Female Demon Hunter Armour [PICTURE HEAVY]

Hey all! So my girlfriend decided she wanted to cosplay as a female DH from Diablo 3, not for anything special just as a general timekilling project, and as I was only with her for a few days before she decided to do this, I thought I'd get as much done with her as I could, and record our progress! I've asked her to take pictures of everything as she does it when I've left, so hopefully the thread will be updated until completion!

To give the general idea.

Also, if anyone happens to want the patterns, just ask and I'll go about finding a way to scan them and get them up!

The plate pieces will be craft foam stiffened with glue\resin, over which paper clay will be applied to allow the plates to be sanded and smoothed, and then detailed and smoothed further with gesso as needed before painting.

So we started with the most difficult or rather problematic of areas, the torso, which I thought would be the simplest. Everything we were to do we would be doing freehand, with only picture references to help, and as possibly the least artistic person on the planet, this proved to be... fun.



So this is the first part I tackled, It's the bit of armour that will be covering and (hopefully) moulded to the boob. To aid with symmetry, I just did half of everything, so when she gets to the stage where she copies the patterns onto foam, it will all be even.



This is the middle layer, of the 'wings' as i've dubbed them, the parts that swing out to the sides as shown on the concept art.



The final and upper layer, there are going to be issues with this and the back plates when the foam stage arrives...



All three plates stacked atop each other as they will be when worn, (Note that the largest, lowest plate will be smaller in person, it's as large as it is because of the curvature of the boob.)



Another photo, this time with the support, which is small and heart shaped, and acts to hold everything together.



Half the breastplate being modelled, looked better than I'd expected!



The upper and lower back, there will be a gap between the two, which will be connected by criss-crossing straps. The lower plate will also be suspended to the front breastplate via straps leading around the sides.



One half of a shoulder strap in progress. because of the curvature of the shoulder and neck, these, as well as the neck guard, proved to be devilishly tricky, and will be a nightmare to do when it comes to the foam stage. Lucky I won't have to do it



The finished half of the shoulder, basically this is the part of the upper-back plate that goes over the shoulder to allow it to sit more comfortably and provide support for the large shoulder plates and cloak that will eventually sit atop it.



this is the upper back plate, fully splayed out, with the neck guard attached. Working out how we're going to divide the two will be interesting, however as the next picture shows that will be the least of the problems assailing us.



Finally, trying out the neckguard AND shoulder straps for size. Far less impressive than I'd hoped, however since then it has been reworked and updated and looks a lot better now! I'll do an update in a few more days when I get back home, with the pictures i'm planning on taking from now until I leave!

Looking forward to starting my own project now! (Headhunters... )

Ciao!

UPDATE

So we managed to get to the stage where we copy our patterns onto craft foam. For the pieces of plate we're using .5cm thick foam, and for detailing it .2cm thick foam. The biggest challenge at this stage was using the heat gun to shape and mould the armour segments to suit the counters of her body. As it happens the plans I made didn't take into account natural curves in more than one direction, (Paper doesn't do that very well), so when it came to the breastplate, it ended up looking less than round. Fortunately this turned out to be for the best, as the 'wings' would need to be flat on the frontmost part of the breast to adhere properly before breaking contact!



Just a concept sketch trying to work out some of the things we wanted to muck around with and change, (Namely the leg armour).



The vambraces after being cut out and heat-moulded. Turned out larger than expected, but I think that's for the best, they look pretty good, especially with the detailing we've worked onto them!



A view of the close. They came out a bit wonky because of how I was holding them when moulding, but after strapping them together that shouldn't be a problem.



Shoulder guards. These are the lowest pair, sitting just underneath the main pauldrons to create that layered plate look.



Side view of the shoulder guards. That feel when you start to see the armour pieces taking shape



A hilarious failed attempt at a paper mache shoulder upon which I was planning to mould the first main pauldron. (It had the consistency of porridge). We ended up using the bowl we purposed to keep it upright.



Finally, to the right you can see the detailing of the vambraces, which will be layered and glued on with the 0.2 foam. To the left, one of the 'finished' breastpieces, you can see the flat part I was talking about on the top, where normally a breast should be rounded, this kind of flattens out. However as I mentioned the flatness means that the wings will stick on super (hopefully) easy!

Alas, that's all for now, I'm leaving for home tomorrow and don't get to see her for another year, but through her i'll keep this updated Peace!

Nice scratch build. It's awesome to see creative people able to build thigns like this from only pictures.

Remind me again where you need mentoring This looks awesome, not too many people do scratch builds anymore. (myself included?) Otherwise it looks like you are doing great!

Creativity at its best! Looks off to a great start!

intresting idea and so far its good. im looking forward to see more !

Looks awesome so far cant wait to see more!

I'm really sorry in advance that I'm necroing this thread, but to anyone interested I have one last picture! Apologies for the long delay, we split up a while after I came back to Australia, and so there wasn't too much communication, however I just dug this up and thought I'd share, the armour is still in progress, and I must admit it's looking very good!

