Equipment upgrade

I've finished the buckle for my Assassin's Creed II costume. (Part 1 – making the cast – is here.)

The first step after taking it out of the mould was to trim off the flash and sand the rough edges. The resin sanded quite easily.

 

Then I engraved the patterns on the arms. I hadn't done these patterns on the clay sculpt because I wasn't sure how to do it without disrupting the shape of the arms. I could do the designs on the 'badge' in the clay because they were very fine but I thought the lines on the arm would displace too much clay to be done nicely. I had tested engraving on my practice piece and it looked promising but I'm not sure that it actually worked that well on the final article. I found the engraving was inconsistent along the lines in regard to how wide or deep it was. In the end result the lines are still a bit too shallow to show up clearly under the paint and didn't catch the black wash as they should have.

This is the pattern I engraved. I cleverly forgot to take a picture of the engraving itself.

After the engraving I needed to prime the surface. I used one part sealant, one part acrylic. I had tested painting resin with spray paint but found that in the weeks it was kicking around my sewing table a lot of the paint had come off. So I went with a different approach for the final article in hopes of a more permanent finish.

Next came two coats of silver acrylic and then a black wash (watered down acrylic).

I thought it looked pretty good at this stage, if a bit darkly smudged in places.

Lastly I did a coat of pewter rub'n'buff. I'm not 100% sold on this – it didn't get as shiny as I'd hoped (it's pretty hard to buff in those small crevices) and a bit too much of the black wash got covered over. That said, it's still eminently usable. 

To make the belt I used a (very cut down) corset pattern. I put the mini-corset inside a tube of red fabric. The seam on the tube is open behind where the buckle goes. I then screwed the buckle to the fabric.

I made sure the fabric beneath the buckle was loose enough to look draped.

The corset laces at the side and one end of the red tube tucks inside the other one. The overlap is covered by a thinner sash (not pictured).

Assassin’s Creed belongs to Ubisoft.