Breastplate Armor Progress

Life has been, well, life recently, so shocker I am not quite where I wanted to be on this project. But I do have an update!

Monday was my birthday, so I took the day off, which gave me time to get started on this project.

Rather than work on all patterns first, I decided to focus on the breastplate armor first, from pattern to base product (not finished, as in no details, but beyond a mock draft of the armor pattern).

First, I printed out the Closed Armor pattern from Kamui Cosplay’s female breastplate patterns. I then traced out all pieces on some 2mm EVA foam. I’m using the 2mm foam to do test runs of the pattern before tracing out on 5mm foam. Then cut out the patterns … … and put them together according to the pattern plan. I wanted to do a mock test for a few reasons. First, in making my Eradicator Valkyrie armor and in using Kamui’s patterns, I learned that my chest/waist are both larger than hers, so I wanted to see how many inches I needed to add. Second, the details of the Day Armor are different from the base pattern by Kamui, so I wanted to use the mock test for the creation of details. I tried the fit, and as expected, it was slightly small in the back. I have a model that is supposed to have my measurements, but even after adjusting to the model, the size on the second mock test was still slightly small. I also adjusted the arm holes to give myself more room in the armpit. Other edits were dropping the waist and revising the “hem” of the armor on the bottom. This is closer to where it needs to be, but I think I’m going to make the hem angles more dramatic. So there’s still some work to do, but the shape is verrrrry close. Once I have the 5mm piece put together, I will add the line details by using my soldering iron on the foam.

Outlining Pieces

I spent a lot of time last night looking at the model sheet for the Striga day armor, and trying to figure out the various pieces. My very high tech rendering of the separate pieces is below:

Per the numbers above, we have the following:

1. Helmet
2. Bird shoulder piece
3. Shoulder pauldrons
4. Chest/upper torso (including back)
5. Belt
6. Lower arm guards
7. Gloves/fingers
8. Hanging things (probably part of belt)
9. Thigh guards
10. Knee guards
11. Lower leg guards
12. Shoes

It’s hard to tell exactly how the chest/torso lines up with the belt, but after staring at the drawing for a while, I think the part in the middle that comes to a point below the belt is actually part of the chest/torso piece (same with the pointy part in the back), and that the belt consists of the belt itself plus some pieces on the side to hold everything together. So the hangy things (technical term, #8 above) are actually part of the belt piece. Maybe. I’ll have to watch the video of the fight scene over and over to know for sure.

Also, even though you only see one shoulder in the drawing, I’m assuming that a similar, non-bird-decorated shoulder pauldron exists on the left shoulder. That should be easy enough to make, I will just mirror the right side.

Overall, this doesn’t appear to be too complicated, the hard part will be getting the angles and proportions right on some of the pieces. I also think I will use worbla in a few places after all, namely the shoe covers (for greater durability), the hanging things, and maybe also the finger pieces (again, for greater durability). This won’t require a ton of worbla and I shouldn’t have to go out and buy any more, so this still keeps cost down.

Intro/Hello

Hello beautiful beans! I can’t believe it’s time for another DK30! ::gasp::

Sooooo since we last saw each other, work got a little hellish (god bless end of year transactions, oy) and I did not make ANY progress on my other armor build. Rather than forcing myself to get back into that build, I’m going to start another, and it’s one I’ve been wanting to make for a while. I’m also not going to use worbla this time around (except for the helmet face guard, going to use clear worbla for that), just high density EVA foam, which should cut down on cost and time.

For this project, I want to get a good start on crafting an armor build of the Striga day armor from Netflix’s Castlevania anime! Yay! Now, I know this has probably been made lots of times before, and I may be late to the party, but when I first saw Striga fight in this armor in the show, I thought, I have to make that. So here I am! Gonna try and make it!

My last project is here. One thing I learned from that project was that I was a little overly ambitious on my timeline and consistency of working on my project. I was trying to force myself into an every day type mentality. This time around, I know a little bit better about my daily time constraints and am a bit more realistic about what I can get done, and so I’m going to be focusing on weekly progress rather than daily. I’m also trying to set smaller goals for each week that I can actually complete and then not feel all defeated if I don’t meet a goal, or something.

And when I say, “get a good start,” I don’t mean finish. I’m not going to try and do that to myself. I want this to be fun and to get me back into cosplay making/building, rather than feeling like it’s a chore. I’m excited to start this new project, and I want to keep that excitement going. I’m also very much still learning as I go, so y’all will see mistakes and all. But that’s part of the fun, right?!