Hobbit Costuming for Desolation of Smaug Premiere in Manila

All the hard work crafting the Hobbit-themed costumes come down to this: the Manila premiere screenings (Dec 9 & 10, 2013) of The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug. I present the attires and costume elements that passed through my production worktables. [Click on the images for higher resolution.]

Lord Elrond's full costume worn by my son, Dante.

These next photos were taken at the advance screening for the New Zealand Embassy in Manila.

Here are the costumes that incorporate my contributions: Thorin's scalemail armor, belt buckle, and toecaps; Fili's leather vest; and Kili's accent (collar/vambrace/baldric) scales.

My bragging rights:

The Hobbit: Lord Elrond Costume: Summary

It took me 6.5 months to build the Lord Elrond costume from scratch. I worked on the project sporadically though, mainly because I had other things to do, but sometimes because I was stumped. While I tried hard to get the whole project organized and planned out, there were times when I would suddenly realize that something I initially thought would work wouldn’t. At that point, I would do something totally different (like Fili's vest) until a lightbulb of an idea would come up.

Thankfully, I managed to make it all come together. On the whole, I’m quite happy with how the costume turned out.

This page serves as the jumpoff point for the build pages of the various elements of my Lord Elrond Costume. May you all be inspired.

Costume Preparations

Tunic

Armor Vest

Vambrace

Pauldron

Hip Armor

Chest Armor

Cape
Boot Armor

Costume Completion

Circlet

The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug Premiere Screening Dec 9, 2013

The Hobbit: Lord Elrond Costume: Final

The final touches were attaching the stud covers to all the bare studs on the vambrace and boots, spraying acrylic sealer to all the surfaces covered by Mod Podge to seal in the tackiness of the gloss finish.

Here’s the “Wearing Sequence” panel I created to show how to wear the armor pieces in order.

And here’s a shot of my favorite McDonald’s Minion, Dave, who says, “Ba-nah-naaah”. 

My showcase poster:

… and my outdoor shot to show the natural color of the armor. Also shows how hot I was, falling out of bed and into my husband’s boots at 11 am -- I mean, literally hot -- it was 95F in the shade that August morning.

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The Hobbit: Lord Elrond Costume: Boot Armor

The boot armor that I made is actually a cheat. On the stock photo of Elrond, I couldn’t tell if the armor was actually overlapped bands with silver edgings. For my purpose, I decided to just use a flat piece of vinyl, backed with heat-curved foam, and accented with silver polymer clay crisscrossed stripes. Then I used loops (same system as the back of the vest), to wrap the “armor” (more like a shield) onto the boot.

So that’s what I did.

I punched holes where I would attach the loops for the back laces, brushed on some Mod Podge, and attached Velcro to the bottom tabs to anchor the armor to the sole of the boot. Easy as pie.

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The Hobbit: Lord Elrond Costume: Cape

What’s a Lord without a cape? This particular elven lord wears a royal-red one what flows sleekly with every stride. I found a bright maroon microsuede fabric at JoAnn’s on sale. Three yards was more than enough for my son’s height. The pattern was easy, just a straight cut with a slit for both arms.

My challenge was how to make it sit on the shoulders squarely and still lie flat behind the neck no matter how tightly the armor vest is worn. My solution was a garter/elastic strip along the back of the neck, and snaps to attach the cape to the shoulders of the vest.

I had to hand-sew the gather on each shoulder and use hot glue to attach the vinyl strip that would have half of the snap. I attached the other half of the snap onto the shoulder of the vest.

My mistake was I didn’t look to see if I had a brown elastic band, which I had. It would’ve been less obvious than the white one I used (and I was too tired to re-do it).

Here’s a photo of the snap solution.

I made a couple of medallions using polymer clay. I pressed the raw clay on a round metal pendant that had swirlies. After baking, I painted it with silver, then bronze acrylic. I superglued the brooch pin hardware to the underside so that I could attach it to the cape. Later on, I made the medallions shiny with Mod Podge.