On a side note I'll be starting my own Spartan project very very soon, (A first for me), wish me luck!



This is a majority of the armour pieced, melted and painted, all that's left now is the undersuit, straps and cloth stuff!

Thats awesome, great work! I love the paint job the most, looks realistic. :cool

Great looking job so far. Paint is awesome!

Could you provide a little more detail to your foam sealing process? You said that you use glue/resin to seal it before adding paper clay? I've never actually heard of paper clay and your pieces look so smooth that I would like to learn more. Armor looks awesome, by the way!

Another picture, this time with the breastpiece fully assembled together, looks quite nice, bar the silver chains and such that will be adorning it.

Could you provide a little more detail to your foam sealing process? You said that you use glue/resin to seal it before adding paper clay? I've never actually heard of paper clay and your pieces look so smooth that I would like to learn more. Armor looks awesome, by the way!

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The foam we used was simple sheets of craft foam, the kind of stuff you'd find in your arts and crafts store. Funnily enough, aside from the layered pieces, we had to do very little gluing, as most of the pieces were simple shapes that just had to be rounded to fit the contours of the body, so the only other gluing we did was of the raised details to the main armour pieces.

Originally we were going to use paper clay to harden the foam and add a textured effect, but we realised that we wouldn't actually need to use it given how friendly the materials were. Paper clay is essentially like paper maché, except the paper you use is cut much much finer so the final mixture is significantly smoother, and you use glue and a hardener to make the dried result really solid and easily sandable. It's a fantastic and cheap alternative to putty and bondo and the like, but it gets messy very quick, it's very easy to mess up the proportions, and the final hardened result is very brittle, (Speaking from experience!)

Will update as things pop up! Just quickly, when starting my new spartan WIP thread, do you want pics of the pieces being pepped? Personally flicking through 30+ photos of white helmets and chest pieces is very boring, just curious as to what you all want to see, it promises to be and exciting little project!

When I saw Daemon Hunter I got my hopes up that this was a 40k build, but alas...

Looks absolutely great! Can't wait to see more from you!

That looks amazing. I always like seeing non metal armor.

//shutters at flashbacks of Ren Faires//

What will you be making your SPARTAN armor out of, foam again?

Sweet build, paint job looks awesome!

Great job on the armor. I like how you were able to give it a look like real metal.
Usually I have to do things like cold cast or layers upon layers of paint.

GuitarMaster157 said:

When I saw Daemon Hunter I got my hopes up that this was a 40k build, but alas...

Looks absolutely great! Can't wait to see more from you!

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Much thanks! If I were ever to do a 40k build, it'd be an Adeptus Custodes suit *hint hint*. Although I don't think there's enough gold spray paint on the planet to fit the role...

Jason-078 said:

That looks amazing. I always like seeing non metal armor.

//shutters at flashbacks of Ren Faires//

What will you be making your SPARTAN armor out of, foam again?

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Thanks! Haven't even got to the fun detailing parts of it yet! The spartan armour will not be made out of foam, no. It worked extraordinarily well with this particular set of armour because all the pieces were nice and flat, and there was very little layering. I'm artistically autistic, and doing anything freehand beyond that would absolutely destroy me, so alas I'll be doing the standard pep n' rondo process, (For the first time...)

Thanks DBmike and Rook3! The paint job was actually really simple, and I'll probably use similar, (Albeit more careful), techniques on my spartan armour. Drybrushing and washing for the win!

Im curious, what brand of paint did you use for the armor?

JayMoore said:

Im curious, what brand of paint did you use for the armor?

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We used a couple of different types as it happens. Being a grizzled Warhammer vet, I approached the painting of this with the same mindset as I would one of those glorious overpriced minatures. The basecoat was done with a Games Workshop spray-on undercoat. They're not too cheap, but they're fantastic at providing a solid black colour to build on, and once it dries the painting surface it provides is exceptional. The silver was bought from an arts and craft store, (I can't remember the specific name of it), but it was a basic acryllic paint that we sprayed into a container and then painted on with a brush. Similarly, the black washing we did to give it the aged look was done with a small pot of watered out black acryllic paint.

Dox said:

We used a couple of different types as it happens. Being a grizzled Warhammer vet, I approached the painting of this with the same mindset as I would one of those glorious overpriced minatures. The basecoat was done with a Games Workshop spray-on undercoat. They're not too cheap, but they're fantastic at providing a solid black colour to build on, and once it dries the painting surface it provides is exceptional. The silver was bought from an arts and craft store, (I can't remember the specific name of it), but it was a basic acryllic paint that we sprayed into a container and then painted on with a brush. Similarly, the black washing we did to give it the aged look was done with a small pot of watered out black acryllic paint.

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Ah that explains it, I paint warhammer as well and they're priming sprays are quite exceptional, it never occured to me to use that as a base primer because like you said its fairly expensive. Very cool though and it looks impressive, great job with the aging wash it turned out extremely well and thanks for explaining how you went about it. Keep up the great work I look forward to seeing more!