had a nice smooth feeling to it, but rather a rough matted plushness suitable to such a hostile creature. Again, though at times I did strive for accuracy from the movie version, it was made completely out of materials I had lying around and is not meant to be a fully accurate reproduction. My main goal was the hope that this book cover would help to inspire the artist to fill the pages with exciting images!

UPDATE: This got a Daily Deviation on deviantART!