Naruvien Art & Design shows how to heat and shape Crystal Art, using it with TranspArt to make a magic crystal staff or wand for her LARP.
Naruvien Art & Design shows how to heat and shape Crystal Art, using it with TranspArt to make a magic crystal staff or wand for her LARP.
Naruvien Art&Design helps cover a subject we get asked about often: Worbla and LARP!
German, with English Subtitles.
We’re often asked if Worbla is suitable for LARP, and it’s been difficult to answer simply because no one on the team has used Worbla for LARP themselves. Ruth from Alhazred’s Ghost blog (no longer online) does does LARP and has given us an excellent writeup for those looking to use Worbla for their kits. To quote
“…if you do it right and avoid a couple of pitfalls, Worbla LARP armour can be fun to make, not overly expensive, completely personalised, and relatively easy to repair…”
Just over a year ago, I got back into a hobby that I hadn’t taken part in for nearly a decade: LARP. With no kit of my own, I slung together what I thought would be a quick and easy character concept, put on a dress that could just about pass for costume, and practiced packing my tent in the front room so the other nerds wouldn’t laugh at me when I couldn’t get the wretched thing back in its bag in the middle of a field.
The event didn’t go quite as planned, and neither did my ‘dip my toes in the water and just try one more event’ plan, as I haven’t quit being keen since then, and I’m still playing the character a year and a half later. This of course meant I needed decent kit. There are some fantastic vendors out there, with products that make me squee with delight, but I wanted to take a crack at making something myself.
So I set about researching, designing, scribbling ideas down at lunchtimes at work (and occasionally during more boring meetings). I finally settled on using Worbla; a thermoplastic in common use by cosplayers worldwide. I found YouTube tutorials, sample images without count, helpful hints and how-to’s. I even bought a book. The problem is, all of this material (and I do mean ALL of it) is designed for use in cosplay, and cosplay costumes aren’t used the same way that LARP costumes are. Generally speaking, if you’re in cosplay armour, you aren’t going to get hit. LARP armour needs to be pretty sturdy: you can be pretty certain that you ARE going to get hit, and even though you aren’t meant to get hit hard, it’s going to happen. Eventually, someone will not pull their blow, miss-time a hit or just be a prat, or you’ll want to RP a beautifully delivered crushing blow with a slightly over enthusiastic collapse to the ground. Both your armour and you need survive undamaged when that happens, and when you hit the deck (whether that’s the end-of-event opponent laying you out or just you slipping on wet grass or mud).
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve offered advice to LARPers who are thinking about using Worbla, but are rightly concerned over its durability. Very basically, if you do it right and avoid a couple of pitfalls, Worbla LARP armour can be fun to make, not overly expensive, completely personalised, and relatively easy to repair if something doesn’t go as planned.
Worbla is flexible, but can become brittle if that flexibility is removed. It’s also quite thin, which means that larger structures need to be supported to make them workable, which then removes a lot of that flexibility.
I would advise you to stay away from making large or flat structures such as helmets or breastplates, as these may crack or split if shock-loaded with weight (i.e., when you fall on them, or when struck hard), and this could lead to potential injury. If you’re confident that you can create something safely, feel free to give it a go, but I’d personally avoid it, and stick to smaller pieces like bracers and greaves, or using the Worbla for constructing scale or splint mail.
The Rules (things you need to know so you don’t cry, give up, go mad, or all three)
WHAT YOU NEED (tools, materials, workspace)
Things you can’t do without:
Things that are useful but not required:
STEP BY STEP
It sounds redundant, but planning is vital before you start making anything. Draw sketches, measure yourself so you know how big things are going to be, and how much of each type of material you’re going to need. Check dimensions, create flimsy little paper copies even if they’re only half sized.
Once you’re happy with the general design you’re making, you’re going to create a template in a way you probably don’t want to tell your parents about. That’s right; you’re going to wrap yourself in clingfilm. I’ll use a bracer as an example, since that’s the basis for the video tutorials. Wrap your lower arm in clingfilm (obviously not too tight, as it’s gonna be on there a while), then cover the film in strips of masking tape so that the whole area that will be covered by the armour is covered by tape. Once that’s done, you can draw the basic shape of the bracer onto the tape. Use scissors to remove the clingfilm from your arm without cutting through the template, check that it looks roughly how you want it, then cut it out. Presto, instant template built to fit you.
Transfer the template to card and use the card version (or versions) to play around with fit, decoration, colour and anything else you aren’t sure about. When you’ve got a card template that works, it’s time to break out the Worbla.
Most Cosplay tutorials for working with Worbla use something called the ‘sandwich’ method, which is where you create a three layer Worbla/craft foam/Worbla arrangement, however the cheaper version is to have a single layer of each, with the Worbla turned over so you can’t see the edges. I used this method on my first set, and had no issues with durability because the armour was flexible enough to bend when struck. It’s this second method that I’m going to detail here, as there’s a lot of other tutorials out there for the sandwich method if you prefer to use that.
There’s a lot of different styles you can use in constructing Worbla armour, and I’ll cover a couple as video tutorials. The first video is a step by step construction of a simple plate style bracer. These videos have no sound (so that they can be viewed anywhere), and include on screen instructions, which are also copied into the video description for your reference.
——————————–