Character: Dovahkiin
Series: Skyrim
Variant: MalikCG’s Daedric Female Armor Mod
Total Construction Time: 3 Weeks
Debut: Phoenix Comic Con 2015
Status: Retired
Personal Thoughts: I love Skyrim. During a time I was unemployed, I spent a solid 3 months on the game, racking up 200 hours. The whole time I never thought about cosplaying anyone from the game until towards the end when other people had started to cosplay from different guilds. I decided to do a cosplay that would be a bit challenging and allow me to play with worbla safely without making full body armor.

This costume is a tad sentimental for me. It was the first and last big armor piece I would do for a while as halfway through my progress I quit my job. I decided to hold off on finding a new job for 3 months to focus on PCC, a few freelancing gigs and more importantly, myself. It would be the last costume I would do until January 2016 because of my financial situation.

Details
I started off with the corset. I opted to change the design from the original mod as I figured it would look kind of odd in real life. I tried making a prototype with foam a few times before finally moving onto worbla. I opted not to do the sandwich technique since I was trying to save money and wanted to try to run through it as fast as I could for PCC. Once I had quit my job, I ramped up my own production and started working on the costume faster. I used various tutorials and patterns to help me out with the process.  I would make a foam base, decorate it with everything that was needed then applied the worbla last, using heat and clay tools to pop the details out.

The tail and neck piece had to be light. My neck is incredibly sensitive. If anything heavy or light touches it, I instantly feel sick (it’s weird). So the tail HAD to be light as hell. I couldn’t worbla it. I made the neck piece out of foam and worbla to keep it stable but it was wide enough that it wouldn’t touch the back of my neck.  For the tail, I made a pattern in Photoshop and scaled it down for each different section. I then created pieces out of foam and used felt beneath it so that it would hold it’s shape and be soft on my back. The pieces were connected uses small metal rings from Joanns so that when I moved, the tail would have easy movement as well.

For paint, I used home 2-in-1 primer that’s used on furniture and metals since I feel the spray always gives me an even coat and color every time. The colors tend to run moodier as well so after priming the pieces, I coated everything in black then painting the undersides red to give it an extra dimension.

The daggers are the worst part. I had 3 days left so I had to absolutely rush it. They’re bigger than I ever wanted them to be because I had to use eva foam as I had no other materials left. I bent a PVC pipe using heat to create the curve and wrapped the bottom in spare rope that I had lying around.

I may have done the whole thing backwards. It was my first real armored cosplay and although I feel I did a good job on most of it, it doesn’t hold up too well and is difficult to keep on. I learned a so much doing this project and even though I deem it a half failure, I strongly feel it was a great project to do.