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| Photo by Karolina Ryvolova photography |
1) Why I chose to make this costume:
I admire nordic mythology, as I said already in my article about my Haven Paladin cosplay from MMH7. And during the process of making my Paladin cosplay, my dad said to me, that he wants a matching cosplay to mine, some epic badass armor, that will suit him. I immediately thought about Odin and Smite was the first thing, that came to my mind. Odin from Smite is as big as my dad, he is badass, he has big armor and he inspires awe.
Eventually I made this costume really fast, because he wanted to wear it for the wedding anniversary of him and my mom. It's made to fit him, but in fact it could be worn by any big guy or even me (I'm pretty tall).
ORIGINAL CHARACTER:
2) How I made this costume:
1) Helmet
I traced the helmet on the cast of my head, that was slightly adjusted to be bigger as the head of my dad. I covered it in food foil and taped the food foil with adhesive tape. Then I drew the lines of the patterns on the tape form. I cut the shapes, transfered them onto craftfoam (moosgummi) and covered it in worbla to hold the shape.
Then I made the horns out of foam taped in adhesive tape, glued them to the helmet and covered it in papermache out of newspapers and woodglue. Then I primed it with latex cement and made the details out of EVA foam, used the fussing glass cabochons for decoration in front and back and painted it all black. Then I used my sponge-painting technique for painting the golden parts and try to make shades on the horns just with a normal brush and acrylic colors. The shading with acrylics could be much better when using anti-drying fluid. Then I used shiny acrylic structure gel to make the surface of the horns shinier.
Then I made the horns out of foam taped in adhesive tape, glued them to the helmet and covered it in papermache out of newspapers and woodglue. Then I primed it with latex cement and made the details out of EVA foam, used the fussing glass cabochons for decoration in front and back and painted it all black. Then I used my sponge-painting technique for painting the golden parts and try to make shades on the horns just with a normal brush and acrylic colors. The shading with acrylics could be much better when using anti-drying fluid. Then I used shiny acrylic structure gel to make the surface of the horns shinier.
2) Beard
I have to say, that buying a long grey beard isn't an easy thing to do. I have to admit, even on e-bay are these wizard beards and wizard wigs prices pretty damn high! :D So I've done something, that was against all my rules and advices I've written about and I bought a wizard wig and beard, with photoshopped picture and if you look closely, the wig is crepped to add volume to it. So I've risked a lot. A shiny beard and badly fitting wig came, the overall volume of the beard was bad. So I've decided to cut the wig in pieces and use it for adding volume to the beard. And here's the result - thick beard, that I could braid in three thick braids and I'm really satisfied with it. It's still shiny, but I like it - Odin is a God, so it kinda fits. But if you want to get rid of shine from your wig, you can try to bath it in fabric softener mixed with water (1:2) (and talc powder) for a few days. It cost around 250 Kč = 9 Euro. Oh and the bottom parts of the braids are then decorated with foam pieces. And to hold them on their place, I glued hair clips inside of them :)
3) Eye-patch
The eye-pathc was one of the simplest parts of the costume. I just traced the shape of the eye onto a paper and made bulky shaped pattern (because the person wearing it has it's own eye in there and when you make a space for the eye inside, it will be much more comfortable for him to move the eye.) The I traced the pattern onto a foam, cut it with exacto knife and glued it together. Then I cut stripes from moosgummi and made an eye shape on the patch. I painted it whole black and used my spinge-tapping technique to make it gold. Then I glued small rubber bands from both sides to hold on the head.
4) Boots
As I looked on the boots of Odin, it reminded me of snowboots. Fortunately, my father owns snowboots with camouflage, that made a fitting base for Odin's boots. I traced the shapes on paper and transfered them on the foam. From the backside, there are two elastic bands to allow small movements for the foam cover. A small vecro could be fastened to the boot lace from the bottom side of the foam. I decorated the foam with moosgummi and painted it with acrylics. I sewn two fluffy cylinder shapes from old hairy coat, that could be opened and closed with velcros on the back side. The cylinders are then glued to the foam on the bottom, and pinned to the boot on the top.
