Mitternacht Cosplay: Griffith

Griffith Millennium Falcon armor - Berserk

Bio
Character: Millennium Falcon Griffith
Origin: Berserk
Year constructed: 2013
Debuted at: ConFusion: 13

Why

I could go on and talk for yeeears about him, but I won't. I chose to make this costume because it's absolutely beautiful. My boyfriend is actually the one who talked me into doing Griffith in the first place since he wanted to do Guts, so I started reading it because I was asked to, and then I was stuck. I chose the Millennium Falcon armor because it's my favorite, and since my boyfriend was making the Berserker's Armor thye would fit well together. After a while, our Berserk group grew and grew and culminated at NärCon Vinter this year where we had a huuuge Berserk group, a real dream come true!

How
The first thing I did was to draw out the patterns for each armor part on hard paper. I did this even before ordering my material, to get a feeling of how much I would use. I had already decided that I would do the costume in Wonderflex, due to several reasons. The most prominent reason being that Wonderflex is better than Worbla when it comes to larger, flat surfaces, which Griffith has a lot of. It's also easier to carve and make patterns on since it's thicker.

Various armor pieces in paper.

I also drew out each feather form directly onto the pattern, again to get a feeling of how the end result would look like. These would later be carved out in the Wonderflex to give a sense of texture.

What's really important when you're making a full body armor is that the pieces resonate with each other and gives you full movability, hwnce you need to try on the pieces in paper before you actually make it (or you don't HAVE to but it helps). The pieces also need to look good size-wise next to each other, which is extra important with a costume with this many pieces.

After I made all the patterns I got some help from my boyfriend to tape them all together to try them on. Obviously you only need to make one set of patterns for legs and arms.

Trying on the finished paper-armor!

When everything fit as it should and I felt like I could move properly, I ordered my material and got ready to work. For this costume I required 2 jumbo sheeths of Wonderflex (a thermoplastic which can be heated and shaped) and around 50 A4 sheeths of craft foam, mainly.

Working with Wonderflex is time consuming and really tests you patience if you haven't worked with it before. It takes a lot longer time to heat than Worbla, and hence takes longer to cool down, which can be both a good or a bad thing.

I used a half-sandwhich method for this costume (you take a piece of wonderflex, put it on top of a sheeth of craft foam which is just a tad bit smaller, and wrap the Wonderflex around the back of the foam, hence creating a sturdy piece with Wonderflex on the outside), because since Wonderflex is so thick I won't think it neccessary with a double sandwhich method (where you use Wonderflex on both sides of the craft foam).

Chest plate almost finished, unpainted.

The hardest part was to get really flat surfaces, since Wonderflex tend to create air bubbles between the Wonderflex and Craft foam, but I found out that heating the Wonderflex and pressing it on a hard, flat surface until it cooled off was the easiest way, and it turned out great.

The feathers were hard. I tried a variety of different methods and tools, and in the end I ended up with using a cheese slicer and a bread knife to make the little dents, folds and lines. I wanted to make the feathers elevated enough to cast natural shadows, which you can clearly see on the picture of the unpainted chest plate here.

The two external feathers on my collarbones were elevated out from the chest plate, allowing me to tie my cloak around them :)

The arms took a lot of time since they have the largest amount of feathers on them. The upper armguards are fastened with D-buckles and velcro, and so are the lowere guards. The elbow guard is simply held in place by the sheer pressure of the other two pieces :) I was actually able to move quite well in the arm pieces, something that was very important since I wanted to be able to flip my sword around a lot! The shoulderpads were also fastened very loosely for the same reason.

For the elongated parts (like the four long feathers on the elbow) I used wonderflex to cover the back of them as well, since the back would be visible from behind me. I did this with all feathers that were long enough to show their back.

The legs were a challenge. I needed to be able to move around freely and walk normally, and I didn't want the pieces to be heavy either. The legs are made up out of five pieces - feet, shin guards, two knee-pieces and upper leg armor. Since Griffith fights a lot from horse back, the back of his armor is completely bare (making things a lot easier for me!). Every leg armor piece is fastened separetely to the leg, but also latch on to each other. To make it all stay up, I have long velcro straps that hangs from below my chest piece, and that goes under my shirt and tights to hold up the upper leg guards, like a pair of invisible super fancy stay-ups. It spreads out the weight of the leg armors to my shoulders and back, making it easier to move and walk in the armor pieces. Everything is fastened with D-buckles and velcro.

The base blade of the sword is made out of oak, courtesy of my boyfriend. I sanded it and coated it and painted it in silver chrome to make it shiny and pretty. Even though it's very thin it's super sturdy, oak is a very good material for swords, even though it might be a tad expensive. The hand guard and golden ornaments are all made in worbla, and I also padded the handle to get a better grip on it. The sheeth is made out of fake leather, and is attached to several leather straps that goes around my waist.

The only part of the costume that isn't worbla is the "skirt" part, which is worbla. Seeing as Wonderflex is very sticky and fastens to itself very well, I didn't use any glue at all for this costume, except to fasten the velcro and D-buckles.

I also used two different wigs for the costume; one that is very mang accurate and super curly, (I curled it myself by braiding it strategically and the nboiling the wig). But for NärCon Vinter I wanted a new wig since I wasn't very fond of the sheep curls, so I bouth a beautiful long wig from Arda wigs which I tousled and cut, and I'm much happier with that wig, even though it's less accurate. It simply looks better.

Thoughts

I had so much freaking fun in this costume it's insane.We had the opportunity to shoot with several talented photographers in these costumes, such as Mattias "Artano" Persson, Shila Forsman and Gabriel Kulig. The photos are all gorgeous and you can view some of them just below here.

Sadly, I no longer own this cosplay. It was stolen from me when someone broke into our car and stole it, and I haven't seen a trace from it since. It's very sad seeing as I put a lot of work into it, but "luckily" it was stolen after I had worn it many many times, and I'm not sure if I would have worn it again anyways. Still sucks though!

I'm certainly not done with Griffith, I really want to make his Golden Age armor as well as his Ball outfit, along with my wonderful group and friends that is my Berserk-family, haha <3

Photos
Click for larger versions!

Photos by Tomasz Niewiarowski, Shila Forsman, Mattias "Artano" Persson, Gabriel Kulig and various others that I don't know the names of sadly.