Fantasy Armor

[Beaverslayer]

Azmal,

My hat is off to you....that is some AMAZING work you've done there, I can't imagine the time and effort that would be put into such work.

More pictures PLEEEEEAAASE.......

Ken

[Prince]

Thanks for the props, I actually was expecting a few arched eyebrows and sideways stares; )

Not really. The kind of armour Samuel is making is pretty much a RenFair, LARP and maybe SciFi market.

Although many people may attend Ren Fairs, a much smaller percentage are interested in dressing the part, and then of those, only a limited number are looking for armour.

There's also an even smaller market that's interested in armour that's plausible reproduction of historic pieces, as opposed to fantasy stuff.

Exactly.... There is such a small market for this stuff its almost ludicrous to make a business out of it, yet thats what I aim to do lol. No easy task and I think I'm getting in over my head at the moment while I'm thinking about college and other ambitions too but I do need some cash inflow and need to test the market and better now than later. Another problem with the market is that of the people who do dress up, many are content wearing cheapo junk or poorly made stuff as long as it look cools... even if they cant sit down or tie their shoes. My mentor prided himself on functionality and being the best, as shall I.

The armor I make is historically based in that I learned the function of armor from my mentor and make fantasy designs. Some of the designs were made as "standard edition" and he would make a pattern, and we would make variants of that pattern with different color bands and overlays and wet molded designs and tooling patterns, etc.

Leather used can be , latigo sometimes, but 8-10oz tooling leather usually because it can be tooled, dyed, and wet molded to be really custom. Of course one could get creative with stitching together latigo into cool shapes or corseted designs too.

My mentor (William AKA "The Goblin King") is by far the best craftsman, artisan, artist, I've ever seen for just about anything you can think of. One of those people who's really tried to do it all. he's got is own quirks and he abused my generosity terribly which is why I'm not with that business any more. Things may still work out and all but I needed a break. (what I said here doesn't leave here, yeah? - There is a big fan club and forum/album site that I built for us and I don't need the people there asking me lots of questions, in fact I haven't been back except to fix it. But I'm sure you'll like to see the billion pictures there.

www.GoblinNation.com Then click 'albums' up at the top and you will be busy for days if you try to see them all. there are waaay more pictures in the user's personal albums

There is a commercial site that I started on many months back before I left (which was just a few months back) and thats www.GoblinKingForge.com but its not finished but it has some products and a pretty good start.

Also, my myspace for those of you into that sort of thing is www.myspace.com/goblinnation

[Prince]

Here are a couple pics I'll point out so those of you without much time to sort through the album

Lord and Lady Dahlberg - this armor is already several years old and still holding up

My Dagger my GK (Goblin King)

GK Strapping someone into armor he made for them at the Texas Ren Fest.

Big Mace

Rapier

William in his armor at Dragon Con 06 (Atlanta Ga)

Another pic of Dahlberg

the Corinthian Suit

also note most of the fabric costume design you see with the armors are made by GK too

Edited July 16, 2007 by Azmal

[candyleather]

Another links for ancient armors

The perfect armor

The perfect armour 2

Leather helmet instructions

A 13th Century Leg Harness

and more patterns

Medieval french shoes

[abn]

I don't know a whole lot about what goes into making leather armor, but I can imagine it takes plenty of time, effort and creativity. Absolutely incredible work. This stuff could easily be in a Lord of the Rings movie -- it's as good as any costume designer in Hollywood is making IMO...

-Alex

[Peter Ellis]

Another links for ancient armors

The perfect armor

The perfect armour 2

Leather helmet instructions

A 13th Century Leg Harness

and more patterns

Medieval french shoes

chuckle. Please disregard both of "The perfect armour" articles. They're many years out of date and don't reflect current understanding of the process of hardening leather. Boiling is incredibly difficult to pull off consistently and on those occasions when one gets it just right, produces results no better than can be achieved through much more easily repeated procedures.

Those two articles are reproduced and linked all over the internet, but for some time now they've been perpetuating an old experiment that has proven to be on the wrong course.

No offense, the author is an old friend and mentor of mine who would readily acknowledge that he was exploring and that subsequent research has gone beyond his initial attempts.

[MatthewD]

Peter,

Could you give some insight on the better way of hardening leather armor? Please

[Hoyden]

Thank you CandyLeather for those links.

I need to get back to work and get done so I can go home and spend the rest of the night buried in these links.

I'm re-doing my five year old daughter's armor for the ren faire, and BOY did this post give me some ideas to try out on her. Yes, I know, she will out grow it. But I like doing small test runs using her for a test dummy before I screw up something much larger.

This was whipped together out of leather scraps in October last year.

http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/hoy...nt=DSC05740.jpg

http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/hoy...nt=PICT0018.jpg

[candyleather]

Hoyden, thanks. I saw your pics. A beautiful Lady with a buccaneer!, tell her that is a bad choice for a son-in-law. I know that in the american market there are wood swords very realistic for training and for make and scabbard. Be careful, she knows more fencing than you!

[Hoyden]

Hoyden, thanks. I saw your pics. A beautiful Lady with a buccaneer!, tell her that is a bad choice for a son-in-law. I know that in the american market there are wood swords very realistic for training and for make and scabbard. Be careful, she knows more fencing than you!

Thank you!

This one is hell on feet, so I am sure she is going to give us a run for our money. I won't have to worry about Aiden (the buccaneer) too much, she is way tougher than he is and gets impatient with him when he can't keep up with her.

The man she is sparring with is the head of the Academy of Knighly Arts, he completes in Western Martial Arts in the US, UK and Europe. We warned him to watch her head as she is known to cross swords, give a little then haul back and head butt her opponent.

I've got a nice wooden waster from Hallow Earth put away for her, she forgets that her friends can't take the battering that she can, so until she learns, she has to make due with softer wooden weapons.