5) Shoulder armor, collar
Shoulder armor are just rectangle pieces of 1cm foam with moosgummi border decorations and soldered ornaments, that are curved around the shoulder and connected with velcros on top to the collar and around the armpit.Collar was made also out of EVA foam, it was decorated with moosgummi and soldering too and wrapped around the neck - it is hold on it's place by the other parts like shoulder armor and cape parts and it can be connected with velcros in the front (the connection is covered with beard).
To the collar I glued the back cape and the fur piece, that was really easy to make, since I took a collar from fur coat, tweaked it a little and glued it to the foam collar and that's it!
As you can see on the picture, the soldered pattern is not even and I thought it would be much more realistic when it is not even, so I didn't tried to make the pattern superperfect ;)
6) Skirt
The skirt is actually made from three layers - there is a long brown skirt with golden details, shorter two-layered skirt right under the belt and blue part right in the middle of it all.
The biggest skirt I made from old leather coat - So it is just the bottom part of the coat, that I cut and sewn into it a space for a lace, that is laced in thw fron of the body and the whole skirt is mainly on the back of the body. The I took golden lurex ribbons and glued them onto the leather since the leather was too strong to sew into. The skirt is on the 2 pictures in left corner. And because the skirt was really heavy, it holds in it's place not only becaus of the lace, but also because of the braces (3rd pic).
Second skirt looked leathery like the first one, but I hadn't any more good quality leather, so I decided to make this part from moosgummi. And how to make moosgummi look like leather? Look at the two pics in the bottom middle part of the collage - You just take dark moosgummi, put a wrinkled aluminium foil onto it and you iron the aluminium on the moosgummi. And it makes in the moosgummi perfet leather pattern for you to use. I've just put brown acrylic paint onto it and tried to mix different shades to match the real leather used fro the other skirt. Then I covered it in shiny acrylic medium gel to make the surface shiny and match again the other skirt. The front skirt needed then much more love because of the amount of decorations I had to put on it - there are a lot of 2mm and 0,5 foam decorations painted with golden acrylic paint.
Then I had to make the third skirt part and it was a blue fabric skirt - I chose the same dark blue velvet fabric, sewn it into desired shape, decorated it with differen golden and silver ribbons that match the ingame model and glued it to the second skirt with hot glue gun. As you can see, I struggled to find the right way how to decorate it - fabric color really didn't look good on velvet, so the ribbons were much better way how to decorate it ;)
The biggest skirt I made from old leather coat - So it is just the bottom part of the coat, that I cut and sewn into it a space for a lace, that is laced in thw fron of the body and the whole skirt is mainly on the back of the body. The I took golden lurex ribbons and glued them onto the leather since the leather was too strong to sew into. The skirt is on the 2 pictures in left corner. And because the skirt was really heavy, it holds in it's place not only becaus of the lace, but also because of the braces (3rd pic).Second skirt looked leathery like the first one, but I hadn't any more good quality leather, so I decided to make this part from moosgummi. And how to make moosgummi look like leather? Look at the two pics in the bottom middle part of the collage - You just take dark moosgummi, put a wrinkled aluminium foil onto it and you iron the aluminium on the moosgummi. And it makes in the moosgummi perfet leather pattern for you to use. I've just put brown acrylic paint onto it and tried to mix different shades to match the real leather used fro the other skirt. Then I covered it in shiny acrylic medium gel to make the surface shiny and match again the other skirt. The front skirt needed then much more love because of the amount of decorations I had to put on it - there are a lot of 2mm and 0,5 foam decorations painted with golden acrylic paint.
Then I had to make the third skirt part and it was a blue fabric skirt - I chose the same dark blue velvet fabric, sewn it into desired shape, decorated it with differen golden and silver ribbons that match the ingame model and glued it to the second skirt with hot glue gun. As you can see, I struggled to find the right way how to decorate it - fabric color really didn't look good on velvet, so the ribbons were much better way how to decorate it ;)
7) Cape
The cape was made similarly as the third skirt part - it is just three different rectangle parts made out of dark blue velvet fabric and decorated with ribbons. Two parts are attached to the shoulder pad and arms go through them - to be honest - it looks great, it is the same like on the game model and it covers the bracers that hold the leather skirt!
The back part is the biggest rectangle piece, that i glued under the collar.
Look at the picture to se how all the parts go together:
The back part is the biggest rectangle piece, that i glued under the collar.
