From CosplayWiki

When deciding what you want to make your armor out of there are several considerations to be made. Those are how much time you have, how much money you have to spend and your skill level.

Contents 1 Pre Construction 2 Patterning out the Armor 2.1 Making a pattern 2.2 Second Generation (2G) Pattern 2.3 Testing the Pattern 3 Cutting out the armor 4 External Links

Pre Construction

There are several things that you need to do before you start to make any type of armor. Collect reference shots of the piece of armor you are making. Determine the materials you are going to make the armor out of and figure out how you are going to attach the armor to your body. Determining how you are going to attach it to your body is one thing that is VERY important. You don't want your armor falling off or slipping down when you walk. Also planning out how you want to make the armor is an absolute must as well.

Example
In this example i'm going to make a bracer for my arm.

I have collected massive amounts of reference shots.

The materials i am going to use are foamies, hot glue, elastic banding, and spray paint.

The bracer is going to be made out of foamies, with two straps - 1 attached to my wrist and one around the middle of my forearm. Since my hand is larger than my wrist i will need some way to make the one around my wrist expand or just make it bigger. Since i want it sorta tight, i will be gluing a piece of elastic to the wristband to make it flexable.

Patterning out the Armor

There are several great resources available online if the armor you are building is standard armor - as in non-fantasy armor. A great place to get started is in the Armour Archive (see links at the bottom of the page). If the armor you are making is fantasy armor type you should see what the closest representation to the armor is and find the appropriate pattern for it on AA and modify it.

Making a pattern

If you decide you cant find anything that looks even remotely similar, you might need to make your own pattern for the costume. This is fairly easy to do, if just time consuming. You will need to have a sharp pair of scissors, tape and paper (poster board works the best as it is a bit thicker, but regular paper will work).

Before you start patterning out your armor you should have a good idea what type of materials you are going to make your armor out of because this will affect how much room you need to give your pattern. When you have your pattern, how it fits will be the outside diameter of the armor, but the inside might be different. The inside with the pattern is paper thin, so almost nothing, but if you decide to use something like 1/4th inch foam, the inside is going to be 1/4th of an inch less, and MUCH tighter. Just something to keep in mind when working. Then general gist of patterning is to first break down the armor or costume into basic pieces, then cut out the paper so it has the general shape of what you want the material to look like. After you have the basic shapes cut out, you tape more paper on or cut off paper to get the shape you are looking for.

This is a great way to pattern, as it is just paper you are using. If something dosent look right or dosen't fit right, cut it out or make a cut and tape it together. If it is too small, cut it apart, tape more paper on it, and trim it so it fits better. This is a very inexpensive way to make patterns rather than just trying to figure it out with the material you plan to make your armor out of.

Example
I will use the example of a bracer for your lower armor for this. The first thing you will need to do is cut out two a rectagles of posterboard that will wrap around your arm, all the way around. The first one should fit around your wrist and the second should fit around your forearm when you flex (so that its the largest it can be). Make the two rectangles aproximately 1 inch wide.

When you tape each end of the rectangles together you should have a loop around your wrist and a loop around your forearms. Make sure that you can slide your wrist through the one around your forearm. Take a sharpie or some marker and draw a diagnonal slash through each of the bands, then cut the bands in half. The slash is there so you can line it back up easier to tape them together.

Take your arm and lay it down on a sheet of poster paper, and trace out your forearm on the paper - also trace past your elbow and trace the bottom part of your hand. Now take your drawing tool and draw out what your bracer's shape is. This is where your mass amounts of reference shots will come in handy as you can see how far up the arm it goes, does it wrap around your arm or other things. After you have finished drawing your bracer cut it out. This is a first generation pattern. I usually will fold whatever i have cut out in half to make sure it is symmetrical. If it isnt suppose to be symmetrical dont worry about it. If it isn't symmetrical and should be take pieces of paper and tape them to the side that needs more. I usually will tape a larger piece of paper than is necessary to fill in the gap. Fold the bracer over in half and trace the correct outline on the bracer half that didn't match and now has extra paper on it. Cut out the correct side of the bracer.

Second Generation (2G) Pattern

A second generation pattern is just a pattern that you make off an existing pattern, either to clean it up or fix something about it. It is a whole new pattern. The 2nd generation pattern is what you are going to trace onto the material to cut out to make the actual armor piece. The 2G pattern is a cleaner copy of the original patter, with all the tape and paper stuck together. The 2G pattern will also show you how the pattern will come out when you put the armor together.

Example
Eventually after you have your bracer looking right for the shape you will make a second generation pattern from it. Trace the bracer shape on a new sheet of paper then cut it out.

Right now you should have a 2G pattern of the bracer top and the two loops of the bracer cut in half.

Testing the Pattern

Take the 2nd Generation pattern and put it together on you so you know that it will fit. Alwasy assemble the 2G pattern into your armor/ on your body so you can see how the final pieces will lay against each other and if it will fit right. This will also give you a very good idea if it will look right or if you need to add some more paper to the patter, or if you need to cut some away. How does it look? Does it fit right? Adjust as needed. It is helpful to take a sharpie or colord marker and draw the general decorations on the armor so you have a idea of how things will fit.

Once you know that it fits and it does look like the general shape, cut the pieces apart again so that they will lay flat.

Example
Take the bracer and draw the design on the bracer using the various different reference shots. Then take the two loops, wrap them around your arm and tape them together using the slash marks as guides to where you should tape them together. Put a loop of tape on the top of each paper loop, then put the bracer pattern on top of each loop and press down.

Cutting out the armor

Lay all of your 2nd gen patterns out on the material you are going to be using for the final version. Trace the patterns on the material and cut them out. Depending on the type of material you are using you might use a utility knife to cut out the pattern or just a pair of scissors.

Example
Since this example will be using a foamie, a pair of scissors will work fine. I will trace the two rectangles out on the foamies as well as the bracer and then cut them out.

Put your 2G pattern asside and keep it - you might need to make another bracer sometime!

External Links

• http://amethyst-angel.com/armormaking.html - Amethyst Angel's Armor Making Guide.
• http://www.armourarchive.org/patterns/ - Armor archive patterns