Completed Costume

I realized I never really posted any picture of the finished costume!

Tunic & Leather Details

Newspaper cutout of the tunic template.

Tunic base cut out. (tunic folded in half)

Tunic with the interfacing sewn on. This will give the correct shape for Link's neckline.

Rough cut of the tunic. Shape more defined and sewed together.

Cutout of Link's hat. Yes, it looks like a demented slug.  It pretty much was.  I suggest making a LOT of templates out of newspaper first. Also, if you don't make it slug shaped, the seam won't lie correctly like Link's does.  Once the hat was finished I added some cotton stuffing to it.

Close up on detail of neckline. (This was my friends tunic)

To get the belts and leather straps to hold up and be able to support the weight of the sword, we cut up cereal boxes and taped them together.  These were then shoved inside the leather.

Suede laying out to dry.  All the pieces were died to the correct darker color with leather die.  The suede was turned inside out so it was smooth.  The darker circles on the belts are from the pieces covering the seams. (This is double of everything because we made two costumes; one for me and one for my friend)

For the gloves, I found old riding gloves at a thrift store and cut off the fingers and sewed them (a pain).  Fortunately, they were already the correct color.

Begining of the vambraces (they look really shiny for some reason).  The edging has not yet been put on.  I took 2 liter pop bottles and spray painted the inside (non shiny side) gray.  I then made a template for the size I wanted them to be and cut them out.  Inside the two edges I hotglued in velcro to keep them shut.  Later, the gray foam edging was added.



Finished Tunic, chainmail, and shirt!

The Sheath! (and sword)

Well, I skipped posting a step in between the last post and now, but it's not that important.  My dad buffed and sanded the sword down to make it all smooth and then put on three or four coats of primer.

For the sheath, we decided to use matboard, which is kinda like really hard cardboard.  It is used in framing a lot.  We measured out the length of the sword and built a mock to get the sizing correct and figure out how to not have it collapse.  By cutting only halfway through a layer with a razorblade it makes the matboard pliable enough to bend but still retain strength.  We bent the side pieces so that they overlapped each other, adding more strength.  To add the 3-D effect down the top of the sword, we cut another piece of matboard and peaked it (like a roof).  Then we glued in spacers of matboard and a little piece of wood to give it the height that we wanted. 

We then covered the entire sheath in packing tape which added strength.  Here is a close up of the nose, which was a pain to make.

The sword next to the sheath.

Since the sheath was covered in tape, we put brown paper (like butcher paper) over the entire sheath.  We used vacuumount spray to attach it.

By doing so, it gave us the traction needed to attach the blue.  That is actually boat shrinkwrapping plastic; it just happened to be the right color for the sheath.  Rather than plastic, we could have left it just covered in paper and painted it.  However, I didn't want seam lines on the back.

Big jump here.  Once the sheath was covered in blue we started cutting out patterns for the gold decorations out of paper.  Once we got working models, we then traced and cut them out of yellow craft foam.  Since the yellow was the wrong color we painted the pieces gold.  It took 4-5 coats to come out the color I wanted.  A really good glue to use (at least for us) was E-6000.  I swear, that stuff will glue anything!

Another big jump.  Here you can see most of the pieces have glued on.  What all the clamps are for is that we just added the top most piece of the sheath, the one that sticks up around the wings of the sword.  We glued this on after because at the time of cutting it, we didn't think of how that piece was going to fit in :P  Otherwise this would have been added in when the sheath was first cut.

Out of the whole costume, I think the sheath was the hardest.  I will add more pictures later.  At this time, thought, the sheath is done!

Sword Update:

Big jump again!  To get the doughnut around the handle, we ended up using modeling clay and just shaping the doughnut on around the sword handle.  We then let it dry next to heat for a day.  We used the same modeling clay for the ridges that are shown in this picture.  It's really hard making matching ridges so all the wings look the same!  These were glued straight onto the wood with E-6000.

The sword has now been spray painted silver to color the blade.  We put on a couple coats of spray paint to make the blade shiny.  However, I'm not sure, but I think these leads to increased scuffing if you are not careful with the sword.  I already have a couple scuffs from taking it in and out of the sheath since the sheath is a bit of a tight fit.

Now the sword has a clear laqure sprayed over it and we are painting on the blue.  In later pictures you will be able to see that the insides of the ridges on the wings were painted darker than the rest of the sword.  This gives a shadow effect.

The only thing left is to wrap the green/yellow string around the blue leather grip on the handle. 

Sword complete

Back view of Sheath and Sword

If anyone wante more detailed pictures of the sheath I will be happy to send them!
Email me at my cosplay.com account.
http://www.cosplay.com/member/247929/

Master Sword

My dad and I worked on making Link's Master Sword this week.  I'm finally posting some pictures!

We first cut out a very rough cut of the sword to get a rough idea of how big we wanted it.

I got this picture from a cosplayer who posted an amazing tutorial on Instructables.com, I highly recommend looking at it.  However, all the measurements were in centimeters so I converted them into inches.  This sketch was made for a normal sized male, while I am a much shorter female.  Therefore, when making the sword I scaled it down to fit my 5' frame.  Therefore, most of the measurements stayed the same but the blade is at least 5 inches shorter. Also, the sword is made out of plywood.

Here is a rough beginning drawing for the handle.  Due to lack of certain tools, it lacks the large circle that sits above the horns and the pommel is slightly different.  However the pommel could easily be cut differently. 

 Once we had the rough design sketched, we started cutting it out.

 To make the sword thick enough we made two pieces, both copies of each other, and then glue them together.

 We then traced out the wing design.  This was all free handed.  The piece of wood we traced it on is exactly a foot long.

Below, you can see the two pieces of the sword and the wing piece cut out. We left one of the sword cutouts complete to retain strength, but the second piece we cut in two to allow us to fit in the wing piece.

 Below are the measurements of the wing piece.

 Below is from the top left "horn" to to right "horn". About 8 inches.

 Below is the distance from one indent of the wing to the other.  5 1/4 inch

 Here is the wing fitted in with the rest of the sword.  Below are the two cut out pieces.

 To make the wing piece as thick as the rest of the sword, we made the same piece again but cut out the middle so it would fit snug against the uncut sword piece.

 Here you can see how it will fit together.  The second cut up wing piece will be glued onto the full one to give it the thickness needed, but to retain strength.

 Here we clamped the pieces together with wood glue.

 Here is the sword being sanded down.

 Here you can see it glued and put together.  Kinda like a puzzle :)

 We used every clamp we had!  All the small pieces are now put together and glued in place.

 This is after the glue has dried.  The handle and blade has been rounded out a lot with a sander.

And that's all for now!