Look at the picture to se how all the parts go together:
8) Belt
Belt is made entirely from 0,5 cm foam, there are on the inner parts decorations from 2mm craftfoam/moosgummi and 0,5 cm foam borders. The ends are underglued with unvowen black fabric and I put two grommets on each end to lace the belt in desired length - I counted with changing body shape of my father, so I tried to make everything either laced or velcro connected.
The middle part is made mainly from 1cm thick EVA foam, but I tried to make the blue parts inside look like a glass, so I filled it with glass colors and it looked like a vitrage!
The middle part is made mainly from 1cm thick EVA foam, but I tried to make the blue parts inside look like a glass, so I filled it with glass colors and it looked like a vitrage!
9) Gloves
Gloves are just long leather working gloves that I painted with brown acrylic color, cut off the fingers, because Odin's gloves are fingerless, decorated them with 2mm craftfoam (moosgummi) on the fist and with 1cm EVA foam stripe with a filling of softer foam, that made the border. And as wioth other parts, I made the nordic pattern in the border with soldering iron.
10) Gambeson
Gambeson is a part of a (not-only) medieval soldier/knight, that was worn under and armor. It was a thick, mostly quilted torzo cover, sometimes used even without an armor. I wasn't very succesfull finding the right brown quilted material with the right rhombus shape on it. And then I found a huge jacket in a second hand shop with the perfect lining inside. So I've actually used lining for the gambeson :D
I've sewn the borders, I've made a holes to be worn as a corset and I've decorated the whole thing with plastic rivets in silver finish. So the whole thing is actually worn backwards, I just adapted it to be comfortable, made borders and it is closed with corset lacing. I added some velcros, that hold other armor parts on the place.11) Knee pads
The base of the knee pads is made from 1cm thick foam, that is glued onto an unvowen fabric. On the ends of the fabric, there is a velcro with elastic band that holds the knee pad on it's place and the elastc bands allows for free movement.I decorated then the piece with 2mm moosgummi and 0,5 cm foam for the borders and painted it with acrylic colors.
12) Spear
The spear was made out of looooong wooden pole used for making brooms. It is heavily decorated with different sizes of foam - mainly 2mm thick moosgummi with soldered and paintbrushed details, and 0,5mm foam for upper and bottom parts. I've also glued a soft foam on the places, where Odin holds the spear in glued a bast cord around the foam and painted it with different shades of brown. It really feels good int he hand!
One of the hardest parts was dividing the spear into two different pieces, since the spear itself measures around 2,5-3 meters. I cut the pole in two pieces (mind the place of cutting since it has to be hidden somehow) and I drilled a bigger hole into the bottom part in order to put inside a long metal nut (female srew) and glued it into it with two parts epoxy glue. The same I did on the other part. I just glue a male screw into it - keep in mind that your male screw should be headless so you don't have to make an unnecessary bigger hole. Next thing to keep in mind - you have to tryto screw the pieces together before gluing and be sure that it works well. Also - the angle of the drilled holes should be straight - if you drill the holes a little off, your spear can end up crooked - I made the holes myself and I managed to pull it off, but if you are not sure if you can make it yourself, ask (for example in the shop where you bought the pole) if some expert with the right tools can make it for you. Then I wrapped worbla around the connection to make it more sturdy and solid and decorated it with foam.
But this is not all - I had to make a lot of decorations - I made them out of 0,5 EVA foam and glued them to the spear on several places. I thought about making them from worbla, but with good quality dense foam you can make it nice and sturdy without using worbla.
The top part is made out of XPS polystyrene, that was shaped with exacto knife and dremmel, smoothened with acrylic cement, decorated with blue glass color, small foam pieces and hand made glass cabochons and painted with acrylic colors and paintbrush. Then I mounted the top part on the pole and glued it into place with hot glue.
The bottom part had to be really hard and sturdy and withstand a lot of stress, since I assumed my father would like to lean on the spear sometimes or use it sometimes as a walking stick. So I made it from 1cm foam and covered it all in worbla thermoplastic.
13) Back decorations
Some of you may notice, that on the ingame model, Odin has some kind of big armor parts on his back. In order to simplify wearing the costume for my dad, I decided not to make this part of the costume, since my father is not used to wear complicated costumes and it is really exhausting for him to wear the costume even without the big backpack structure.
And if you see someone being this happy about wearing the costume, you know you did your job right:
Yours
Germia
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