Breastplates can be a daunting task, but AllieCat Cosplay created this tutorial in partnership with Cosplaysupplies showing how she created her fantastic breastplate for her Camilla build, using Worbla and Foam. You can use this process to build your own Camilla armor, or a similar character’s design. Take a look at the steps below!
Camilla’s Breastplate with Foam and Worbla Tutorial
Make a Tape Pattern over your body and cut directly down the middle and back (getting assistance so as to not cut yourself upon removal).
Cut out breast cup making dart-notches so the pattern lays completely flat
Transfer to 1/4 inch L200 foam and glue together at seams. Start with notches first then merge middle seam.
Transfer stomach portion to 1/4 inch L200 foam and glue down the middle making sure they line up. Connect back portions to the front panel and it will start to take shape on its own.
Wrapping corset around pillows, put torso of breastplate on top and heat with a heat gun, slightly pulling the foam towards the back and waiting for the foam to cool. It will hold a curved shape after cooling.
Attach Breast cups to torso portion. At the bottom where the armor lip is, score the line with an exacto knife making sure to not cut all the way through.
Pinch the L200 foam where you scored it and heat with a heat gun. Hold in place until it has cooled.
Add details using the original pattern as a stencil with sheets of 2mm craft foam and contact cement.
Wrap bodice around pillow for support and slowly but carefully heat a large sheet of Black Worbla from the middle to the outside making sure not to rip the sheet.
Prime with 4-5 layers of woodglue and prime with grey spray primer.
Paint with matte black and gold/white details with metallic paints so that they pop in photos.
The breastplate will be seamless and strong to wear in battle!
Jak Cosplay has created this great tutorial on making the armor bra cups that Digimon’s Angewoman sports. This tutorial would also be great for many other designs, including Ariel from the Little Mermaid. Take a look below!
Texie Jo Cosplays shared the following tutorial on her Wonder Woman costume with us.
So, here’s how I made my Wonder Woman breastplate!
Materials: Worbla Cling Wrap Masking Tape Acrylic Paint Heat Gun Scissors D-rings Velcro Needle and thread Styrofoam ball about your cup size Vaseline Paper Craft foam I tried to take as many pictures as possible, but I will explain as much as I can!
The Breastplate
Take your worbla, heat it up and fold two squares on top of each other. This will reinforce the worbla so it doesn’t separate when you shape it.
Next, cover your Styrofoam semi-circle in Vaseline. Then, heat up one square and shape it to the semi-circle. Cut off the excess, wait for it to cool and remove it from the orb. Do this one more time with the other square! Now you have you boob-cups!
Now, where do we put these? I’m glad you asked. Put on whatever bra fits you best and wrap your chest up in cling wrap, then, cover the cling wrap in masking tape. You should be able to draw on the pattern you want for your breastplate onto the masking tape, or get help from a friend! Cut yourself free of your cling wrap restraints and cut out the pattern you’ve just made.
Transfer it onto craft foam and worbla. I used the technique you can find here for how to reinforce these sections.
Heat up the bottom of your boob cups and stick ‘em on to their designated areas of the base! Now for the details in worbla!
I used scrap pieces of worbla (You are saving those, right?) to make each individual feather, The breastplate alone has over 200.
I individually heated and placed each feather. Start with the lowest level of feathers and place on top until you get to the top. Once I got there, I cut a strip of worlbla for the top laid it on there. The lining of the base is very simple, you measure what you need,cut it out of worbla, heat it up and place it where you want it to be!
After this, I coated it in wood glue as a primer and added the lower levels of the breastplate.
There are stars on the lower levels and I made them by cutting two small squares of worbla and a star out of craft foam and sandwiching the craft foam between two layers of worbla. I used a straight edge to make the sides look tighter.
Painting!
I didn’t take nearly enough photos of this process but here is what I can tell you.
First, I covered the lower level in three coats of hard, sandable gesso, and sanded them smooth. I don’t have a photo of that on the breastplate, but here’s what that looks like on the tiaras:
I covered whatever I didn’t want to be gold in masking tape, took the sucker outside and spray painted everything else gold. I let it dry, came back inside and removed the making tape and painted everything else red.
You can stop here if you like how that looks, but I chose to add some shading to it. To shade, I used a dark brown and got under the feathers, you can move the paint with your fingers and it usually ends ups looking pretty good. I shaded anywhere I thought there should be a shadow with dark brown, very sparingly, and then on the red sections, mixed red and brown together and dabbed that on around the edges of the brown shading!
