The Emperor - CCEE 2010

This isn't the greatest shot but I really wanted to put something up on my first foray into the world of Cons.

I decided to revamp my Emperor of Mankind kit for the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2010 a month before the event. Essentially, this thing was put together in twenty days and I just about lost my insanity in the process. Everything from the original had to be redone except for the laurel crown and, as you can see, the design changed considerably. (Again, I would have LOVED to make the giant suit of gold power armour but yeah... we'll get basic Space Marine power armour figured out before we attempt that. )

I'm going to put together a separate 'tutorial' on the various pieces at a later date but for now, this costume includes the following:

Red tunic with three separate sleeves on each arm. I wanted to give the illusion of multiple tunics but keeping heat-stroke in mind, I maintained one body piece but then made a white 'undertunic' sleeve, a fake leather 'armour' sleeve, and then the normal red sleeve of the tunic, sewing them all into the same armhole.

'Leather' armour. This has a basic zip-up body 'vest' with segmented torso pieces over top. It was based partly on the lorica segmentata of the Imperial Roman Army and partly on Fulgrim's torso armour in Sam Wood's brilliant painting: [link] Fulgrim is an evil bitch there...

Pauldrons or shoulder armour. These are made of 6mm craft foam and covered with the same fake leather used with the torso armour. The detailing is done with 2mm craft foam and the raised edge is created with that rounded pillow edging bias tape.

The gauntlets. Again, 6mm craft foam sewn to basic leather gloves and then sewn into a tube. The segmented fingers are made from styrene scales - each individually cut and heat shaped - which were sewn onto leather strips and glued to the glove fingers. This was definitely the most tedious part of the construction.

The waist 'cummerbund.' You see a lot of these sash-type-things on Imperial commissars and I thought 'Why not? The Emperor can have one too.' Because, frankly, they look really sexy. As Commissar Cain is demonstrating here: [link] This is made by gathering a fairly wide piece of cloth into two leather holders which are then laced up at the back like a... ahem... corset.

The belt. Made of leather which I tooled to give a nice raised edge and then dyed a dark brown with antiquing gel. Of course you can't see any of that here. The buckle is covered with white fake leather and decorated with 2mm foam.

The boots. You can't see them here but they were an adventure unto themselves. Bought a very cheap pair, cut the terribly wide tops off, made a new taller, thinner top out of vinyl, stitched it around the ankle hole, and then contact cemented leather over top of the entire works. These were based VERY much on *StellarReverie's fantastic construction methods for her Arwen boots: [link] The boots I made are actually way too.... girly for the Emperor and I'll be making a new, more robust pair in the future. I told everyone that I had just borrowed them from Fulgrim for the day.

That should be everything. All in all, this is constructed predominately of craft foam (6mm and 2mm), styrene, fake leather, real leather, and various fabric. It took approximately a hundred and fifty hours - probably the most amount of time I've spent on a costume yet. Throughout the last week, I was running solely on Tim Horton's coffee, adrenaline, and "Burn It to the Ground" by Nickleback, which seems like the ultimate Astartes practice cage song if you just don't listen to the lyrics. But it was an ABSOLUTE BLAST wearing this at the Con. Many LOLs were had (particularly when we went to the Calgary Women's Show next door to the Expo and someone walked up and handed me a copy of the New Testament - 40K inside joke...) and I made some GREAT friends in the process (you guys know who you are...).

I have yet to do a real photoshoot for this costume but I hope to over the next couple of months so there will be MUCH better pictures up then. Hopefully I will look less like the chick version of Russell Crowe in them. PS If they ever make a Horus Heresy movie, I vote Sam Worthington to play Garviel Loken and maybe a younger Timothy Dalton for the Emprah if his chin wasn't so weird.

Plans are already in the works for the next Con in October and next year's Expo. This includes the two 'pretty boy' primarchs (who could that be) and a particular Dark Apostle who was responsible for stirring up some serious shit back in the Great Crusade...

As always, the Emperor of Mankind and anything 40K-related are all (C) to Games Workshop.