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Description
I wore this at ACEN 2015 on Saturday and Sunday!

This character is from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. The Black knight was my favorite character and I thought he looked awesome, so I decided to make my costume for Acen this year him.

Summary on how I made it:

-Armor
I patterned and figured out what everything except the helmet and shoulder piece was supposed to look like because those were the only ones I could. I used Pepakura to build the helmet and the shoulders because I wanted them to look as exact as possible to the game character. Proportioning was a pain in the ass and I had to edit the model a bit to simplify the shapes, but I managed to get it to look reasonable. Not having a model to work with is a pain in the ass since I had to tape myself up and cut myself out to pattern the chest piece though. The main building materials I used were EVA foam (first time messing with it) and craft foam (still new). After building all the pieces, I used some latex silicone caulk to fill in gaps and fix seams in the foam that I messed up really bad. After I filled in gaps and holes, I coated everything with ModPodge: Matte finish (not sure if it really matters). Then, I wet sanded the pieces to give the surface a nice smooth feel, and so that everything looked as clean as possible. After the endless process of wet sanding all the pieces, I coated them all in black PlastiDip to give it the texture I wanted, prevent myself from going over with black paint, and to give it a little bit more strength. You're supposed to do 3 coats, but I was fine with only 2. Finally, I went in with white acrylic paint and hand painted all the elevated parts that are supposed to be white. (That was the biggest pain in the ass ever) I went over the parts about 3-4 times because I painted the coats really thin and the black kept showing up in the white. As for the cloth, I used a bed sheet for the dangling black cloth parts below the armor and used some stitching glue or something to attach some ribbon. For the cape, I went to party city and got myself a hooded black vampire cape and attached a red fabric to the inside. The visor for the helmet is made from a 2-liter bottle that was cut to shape and then I went over it with window tint. It worked pretty well, and plan to keep doing this for future visors. Visibility was fairly clear, so that's a huge plus.
-Sword
I made the sword using a Swiffer Wet Jet's pole as a core, then I used EVA and craft foam to make the blade and the guard. I used a rotary tool to bevel the edges of the blade which took forever because it was tiny, then I coated the whole thing in ModPodge after I finished getting the shapes and everything down. After that, I wet sanded the blade, and instead of using PlastiDip on the sword, I directly painted it, which turned out fine. I used a shiny silver spray paint for the blade and I used a Rose Gold acrylic for the handle and guard. I then used black acrylic to shade and weather the guard.

Thanks for taking interest and reading this! If you want more information or would like a really really detailed story on how I did everything, I'll post something later. Not many pictures of me building until the end, but I can explain as much as I possibly can.

Description
I wore this at ACEN 2015 on Saturday and Sunday!

This character is from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. The Black knight was my favorite character and I thought he looked awesome, so I decided to make my costume for Acen this year him.

Summary on how I made it:

-Armor
I patterned and figured out what everything except the helmet and shoulder piece was supposed to look like because those were the only ones I could. I used Pepakura to build the helmet and the shoulders because I wanted them to look as exact as possible to the game character. Proportioning was a pain in the ass and I had to edit the model a bit to simplify the shapes, but I managed to get it to look reasonable. Not having a model to work with is a pain in the ass since I had to tape myself up and cut myself out to pattern the chest piece though. The main building materials I used were EVA foam (first time messing with it) and craft foam (still new). After building all the pieces, I used some latex silicone caulk to fill in gaps and fix seams in the foam that I messed up really bad. After I filled in gaps and holes, I coated everything with ModPodge: Matte finish (not sure if it really matters). Then, I wet sanded the pieces to give the surface a nice smooth feel, and so that everything looked as clean as possible. After the endless process of wet sanding all the pieces, I coated them all in black PlastiDip to give it the texture I wanted, prevent myself from going over with black paint, and to give it a little bit more strength. You're supposed to do 3 coats, but I was fine with only 2. Finally, I went in with white acrylic paint and hand painted all the elevated parts that are supposed to be white. (That was the biggest pain in the ass ever) I went over the parts about 3-4 times because I painted the coats really thin and the black kept showing up in the white. As for the cloth, I used a bed sheet for the dangling black cloth parts below the armor and used some stitching glue or something to attach some ribbon. For the cape, I went to party city and got myself a hooded black vampire cape and attached a red fabric to the inside. The visor for the helmet is made from a 2-liter bottle that was cut to shape and then I went over it with window tint. It worked pretty well, and plan to keep doing this for future visors. Visibility was fairly clear, so that's a huge plus.
-Sword
I made the sword using a Swiffer Wet Jet's pole as a core, then I used EVA and craft foam to make the blade and the guard. I used a rotary tool to bevel the edges of the blade which took forever because it was tiny, then I coated the whole thing in ModPodge after I finished getting the shapes and everything down. After that, I wet sanded the blade, and instead of using PlastiDip on the sword, I directly painted it, which turned out fine. I used a shiny silver spray paint for the blade and I used a Rose Gold acrylic for the handle and guard. I then used black acrylic to shade and weather the guard.

Thanks for taking interest and reading this! If you want more information or would like a really really detailed story on how I did everything, I'll post something later. Not many pictures of me building until the end, but I can explain as much as I possibly can.