To fix this to myself, I sandwiched craft foam and wonderflex, fed it through a D-ring and placed it where I wanted the velcro to run across on either side of my back. The velcro is half hook and half loop so that when you fold it over, it will catch. This holds really well for me! If you’ve got any questions on anything, ask me and I’ll do my best to help!
This is one fierce lady with full cover armor, so of course I had to make this costume. Demon Hunter from Diablo 3. This will be my first big armor costume and I will most probably use mostly worbla for the construction since the shapes of the armor is very organic.
Worbla is a thermoplastic sheet which can be heated with heat gun or warm water. The material then gets flexible and can be shaped, bent or molded in any way, and even better remolded if you need the materials for something else later. You only need scissors to cut it, and all leftovers can be molded together so you don’t waste any material.
First up is her chest armor I figured that I could build the chest in layers and not use foam in between to save a little money. So I started of by making a one layers base shape.
The Worbla is heated up and shaped over acrylic hemispheres. Careful not to stretch it too thin.
With by basic shape done I added masking tape to draw up the patterns for the next layer. With focus on using as little worbla as possible I will only add details in visible areas. Other worbla makers such as Kamui often make whole pieces that the almost completely cover up with the next layer, therefor spanding way more material than necessary.
My pattern
When adding new layers be more careful not to get any dents in your armor, so you won’t have to smoothen them out later.
The collar will be visible from behind, so I’m adding a double layers of worbla with a cardboard core (holding it stiff and smooth)
Collar on.
Repeat masking process to get the rest of the detail-layers.
Transferred to a sheet of worbla.
And back on the chest.
The cross ornaments in the making.
And all the stripes and “bolts” are just more worbla added with care.
The piece will be attached to my body together with a back piece being hold together with straps. These will be added when the back piece is done.
I had quite a few scraps left over from the Genie, as well as one piece of warped Worbla that was stored too close to the oven. Using a rolling pin, I ironed out the warped piece by heating it up and flattening it while warm on a hard surface.
Worbla works best when heated to a consistency that reminds me of a fruit roll-up. Too hot and it starts to look gravely of frothy, and too cool and it won’t stick. Interestingly, this is not a difficult product to use, and finding that correct temperature comes very quickly, and since the change is apparent visually, it’s easy to reproduce once you find it.
I had some warped worbla which sat too close to the oven. I used a rolling pin to flatten it.
I also took all my scraps, heated them, and using the rolling pin, fused and flattened them together into a workable sheet.
I fused all my scrap pieces together and rolled them flat.
With this project, I decided to use a craft foam base. I altered a shirt pattern to be just the front and side panels, and cut it out of foam.
I glued the front opening shut, by overlapping the two sides of foam. A curved point formed at the top. The curved point just below the neck was actually in the pattern, and I believe the original shirt is not meant to button all the way up.
I also made an equally proportioned shield shape for an overlay. I traced it onto butcher paper/waxed paper. I also mapped out where I wanted my swirl details to go.
I altered a shirt pattern and made a shield pattern for the overlay. I made a craft foam base.
I cut out the shield using another layer of craft foam (red), and glued it to the other piece. Notice how the shield sticks up at the point below the collar. It hides the bump, and gives a 3D effect.
I cut out and attached the overlay using craft foam sheets.
I also cut the details out of craft foam and glued them into place.
I cut out craft foam details.
Next I took a large solid sheet of Worbla to cover the shield portion of the armor. I have been following Cosplay artist Ameno Kitarou on Facebook, and he gives many tutorial using Worbla, and I tried one of his techniques. The raised detailing was something I did not consider on the genie, though I think it would have worked better than what I chose to do. I tried the technique he mentioned of covering the details and using a pointed edge (like scissors) to press the worbla around the edges of the curved foam details. When finished, the effect looks much more realistic and metallic.
I heated a sheet of worbla over the craft foam and using the scissor edge, formed the warm worbla over the craft foam details.
Once the shield and it’s details were covered, I took my fused worbla scrap sheets and covered the side of the armor using it. You may not be able to tell, but I am heating the worbla over the craft foam while it is on my male mannequin torso. This is how I got it to curve correctly to manly proportions.
I used the fused scraps on the sides and shoulders of the breastplate.
