Fan or Obsession?

I saw Narnia, Prince Caspian last week and thought they again did an absolutely fantastic job. Disney is doing a great job with these films, if not entirely keeping every aspect of the storyline (Does any movie?). Also, having been an active member in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) three years ago, I naturally spent a good portion of the movie contemplating armour designs based upon the movie designs. The Narnian armour of course could be anything the costume designer wished it to be, yet the Talmarine's armour with the brigandines and Spanish helms definitely hit home with 15-16th century European designs... Well to keep it short... My old SCA armour needed replacing... I want something more mobile, and well, I have a small desire to win my companies Halloween costume contest each year... Good movie... Nice costumes... yepp, here we go, let's make Prince Caspian's costume, the battle armour costume.

I have spent the past, oh, week researching the design of this outfit, scouring the web for pictures and video clips of Caspian. Let me just say I had no idea who Ben Barnes was or that it is the actor's name who plays Caspian before all this research, but fan girls and their forum signatures have branded the name into my brain solidly now... sigh.

By day four I realize this is going to suck! But of course once decided I would not back down... Now I have also decided at this point that I am not going to stick 100% to the design from the movie... Again the plan is to make this armour fightable, aka upholding to SCA fighter standards. One thing I will need to change right off the bat, is the chainmail. Caspian has a full Hauberk and Coif for his battle gear. The chains, however are either welded or just butted. If I am going to wear this chain into SCA combat, butted mail would just be destroyed! So hours of Google Searching has of yet not delivered to me a merchant selling rounded riveted chainmail rings. (I want to make this thing myself and save myself $300-$500.)

Day five I am at work and find a big cardboard box in the hallway and immediately think Jackpot! And, into my car it goes. (It was to be trashed, I checked...)

Well my son was not to be left out of this Armour process! So he got a little suit to keep him busy for a while. :-)

I took the advice of a Brigandine construction site I found and decided to make a mock-up version using some cardboard and scrap material first. That was definitely a good idea given how much I learned from that simple experiment. Let me just say it has not turned out very well so far.

I will upload the progress on that tomorrow as well as the current portion I am working on, the shoulders and vambraces. I have some experience playing with leather tooling and leather armour crafting so I figure this to be one of the simpler portions of the outfit to make. But, it is late, so more tomorrow!