Skyrim Cosplay - Steel Battleaxe in progress

I wanted a big weapon for desucon. Therefore I made a Steel battle Axe. I scaled it down a bit so I could get it inside Desucon, because this is a huge weapon.

Picture: The Elder Scrolls, Skyrim

Cardboard

The blade is made from cardboard.

The shaft is made from plain pine rod from local hardware shop. It will show a beautiful wood pattern when painted. 

Another layer of cardboard with foam mat in between. I also used cardboard for the axe edge (not shown on the picture)

 All edges were filled with paper clay which were sanded down, filled up with filler and sanded down again. This took a while, so jumping ahead. It is important to not lose hope at this stage, it will look better. 

After sanding (I recommend a sanding machine) the blade was primed and painted silver. The rod for the handle was painted warm brown using basic acrylic paint. Strips of Skai (faux leather) was nailed to the handle following the pattern from my trace, using furniture nail from Jula.

The end piece is the top of a metal shaker (so I could lean it on the floor without it breaking)

The blade is nailed to the shaft. By using cardboard and filler you will have a very very brittle base. Therefore it won't survive ruff handling. 

Weathering, you may have seen this at my previous posts, all details are painted by hand using my vector axe for reference.

 Full size axe

Bloody deatails

Axe in use

Photo: H. Nyhus 

So, next up - Iron Armor

Other parts

• Helmet
• Gauntlets
• Upgraded Battle axe

Skyrim Cosplay - Helmet second round

Earlier I made a simple Skyrim helmet. Afterwards I have seen that there are several flaws I would like to fix, so I did. And made the rest of the female Dovahkiin costume at the same time. 

This time I started with this (see my previous blog post about making a Skyrim helmet):

Photo: Christina Bårdsen

But it should look more like this:

Photo: The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda

First things first, the horns looks too much like croissants.That must be fixed. And I need more details all over, which means strip down the paint and on with more filler.

 Strip down paint

Adding filler

More details around the edges, made from pizzabox cardboard.

Ready for priming, added axe mark in front. 

Primed, now silver paint

Weatering

Start

Add black acrylic paint and drag it out, see Volpin's video 

Backside of Skyrim Helmet. I hade received questions about what the helmet looks like from behind. If you have the game you can find a helmet and rotate it. 

Base coat on the horns

One horn ready - I used darker brown and faded it out from each ridge. Add some blood and I'm done

Finished helmet - Female Dovahkiin cosplay

Photo: Kake Yamamura/Kakeboksen

Photo: Kake Yamamura/Kakeboksen

So now I am more satisfied with my helmet. Next up: Axe!

Big sister -Helmet part two

Continue with my Bioshock Cosplay

In this post I have continued describing how I made the Big Sister Helmet (See here for first post). I will now guide you in the process of detailing. This is how far I came last time:

Lower part of the helmet

Corset and shorts

Other part: boots, leg armor, tank

Adam Syringe

The paint job
Before painting I still needed to sand and add more filler to get an even surface.

It was really hard to find the right shade of bronze; this is the result of three different types and a brown and rust weathering treatment. 

More Details have been added before the paint job, like the light covers (which are soy trays that come with take away sushi). There are three red lights on the helmet - The blue light-cover on top of the helmet is the cap of a hairspray bottle. (I love this kind of low tech prop making, and it is cheap) 

After the paint was done I started to the weathering process - see my skyrim helmet tutorial for more details about weathering. 

For rust details I used orange paint along all the outer tubes and used a sponge to even the color out. And little fishes were added on the back.

The helmet and chest piece was fixed together using duct tape, in case I need to take them apart. 

Lighting

The wiring is very simple 11 LED connected in series, 7 red and 2 blue. Remember to use a resistor when working with LEDs. 

I figured I might like some fresh air while inside my suit, so I made it possible to open the port hole using a small hinge and velcro. Taking advantage of this I placed a small switch in front, so I could turn the lights on and off at will. 

In conclusion this was a fun, but very demanding project. 

The finished helmet for my Bioshock Cosplay

Photo: Aslak Sødal