I also heated the worbla to place my metal fleur-de-lis findings. This put a permanent etched mark into the worbla. I used this mark to find and glue the piece in the correct place easily after painting.
I also pressed my findings into the worbla while hot, so there would be a ridge for attaching later.
Once the breastplate was heated and curved to my liking, I primed it with Gesso, then painted it silver, and added metal leafing as per usual.
I wanted the armor to have more of a forged-on-the-fly aesthetic which will become clear when you read the book, which is why I wanted it to look like it was made from scrap metal.
I primed the whole thing with gesso then painted and metal leafed it.
To finish, I used the same shirt pattern that I altered at the beginning, and using its back panel, I cut out some white vinyl. This Vinyl velcros to the underside of the upper shoulder part of the worbla, and then laces up the side using eyelets.
This is the Worbla Breastplate I made for Percy.
My pictures seemed to drop off towards the end of working on this project, which is why everything from priming to finished project is missing, but I only had two days to make this, and felt my time was better spent working. But I hope the worbla portion is well covered in case somebody else wants to try these techniques!
Chrisx Design recently shared with us her Adjunct costume from StarCraft 2. Not only is the costume itself stunning, but she also shared with us tutorials on how she made it!
The chest armor
Of course I had to choose another cosplay with incomplete reference photos. And a character without arms or legs, hmm interesting.
The StarCraft Adjutant Cosplay has been done before, in the style of a ball gown, I on the other hand want to make it more like a space armor cocktail dress.
Starting off with the chest plate. First off I will be making the Second Great War Adjutant and not Adjutant 23-46, but I will use it as inspiration for the parts I cannot see on my reference photo.
Chest armor and Worbla For the front I needed boob cups, so I shaped the worbla over a plastic sphere (my codex staff to be exact)
And pieced together. Since worbla is a little difficult to get hold of here, I am only using one layer to make it last longer. And I do regret that somethimes, when it gets too wobbly. I also didn’t have a pattern, but tried and reshaped it all the way.
Adding details
The back You can’t really see the back, so I designed it as a space armor using reference photos from other space suits from the game. So in theory this is my original design.
And using pizza boxes a supporting material to the worbla.
One idea I had was that you could attach the cables coming out of my head to my back, so I used the screw mechanism from a jar, with the lid attached to the back. This makes more sense when the head is finished.
Used tulle for details
And Lights. For once I can actually take out the batteries.
Vents on the back – Robots need cooling.
Adding a few more details.
Priming Then you need to prime it with Gesso. I like to use a mix of wood glue and gesso during the final layers.
Painting Then I spray painted it with a silver base color.
Detailing Black weathering and black details.
Screws were added to get a more mechanical look.
The threads from a can lid was added to the back construction, so I could screw the tubes from the head piece into the the back piece.
The awesome folks at 519geeks made this tutorial for us on how to make a pattern. They show it for a chest/torso piece, but the basic principal can be applied to all body parts.
Now Worbla is a thermoplastic modeling material from Germany. You may have heard of Wonderflex, well Worbla is quite a bit like it without the grid pattern on it. This makes Worbla perfect for doing things like curves, (ahem certain parts of female armor ahem). It stretches and doesn’t wrinkle as easy as Wonderflex. Worbla is used by heating it with a heat gun…or a hair dryer if you have a bit more time, but a heat gun is almost as much as a hair dryer these days. We picked up one of ours at Canadian tire for just 14 dollars. for this tutorial we used Old Trusty, a heat gun Elicia had in her house that is probably older then her.
Worbla is also awesome in the way that it is easy to both bond to itself and that it can be remolded back into the pile you have left over. It’s also very easy to attach other things to whatever piece you’re trying to add to it. We did use some extra glue for the shoulder straps of the armor but that was just because Elicia is a Nervous Nelly.
Making a Pattern For Your Worbla Armor!
First thing you need to do is gather a few materials.
You are going to need:
Painters tape
(or something like this. Duct tape is acceptable too)
Scissors
Cling wrap
A Pen
A Permanant Marker
(we tried using just a regular pen and I found it didn’t work with keeping the lines straight)
After this you are going to cover whatever part of your model’s body in cling wrap. Make sure to get at least 4 layers or you may have some tape sticking to your models shirt, leg, arm. (side note: also if you are doing a torso pattern, advise your model to wear a shirt they do not like…. in case it gets cut)
Next step is to start covering the same area you just wrapped in painters tape or whatever kind of take you decided to use. Remember that your model may be in this for a bit, while you work out the details of their armor so be cautious and make sure they can breathe…..(ours could not :P). When covering the chest area of your model, make sure to do criss crosses with the tape. That will ensure you don’t get any wrinkles with the tape and it fits more snug on your model.
