Warmachine

We asked Air Bubbles to create a tutorial for us using Black Worbla, and she shared the process of making her headdress or Helmet for her Una costume, a character from Warmachine.

Materials
Black Worbla
3mm Craft Foam
Heatgun
Scissors
Hot Glue
Super 77 Spray Glue
Felt
Wood Stick

Reference and Blueprinting

Thankfully there are many reference photos for Una, The Skyhunter since she is a minifigure and character from the tabletop game, Warmachine. I took the reference for her headdress and hood and created a vector pattern which I was able to resize and print to fit my head. (Inkscape is a free program and great for this use)

Making the Headdress
Overall the headdress is quite simple, but getting the correct shape and size and keeping it symmetrical is always a difficult task! Also, since this would be going on my head, it needed to be kept light. To start, I cut the pattern out of 3mm craft foam:

After that, I traced out the foam pattern onto the new black worbla and cut out a piece that is about a ½” wider on all sides. This leaves space to fold over the extra worbla under the design. This is known as the ‘fold over method’. I chose this method over sandwiching the foam with worbla to help keep the headdress light.

Once all the piece of foam were wrapped in their worbla counterpart, I tested strength at the seams to ensure this headdress was not going to fall apart. Despite the bond between the worbla pieces being strong, I wanted to give extra reinforcement and lined the interior of the top of the head seam with regular worbla:

After that, it was all about assembly and shaping the piece to fit my head. Since the headdress goes over a hood I would shape the headdress on my head while I was wearing a hood to ensure the shape would not be too small for the actual hood.

Depending on how the hood will be secured to my head, the headdress will most likely be velcroed onto the hood and strapped to ensure it will not fall off!

It’s all in the Details

Now that the base of the headdress is done we need to add the details. At first I thought of cutting out the details in the foam prior to pressing the worbla on top, however, that would jeopardize the stability and integrity of the headdress. In order to keep the headdress lightweight, a foam overlay would be the best method. Using the same pattern drawn out in a vector before hand, I cut out another set of foam pieces, but this time with the holes cut out:

After cutting the detail out of foam I took some Super 77 glue spray and glued them down directly to the worbla. It came out to look like this:

To finish off the headdress I needed some feathers. To make a feather I printed a vector pattern of a feather from Una and cut it out of felt. To get a nice stiff feather with some weight, I cut out the pattern twice and stuck a small stick in the center. I glued the two halves and the stick with some more Super 77 Spray Glue. To tint the tip black, I used some regular spray paint (safe for felt/foam) and sprayed the tip black:

After that, just rinse and repeat to make a few more feathers and you’re done! You’re ready to be an all powerful warlock and summon your feathered friends for aid in battle.

Photos by Eurobeat Kasumi Photography

AllieCat Art and Cosplay shared this great tutorial on how to achieve the look of her painted armor for her Lieutenant Allison Jakes from Privateer Press: Warmachine which you can see the build gallery of here.

What I used:

Iwata Studio Series Smart Jet air compressor
Iwata Eclipse Gun
Hot knife
Drybrushes
Rust-Oleum Black Primer Spray Paint
Createx Airbrush Paints
P3 Paints
FolkArt Acrylic Paints
LePage Wood glue
scotch tape
paper

*I mixed the Createx and P3 together for the perfect shades of Cygnar Blue/Yellows

1. Before painting your armor piece be sure to clean the surface of any remaining residues. For the damage/scratches use a hot knife to cut into the worbla at random and be careful not to cut too deep. PSA: If you’re not sure if it’s on *DO NOT TOUCH IT* A good way to test is flicking a bit of water on it to see if it sizzles =]

2. To begin priming your piece smooth I used 4 layers of woodglue. *The advantages to wood gluing is that the drying time is much faster but you can’t sand it while Gesso takes longer to dry and requires more coats but can be sanded. It can also be used in combination but whatever your preference is will work fine!

3. After the wood glue has dried smooth out any lumpy surfaces by wetting your fingers and buffing it out or sanded smooth if you used Gesso.

4. First prime the whole piece black with the Rust-Oleum spray paint as a basecoat.

5. Then switch to the airbrush to create the darker blue base coat and careful to not go too far to the edges to create the black-blue gradient.

6. After thats done airbrush on a lighter shade of blue as the middle highlight.

7. And then airbrush the white highlights.

8. After the blue is done mask off the inner areas that you want to keep blue with the scotch tape and paper then airbrush the inside edges white.

9. Airbrush black in the corners and create a white-black gradient on both edges.

10. Remove the tape and make sure everything looks nice, don’t worry too much if some paint seeped through cause you can just take care of it in the dry brushing stages. =]

11. At this point all the airbrushing is complete and you can switch over to your Acrylic paints and dry brushes.You can now paint all the detailing bolts and trim silver.

12. Using black drybrush along all the edges and creat a drop shadow around each bolt/all the trim, cleaning up any white around the edges.

13. I then painted the Cygnar crest black and added all the drop shadows around it then painted in the damage/scartches with more black and subtle while/light blue highlights along the edges of the scratches to help make them pop.

14. I carefully painted the crest in with yellow and it took 8 coats to make it really pop.

15. After the crest was done I outlined it again with black to make the edges super crisp and dry brushed in some brown for low lights.

16. To finish it off I dry brushed on a few white highlights to the crest and voila! Painting complete heart emoticon

Now the only thing you have to consider is if you want a gloss, semi-gloss or matte finish to your armor. I personally use Semi-Gloss but it also depends on what kind of armor/prop you’re painting. ^^

**One thing I would advise though is to paint all your armor first to make sure it’s all matching before putting on the final finishes**

This was my first time using this painting method and as well my first painting tutorial so I hope you enjoyed it!! Big thank you to Vancouver Cosplay for all the awesome progress pics and to NefeniCosplay for giving me ideas of how I wanted to paint my armor

Una, The Skyhunter’s Headdress

Airbrush and Drybrush Painting Technique