Dark World Loki (Pic heavy)

[Larcwide]

Hi all,

This is my first post here, and I wanted to show and document my build of Loki from the Dark World (with provisions being made to allow it to change to a reasonable Avengers armoured Loki).

The costume will be my first fully custom drafted costume, rather than from a pattern, which combined with only a couple of hours a week to spend on it means it will be a long term project. I actually started around April 2021, but feel enough progress has now been made to share it.

After lots of searching for suitable fabrics, I settled on the following:



My camera washes out the green quite a lot, so here is a very close up photo better showing the colour:



The top black is a simple jersey fabric, acting as a thin base for everything else to attach to and for the tunic's non-leather chest/collar.
Then we have some aluminium mesh for various accent areas and the jacket "coat tails"
The green is a crepe
Then there is brown faux leather which has been watermark ink and a mixture of black and clear matte embossing powder in the shape of the triqueta pattern
And finally some black faux leather for the majority of the costume

I started with the sleeves, which I wanted to be seperate to the rest of the tunic, to allow better movement when wearing it, as well as making the costume easier to get on and off. First I made a muslin to get the right size and sort out the final pattern.

The sleeves are made up of about 25 invidiual pieces each (plus embelishments). The layered strips are done by attaching a strip, folding it over the stitch, then basting in down before the next one is stitched on top of it. It starts with a couple of green layers, then onto the patterned brown. To create the pattern I 3D printed a large stamp of the repeating triqueta pattern:



I had put a coat of varnish over the embossed pieces to stop the embossing from peeling off, but very quickly realised that it wasn't going to work. The varnish simply wasn't flexible enough and immedietly started cracking and peeling when the fabric was folded or moved too much. Here are the varnished pieces vs an unvarnished:



I removed the varnished pieces and replaced with unvarnished. These held up a lot better, but with all the movement during sewing and wear testing the embossing has started to peel away in places. If anyone has any ideas for "sealing" the embossing onto the faux leather, I would be extremely happy to hear them!

After many, many layers I finally had something sleeve like:



After attaching, some mesh was added around velcro wear the wrist and forearm armour will attach (gaps were left on the upper arm for the extra armour from Avengers to be attached later):



I then started work on the armour pieces. For these pieces I designed the pieces in Fusion 360, then 3D printed them. Unfortunately without a resin printer I wasn't able to capture all of the fine details. So what I did was wrap the 3D prints in Worbla, then use the lines on the 3D print as a guide to carve the lines into the worbla. I then used a philips screwdriver to create the "mesh" pattern on them.



After priming a layer of gold paint was added:



Then some weathering applied:



Next up, the rest of the tunic!

 

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For the tunic, early on from looking at references I decided I wanted an all in one stand up collar for it, which took a few attempts to get right, but I am really happy with the result of it:



You can also see I have an invisible zip un the front, which will be fully hidden by the chest plate. I also added an invisible zip up one of the sides, as the tunic is still tricky to get into.

The process for the layered stripes was the same as the sleeves. Stitch, fold, baste, stitch next one. The only difference to this was the last stripe on the right of the tunic, above where the armour scales will go. The bottom of this needed to be hand stictched folded under so it ended on a fodled edge.



Once the leather parts were done, a copy of the "skirt" parts were done in green and attached. The skirt parts are actually stitched to the blank area where the armour scales will be, so that the weight isn't all pulling on the stripes. The back of the tunic is just jersey fabric, in an effort to allow some breathability to keep cool. This does cause one issue that you'll see later.

The chestplate is made of a foam base, with a copy of that cut into the three parts on top.



The golden armour part was covered in Worbla, had the lines carved into it, then attached and painted/weathered.



Green fabric was then added onto the base across the bottom, while faux leather was stretched over the two other upper parts. These were then glued on, velcro added to the back to match the ones already added to the tunic and the chestplate was done.

The armour scales were a simple design created in Fusion 360 and 3D printed. They were then sanded and painted in the same way as the other armour parts.



I added snaps to the top of the shoulder of the sleeve undertunic and this tunic to keep them nicely lined up (and to reinforce the undertunic to help support the weight of the sleeves). Then I added zipper stops and more zipper stops all around the bottom of the skirt area, plus the end of the sleeves. Trying to figure out the colour of the stops on different parts is tricky, as different light makes them look different colours (plus different scenes seem to be different). For the tunic I have gone with silver, as that is my interpretation of what was used.



All together worn for the first time:



Which is where the issue of the jersey fabric on the back comes in. Being a lot more flexible and stretchy than the leather, the tunic bends in the easiest place. This leaves the front lying quite "flat" across the front (I compare it to a Lego figure). My plan for this is to add a couple of velcro "ties" to the back to pull the front round the sides (think like the unused ties on the back of a waistcoat).

With the tunic all but done, the trousers will be up next.

 

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This post brings me up to date with the build so far - work on the trousers.

I started with a standard trouser pattern for a base of the lightweight jersey fabric, then heavily modified the same pattern to make the various leather parts, which were layed on top. Around 5" of the jersey fabric was left uncovered on the outside of the legs above the knee, where armour scales would be attached.

The trousers have a "jodphur" like area of a different colour on the inside back part of the legs. It is very difficult to find any decent photos of this part of the costume though, as there aren't many shots from the back and when there is the tail coats of the jacket cover it. Other photos are generally dark. The Hot Toys figure has it as a burgandy colour, and with this shot of the costume from Avengers I decided that was what I was going to go for on mine:



Here is one of the legs as a work in progress (complete with helper):



Once the rest of the leather parts were attached they were stitched together, and invisible zip added for the fly and a waistband added:



I left the area below the knee as the jersey fabric, as I had decided that I was going to make the boot cover be a part of the trousers rather than a seperate part.

Here you can see I patterned some more brown leather and loosly attached it to the leg - I didn't fully stitch as I wanted there to be some movement to make it look like it was seperate. The cover straps were then attached, then finally some unpatterned brown wrapped around and attached on one side with snaps. The side without snaps would later be had stitched on, with stitching between the zipper stops to hide it.



Once the other cover was attached, both had the customary Loki zipper stops added and it was on to the armour scales. Lots and lots of them. Each leg needs rows of 6 scales, with 9 rows needed to reach under the tunic skirt, so 54 per leg.





108 prints, primes, base coats and weathering later I started attaching. And very quickly realised that half of them were useless as the left leg needed the scales to be mirrored to match the direction of that leg. Doh!



54 mirrored scales are now being made up and once attached the legs will be finished.

 

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The trousers are basically done. A few minor tweaks to be made after the last test fit mostly around the seam allowances, but nothing major.



I was quite happy with getting the burgandy nicely "jodphur" like around the seat.



I was worried that all of the pieces around the knee would restrict movement, but they are still very easy to walk in.



Finding "soft" leather like boots, instead of the usual shiney, hard chelsea boot look was surprisingly difficult. In the end I found these Geox Samuele boots which work well and are very comfortable from my limited experience so far. The trousers have elastic stirrups to keep them pulled down over the boots.



Finally everything I've made so far together. Since this photo I have shaped the chest plate to be a lot more rounded to remove the hard corner at the top of the tunic strips.



Now onto the final piece (for Dark World) - the jacket.

 

[sugachim1310]

Wow, this is looking great!! I cant wait to see more, keep up the good work