One problem we did run into was the fact that the painters tape did not like to stick to the cling wrap so I actually just hit the tape with a bit of heat from a heat gun. It helps the glue heat up a bit and sticks much better. If you do load the model with tape you will find pieces will fall off, but as long as you don’t need that tape and there is still a layer or two underneath just remove it. it will only get in the way.
After your making sure no tape is going to fall off you need to take the marker to your model…..no do not draw a mustache on them……(unless you want to…) You need to mark where you want the armor to end. This is the perfect time to give the armor a bit of personal flair. There may be a design you’re going by but this is going to be made for your model’s body alone, so make sure it looks right on them in comparison to the character you are trying to replicate. If you have no character make sure that the arm holes give them enough room to move and stuff like that!
Finally The hard part of this process. Getting the pattern off your model without cutting their clothing XD. Remember earlier when I said to make sure they had a shirt they didn’t like…there is a reason for this. Simply slide your hand along where you are going to cut it off them. If you are doing a full black plate it’s still ok to cut it off them at the back You really only need half a piece. This is somewhat akin to cutting out a sewing pattern where you put the back part on the fold.
Now you simply need to cut out your pieces (however many you drew) make sure to have them all labled. You may know what they are now but you may not do all this work in one day. You don’t want to come back in a week or so when you get the energy to work on it and can’t remember which parts go where.
As an example here is the finished product with tracings of the pattern pieces over top. Your armor doesn’t have to be intricate to be beautiful…with a bit of imagination you can turn something simple into something beautiful too.
Making a pattern before you order your Worbla if you are on a budget will make it easier to figure out how much you actually need. To figure out your pattern try placing the pieces next to each other and measure out the length and width.(Side note:Remember to add detailing such as an edge or any raised designs you may want to add to your measurements)
You will need two of each piece. if you are doing the back piece like I did where you only make half of a full pattern remember to measure for 4 of the piece.
And then Trace it onto your Worbla!
and that’s it! You have now made a pattern for your armor!
I’ve also done a video on how to do this, it has been sped up so we could show everything
I’m still getting the feel for working with Worbla. It was an amazing experience as I mentioned in my other post and I’d like to share how I made my breastplate. When I was looking for tutorials I couldn’t find clear ones so here is my own version of how I made mine. I’m just going to go through a few steps/ tips when making your Worbla breastplate, it’s not extremely detailed since this was a rushed project but hope it helps anyways.
Worbla can stretch, mold within itself and be reshaped when reheated. I used a cut sphere as a reference to mold on top of. Just cover it in aluminum foil to prevent it from melting, and then put a plastic wrap on top so that when you mold on top of the half sphere it won’t stick on it. I used 2 layers of worbla for the cup so that its stronger and doesn’t melt easily and lose shape when I’m adding details.
Once you have the boob shape you can cut it down to a shape that’s more natural. I also used this method to make my helmet as you can see in the image. All you need is something to support it while shaping it and you can make any shape or size you want. I attached the boob molds on the band with a strip of Worbla on the front and back side. I made the bustier band part by wrapping it around my body and using a mannequin to see where I should cut the cups. Sorry I don’t have an image of this, but I just cut a straight band. After securing the boob molds I just added the details I wanted. This is why I used two layers of the Worbla. When trying to add details on the base of a worbla project it can melt because you need to heat up both pieces to stick them together. The two layers prevent the Worbla from warping your base shape. The back I attached by using parachute clips. I wish I finished it another way because I find it ugly, but it was easy to put on and an easy solution to putting it on your body. An alternative I’ve seen other people use is metal loops and then string to tie it up with an overlap. The worbla is very strong, you can make straps and attach anything to it like the buckles shown below. Just make sure that you heat up both sides and ensure its stuck on so it doesn’t rip off. In my experience I had no problem with the buckles at the back and it withstands a lot of pressure.
Here is the final result of the Worbla breastplate armor. The inside you can see how I put the pieces of Worbla together. I didn’t double side it to save money, but if you can try to add the Worbla on the back as well.
Hope you enjoyed that and helped with your future projects!
![WORB1[0]](http://www.worbla.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/WORB10.jpg)