And this is the finished cape on the dress form. It works!

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The Hobbit: Lord Elrond Costume: Chest Armor

The chest armor, which is the highlight of the costume, was actually the biggest challenge for me. It took me a long while to adjust the lames to fit the measurements of my son. I stared at the Elrond photo for hours, trying to figure out how to make the lames look that way.

I was just glad I had the time, and the craft paper, to do so many revisions and adjustments to make it right. Until finally, I got it right. Almost.

Notice that my original paper pattern had seven lames on each side. At the last minute, I decided to have only six because my son does not share the 6’4” height of Hugo Weaving. When I took out the bottom lame, the chest armor actually looked better.

So, I taped the final lame patterns to the vest and drew all the overlap lines. Then I punched the holes through the patterns and the vest, where the actual studs would be.

Then I traced the pattern onto the vinyl, cut the vinyl, prepared the clay, attached the trim, and glossed with Mod Podge -- same procedure as the vambrace, pauldron, and hip armor. Drawing the overlap lines on the chest pattern helped in positioning the clay swirl pieces on the final vinyl bands.

The closure for the vest was the next decision point. Buckles or laces? This time my son and I agreed on laces. The laces will make the vest more adjustable and comfortable to the wearer. Either way, he will need a second pair of hands to close the vest but the laces will be more forgiving. In any case, they won’t be seen under the cape. So I attached loops to the back of the vest using studs.

And I hammered the lames in place.

And here’s the chest armor, front and back. It wasn’t that hard after all! Well, it became easy after I finalized the paper pattern.

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The Hobbit: Lord Elrond Costume: Hip Armor

The hip armor was my next challenge. Again, I’m thankful for the dress form because without it, I would not have been able to do the math on how to curve those plates around the hips and meet up in the back.

I saw the pattern that was posted online, but I still wanted to do it my way. So my paper pattern is different. Mine has a belt and tabs hanging down to serve are posts for the lames/plates. It was crucial that the pattern is accurate, all the way down to the location of the stud holes.

Then I cut the vinyl and punched the holes.

Then I made the silver clay trim and swirl designs.  Yup, a lot of clay work.

Then I laid out the swirls, superglued them in place, and painted on the Mod Podge.

Hammer the pieces together, and there you are!

What’s not shown in the photos is I attached a belt (also using studs) to the waist of the hip armor assembly. It closes with a buckle in the back.

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The Hobbit: Lord Elrond Costume: Pauldron

I had made a prototype of the pauldron (shoulder armor) to help me decide if I was really capable of doing this project. I used a brown marine vinyl that I was thinking would be what I would use for the entire costume. But somewhere along the way, I realized that that brown was too brown. Elrond’s armor was more reddish-brown. So I went back to the JoAnn fabric store and picked up a redder marine vinyl. I bought three yards for good measure.

Then I started working on the clay trim. I had made the swirls for the prototype, so it was just a matter of tweaking a little bit to fit the plates that I had scaled down somewhat (more proportional to my son’s build). Shape the clay, then bake.

Then I cut the vinyl to make the pauldron plate shapes, and superglued the clay trim.

Coat the pieces with Mod Podge to make them shiny, hammer the studs to assemble the pieces, and there you have it. Oh, I had put a foam base under the second to fourth plates just to give the vinyl pieces a more stable contour.

Upper arm and lower arm pieces done!

Then I thought I’d start making the stud covers. Out of clay, of course. I used the studs to mold the clay and let the molds stay on them for the baking process. Then I made them shiny with some Mod Podge too.

This last photo shows how I attached the pauldrons to the armor vest. I riveted a couple of vinyl tabs extending from the vest’s shoulders and attached snaps to those and to the corners of the pauldrons. Makes wearing the pauldrons much easier (because you can attach them after you've secured the chest armor vest on your torso).

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