Sunday, February 20, 2011

Dragon Age 2- Hawke's belt

Hello all, apologies for the lack of updates (again :p), I really prefer to post full start to finish wips here, but lately I've have been making slow progress on about 15 different projects,  between making accessories for another costume maker! If you want to see some of these things as they progress (and occasional webstreaming), check out my facebook page (no fb membership required! )

Anywhoo, this is a bit of a panic project, as I thought that the convention that this was needed for was at the end of the month, not in 6 days. So the schedule is very messed up, and much coffee was involved!


For those unfamiliar with the character, Hawke, here's a reference. He's from the upcoming Dragon Age 2 from Bioware.



Guyverion is getting the other items from someone else, and I believe he's making the armor bits, tabbard and such

Here's what he has so far (the belt is of course, going to be replaced by mine)
http://fevereon.com/props/propbuilds...an_tabbard.jpg

Here's a foam mockup I did to get the layout right. I found foam great for patterning because it behaves similarly to the damp leather I'll be using for the belt



I showed him some really cool looking rings, and he opted for them instead of the plain ones I had snagged earlier. He also gave me artistic liberties, so time willing, i might do a couple textured accents & such. We'll see though, since there's going to be a lot of sewing involved & I'll have to do it by hand, since I don't have a machine that can get through this.

Here some of the parts have been tooled, and some dyed, and I'm pretty much swapping out things as I go along.



More dyeing done, and preparing things to start sewing! Added texture because i thought it would look nice


And the buckle!

I rough cut the shape with a dremel


forgot to post a photo inbetween here, but I continued wok with the Dremel, and got the shape generally done. Since this was plywood, I coated it with some stuff called "tuf" that Wes from The Engineer Guy gave my fiance when he picked up stuff i purchased. sands smoother & sexier than bondo. Love it


sprayed a coat of Rustoleum stainless steel industrial spraypaint on there, because it dries relatively fast, and sands nicely without clogging up sandpaper.



Here's the finished buckle, after a lil tweaking. I'm leaving it a bit rough, to retain the feel of Hawke's rough design. This of course, was sprayed again after the sanding, and I applied some silver & black acrylic washes to weather it more.



From this point on, things were so hectic that my wonderful fiance pulled a major assist!

I layed out, cut, tooled dyed the leather, and punched the sewing holes, then gave the parts to him to assist in sewing. I unfortunately don't have a sewing machine, and hand sewing takes a good while. I wound up pulling 3 allnighters, and he pulled one getting this done in time XD


Here's some of the straps, in various stages of work.


Here's some up on the stitching pony that he was using. I chose to use a basic stitch that was not only faster, but was more accurate to the references than the saddle stitch that I usually usually use on everything. Most of the stitching done on the belt here was decorative, and though I considered not doing it for times sake, the belt would look kindof plain.



the pouch was again mocked up with craft foam, then transferred to leather.


Decided to use 3 oz. leather on the side pieces, and 5 oz on the main body. I started the sewing to get the things aligned, and my fiance sewed the rest up and added the clasp


While I was sewing the fur onto the back of the belt (sewing fur onto belt= sloooowwww), my fiance made a faux clasp for the leg strap. Its made from Sintra and Mighty Putty, and painted with a subsequent acrylic wash.





Here's some photos of the finished belt! There's a strap that my client would hide underneath the tabbard and bolts to the belt to stay hidden (much like a garter belt, but much more manly)



after taking this photo, I decided that the sack of holding was a little low, so I raised it a bit!



Again, I'm really happy he let me deviate from the original design and put these rings in!



My client is  (obviously) much larger than me XD