Making an Orcish Dagger (Skyrim)

For my Shaheed the Kahjiit cosplay I also wanted to make a dagger. While not my first choice, I decided on making an orcish dagger. It is rather easy to make because it does not need to look as polished or refined as most other daggers found in the Tamriel.

I made it from a combination of Worbla and mouldable plastic, both are thermoplastics so you have to watch out you don’t burn yourself while heating them! If you have never worked with one of them (and especially with mouldable plastic) I advice you to take a little piece and just toy around with it. With the mouldable plastic it is important to get a good idea of how quickly it cools down, since you can only mould it while it’s hot.

I started by searching for a good picture of an orcish dagger that I could trace. By pure luck I found a line drawing of one on google images. I resized it until the handle was just big enough for my hand and then traced it. I suppose you could also print it, but I didn’t want to take the risk of having the size altered in any way. Cut it out and if necessary, which it probably is, tape it together. You should now have an orcish dagger made of paper!

We’re gonna use this to cut out the right shape out of a sheet of Worbla. I used some scraps I had laying around so mine is in pieces (I decided to strengthen the handle of the dagger, due to the fact that it isn’t in one piece, you should’t have to worry about it). If you Worbla cut out curls up or anything, heat it up on a flat, smooth surface (I like to use the kitchen counter or the stone cabinet top in my bathroom) with a hairdryer. Simply point it at it and watch as it becomes flat! Watch out it doesn’t deform in any way! Use your paper cut out as a reference if needed.

  

 

 

 

 

Now it is time to get busy with the mouldable plastic. Take a big bowl that can sustain boiling water. Things are going to get wet and unless you want the plastic to stick to your table, use a plastic tablecloth or something similar to protect the surface your working on (and of course your work itself).

Throw some mouldable plastic in the water. First we’re gonna cover one side of the blade. When you are confident you have enough material ready for holding to cover it (but no sweat, you can add or remove bits later). Roll it into a long ‘string’ that is a bit shorter than the blade your trying to cover. Place it on the Worbla when it is a mouldable as possible (reheating the string recommended), in the middle, with the string not covering the tip.

This is the moment where it gets tricky. You have to work fast enough, but if you rush to much… well, who knows how it turns out then? Spread the mouldable plastic over the Worbla base to the edges. Not everything has to be perfect but in order to get the ridge detail later on, keep enough mouldable plastic on the middle of the blade. If the mouldable plastic hardens too fast, you can just hold it into some hot water again, but watch out that the Worbla doesn’t deform to much! If it does, simply keep the dagger on a flat surface with the shape of the Worlba as close to it’s original shape as possible while it cools down. You can still work on the mouldable plastic like this. (You won’t see any small deformities in the Worlba later on, since the entire dagger will be covered with mouldable plastic. Just make sure to keep the hilt straight.) If any places on the blade aren’t covered, prepare some additional mouldable plastic and place and push it into place. Reheat the entire blade to forge the two parts together.

Next is the small part on the other end of the dagger. Make a small ball of mouldable plastic and shape it much like you dig on the part of the blade. The last part added to the dagger is the hilt, so don’t worry on that just being a thin strip of plastic for now. Add the other side of the blade and then the other side of the smal part on the other end. If you need to reheat the blade or the small tip (for example if you want to forge the two sides of the dagger to each other) only do so one half at the time. Either the small part or the blade. It is harder to keep the hilt straight at this point so it is not advisable to do anything to deform it at this point. It is not a disaster if it happens, simply straighten it out again.

Now we add the hilt. Make two strings from mouldable plastic, one for each side of the hilt. Place them onto the Worbla and shape them into a straight handle as best as you can. Add two small thin sheets of mouldable plastic to the sides, so that you can no longer see the edges of the Worbla base. Reheat everything (but do it on half at a time as described before, this time so you have something to hold onto, since you cannot put it down when it is cooling off) to make sure everything sticks together.

To get the details right, we’ll use a hairdryer. Things like the tip and edge of the knife can be straightened out now. The ridge detail can be be given a sharper definition at this time and this is also the time to fix any small faults or mistakes you perceive in the knife (I tried to get rid of the finger prints I left while shaping the plastic). You point the hairdryer at whatever part you need to be fixed or want to work on. Focus on only one part of the knife  The heat of the hairdryer will not melt everything, just the surface. When heated, small lines and irregularities (such as fingerprints) tend to disappear.

If you are satisfied with the dagger’s appearance, let it cool down. After it has cooled down enough, it’s time to paint it. I haven’t found a kind of paint that won’t chip after you use it for a while, but as soon as I know, I’ll make sure to send word out. I used acrylic paint for the dagger. It covers well, but as stated, doesn’t bond with the plastic well enough. Pick or mix a nice colour together, a darker green is fine. For more colour nuances, poorly mix it with a little black, so the colour differs on different areas of the knife. Get on enough layers over the whole dagger so that you no longer can see the original colour of the plastic.

