Foam Fantasy Armor (2016)

 For the Elf Fantasy Fair this year I build my own foam armor using EVA-foam sheets (5mm and 3mm)

Finished piece

The whole process starts with collecting pictures for inspiration. Google for Fantasy armor, female armor, world of warcraft, league of legends things like that.
From that you can sketch some designs/ directions you wanna go. My main inspiration was the Griffin, since this is the creature of Castle De Haar where the event is held.
In the end I let go the Griffin theme and created something I thought was cool.

When I find my sketches again,  I'll upload them.

Shoulder pads:

There aren't many pictures of this process. I first build a tiny model to see if the kind of shape would make sense. When I was happy with that I scaled it up to a size that would fit me.

Every shape that was made, was first put together with pins, this way it was easy to adjust things.
At first had the "feathers" pointing backwards, but in the end this would be useful as you would poke your own eye out when you move your arm. Therefor they've been put outwards.

I needed a symbol or some sort to pimp up the whole armor. I went online again for some inspiration, looking for tribal symbols. I found something and altered it to the tribal dragon/ scythe thing it is now.

When I was happy with it's final shape, I used contact glue to stick the pieces together. A glue gun is also a fine method.

"Side" view. I'm not 100% happy how it looks from this angle.
It looks like a weird rooster.

"Front" view. This side looks really well,
and because this is the main angle, I didn't change a thing.

I deliberately made it a-symmetric as for some reason it looks more bad-ass that way.

Breast Plate
This is the most difficult piece to create.

I took some measurements of myself and created a paper pattern. I'm not a tailor, I don't really know how these things are measured. I took the circumference underneath my breasts, over my breasts and the measurement below breast-shoulder. This gave me some rough measurements to work with.
Paper can be cut on places you have to much and added on places you have too little or cut away to much. In the end you'll have a decent basic pattern.

I traced this on the foam sheet and glued the 2 bits and the breast seams together.

Now you've end up with some sort of Madonna halter top with pointy boobs.

Pointy boob harness.

Pointy boobs aren't that good looking on armor, or at least I didn't want it too look like that. Therefor I started to shape them; I used a heater gun and a glass ball. The heat makes the foam pliable. I used the glass orb for the shaping, rubbing the heated breast part over it. This made it more round.

Difference between unshaped and shaped.

Once the basic harness was established by making the back part, I added some details: A crest with wings, some edges, a collar and I added some sheet material around the boobs to make them look even rounder and masking the seams. I also added a layer underneath.

Adding the extra rim so it's no longer a sports top.

 In the end this was the result of the breast plate:

Front side

Back side

Right side

 To put it on I made it like a football harness as it can be closed on the sides with velcro (which wasn't perfect and I made the harness a tiny bit to tight)

The harness folded open.

With the shoulder parts:

Final result before painting.

Arm/ Shin guards:
Next to a breast plate my limbs also needed protection.
I took a measurement for my arms and legs and drew this on a piece of paper.
On this paper I drew the outlining of the guards as I wanted them to be.
After that I cut them out, adding missing paper parts to create templates that had some extra 1-1,5 cm to glue them together.

Paper parts stacked together as it will look like.

These were traced on the foam and cut with an exacto knife.
Details were added and with the heath gun I curved the foam into it's final shape.

Different stages of a shin guard; the right one is just as big as the middle one, but due to the shaping it's closer to the camera making it appear bigger for some reason.

Same thing goes for the upperarm/ shoulder guard and the lower arm guard.
Because I like armor to be a-symmetrical I only made one upper arm and one lower arm guard.

Beginning stage of the upper arm guard.

Final stage before painting.

Lower arm guard.

After everything was glued, it was time to paint. For this project I used some acrylic paints. Silver and Gold aren't acrylic. There's a slight difference between them; I noticed the non-acrylic paints crackle way more than the acrylics do. Also they seem to rub off more quicker.

Black is a great base color. I didn't need to add this color as the sheet color was already black to start with. Only the self adhesive pearls needed a black coating.
Usually I would do a "dry brush" technique, but it didn't work as efficient as I hoped. Instead, I used a bit more paints and brushed it out on place.
I've added about 3 different tones of the same color to get the high lights I wanted. In the edges I brushed black acrylics so it "pops" a bit more.
For the blending of the highlights I used a lot more water as I brushed away the color. (A airbrush would work better, but I don't have that luxury.)

To secure the paint I added 2-3 layers of acrylic varnish. This also seem to crackle a tiny bit after 2 days of wearing this outfit, so there might be a better solution.

Arm guards.

Shin Guards.

 When all of that was done I needed to attach my parts to my body, breast plate and boots.

-Shin Guards: I used elastic bands (the ones for fabric, not the post office ones) for the shin guards to slide them over my boots.
-Breastplate: for the breastplate I used velcro on the sides. Which was a bit difficult to put on without help because I wasn't able to reach over to attach both sides that easy anymore when I was wearing it.
-The shoulder guards: these are attached with velcro to the breastplate (3 points; front, on top of the shoulder and on my back.) This can probably also use some improvements.
-Arm guards: As you see on the picture I used elastic band on the upper arm one and nylon straps with plastic clasps on the lower arm one.

Tip: Elastic bands can't be glued directly to the foam, the stretching will detach them. Instead sew the end of it on a piece of nylon strap and glue that to the foam.
Still I had some trouble with the nylon staying in place, so it's even better to do it the Evil Ted Smith way: Cut a small piece away from the foam so the nylon part fits snuggle inside, glue it tight with hot glue and use more hot glue over the nylon and foam to cover it up. The foam will now break sooner than your nylon will be detached.


Bonus: Because it's a great event with a lot of well dressed people/ creatures, I always bring my camera. I bought a little suitcase (beauty case) which was just big enough to fit my camera, an extra lens and a cosplay emergency kit (glue, markers, tape, needle and tread etc.).
I pimped a simple aluminum case with some left over foam and a nice paint job. (Yes, I should've cleaned the edged, but it looks more rough this way :P )

And here you see the final result: A picture of me with Dr. Who.