To complete the look, after the paint has dried, take some ribbon or cut a long strip of black cloth. Wrap it around the hilt. Glue the beginning of the ribbon either to the hilt or the ribbon itself (whatever you prefer, I glued the ribbon to the ribbon) do the same with the end of the ribbon. Wait for it to dry…

And that’s it! You should now have your very own orcish dagger!

Making Shaheed the Khajiit

People who have ever heard of Skyrim, Oblivion or the Elder Scrolls series might have a vague idea about what this is about. For those who don’t: Khajiit are a fictional race in this game series, a sort of a hybrid race between humans and cats.

And I made a cosplay of one. Well, I’m still working on the armour, but the Khajiit part is pretty much done. I want to wear it to Dutch Comic Con this year’s easter weekend. In other words, the weekend after next. Shaheed does not appear in any of the games or the like, I made her up myself.

It looks creepy like this, doesn’t it?

In order to make this Kahjiit, which I very creatively named Shaheed the Khajiit, I started with by making a ‘mask’ from Worbla. I tried to make it with a moving jaw so that it would look more natural when I speak. That jaw stopped moving when I glued fur to the mask… So much for that plan.

I added ears and modelled the nose to look like a cat’s. I used foam for the form and some moulding
plastic for the nose and left the nostrils free so I could breathe through them. I like cosplaying things, but air is pretty important too. I had to duct tape some parts of the face in order keep sharp points away from my eyes, keep the nose properly in its place and to fix a slight asymmetrical issue around the mind. A construction of metalwork assures that it doesn’t fall of my face while wearing it.

After making sure it fit well and didn’t fall apart after shaking my head, I started gluing on the fur. Faux fur which was expensive and whose shipping costs were even more expensive, but it was worth it.

Even the mask is happy with the fur!

After hot glueing the fur to all of the mask it was time to start cutting the fur, or else I would just end up being a giant ball of fur, who could only see fur and whose mouth would be full of fur and believe me, this fur does not taste as good as it looks. 

 

 

 

I’d like to thank my good friend Griff for helping me out with the fur and how to work with it and everything. Without you I would’ve screwed up so bad. I just know it.

And after cutting the fur I had to start painting the pattern I wanted onto the fur. But before that I had to sew a few last patches of fur into the right place so the neck would look smooth and finished, and I had to put a zipper into the back so I could still fit into the thing.

When it was time for the paint I ended up using a combination of acrylic paint and water based paint. If I had to pick something I would definitely do different, it’s the paint. whatever you do: use ink, waterproof indian ink or something. It still looks okay I think, but it’s just that, if I had to do something differently…

Even though it was my first time working with fur and only my second self made cosplay I’m really happy with the result. Now on to finishing the Thieves Guild Armour!

The end result!

 

It All Started With a Wig

I promised to upload this two months ago but I kinda forgot. Sorry V-chan!

Well, three wigs to be exact. Three identical wigs to be even more exact. They’re black, short wigs. They were rather cheap so I bought three. Since I obviously couldn’t wear three wigs at the same time, I gave one to V-chan. After trying it on she said to me: “These wigs would be great for crossplaying!”

That’s where we got the idea. The plan was simple: we dress up as guys and go to our local mall. There we’d just see what happens. (If you want to get technical, it’s not exactly crossplaying, but crossdressing, since we weren’t cosplaying anything.)

The wigs more or less forced us to go with a sort of ’emo-ish’ look, but neither of us really minded that. We even put on a little eyeliner to complete the look, but we didn’t use any other make-up.

So we did. And somewhat against our expectations, nothing special happened. Nobody really reacted to us. I caught a few people looking at us a bit weirdly, but that’s pretty much it. We weren’t offered some sample products or flyers targeting females, so maybe everything went better than expected. In conclusion: either we looked so much like guys (almost) nobody noticed a thing, or nobody gave a damn. Maybe both.

In a department store we spent some time in the male clothing section and after that we ate something. We picked apple pie and tea, since hey, who does not enjoy those? We took a couple of pictures while we were at it before we went home.

Voila, V-chan

C’est moi (Alex)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We showed the pictures to one of our friends and she said, I quote:

“You guys could be guys!”

the First Post Ever

‘Cause you need to start somewhere.

We’re random people, weird people. At the moment two humans, maybe three in a bit, maybe more, maybe less. We like randomness first of all. But we also like cosplay, drawing, dressing-up in general, reading, writing, gaming, imagining, Dungeons and Dragons, and many more things. Some weird, some random (also some fairly normal things, but that’s just between us).

And we decided to share our love of randomness with the world. Not ’cause we’re bored or anything, just because we help people expressing their own weirdness. Because weirdness keeps the world alive.

So expect to be seeing: cosplays, costumes, drawings perhaps, maybe other things. Only one way to find out, stay tuned. Wait to find out if we don’t forget.

We’re not perfect, we don’t expect to be and thus we don’t expect our creations to be perfect either. But we like what we do and make and take pride in it.