It’s winter. It’It’s winter. Is cold, it’s wet and the weather is just disgusting in Germany. No photoshoots, no conventions, nothing. BUT: Enough time for a new project!

You maybe remember my old project from spring 2011: The Protoss Wizard. This costume, a mash up of the Protoss from Starcraft II and the Wizard from Diablo III, was originally planned for Blizzcon 2012. Sadly this event was canceled some weeks later and so I also canceled my costume. Well, now Blizzcon 2013 was announced several times now and a new reason to restart with this project followed.

So, just let me introduce the Protoss Wizard again: Originally it’s a Battle.net portrait which was available in the Diablo III collectors edition. Sadly, this tiny image is really the only reference I have, since it’s not a real ingame character. And now we come to the hardest point: This time I’m not only the costume creater, this time I’m also the designer.

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The helmet was pretty much the only part I had a reference for it, despite of I changed it a bit. Last year I already built a Protoss Wizard helmet, which was round, more threedimensional and bulky. I really experimented with different materials, but at the end I noticed that I just don’t have enough money to sculpt, mold and cast the whole armor. Instead of I used the thermoplastic material Worbla for all armor parts.

To create the wig was anything then easy. I wanted to use hair instead of these Protoss typical tentacles since I still wanted to stay a human in this costume. So used a usally black wig from Mycostumes, made a tons of braids and filled it up with dreadlocks and more braids. Oh god, it was a lot of work, but at the end I’m pretty satiesfied with the result.

Well, and then it was time for the armor…

A huge amount of casted gemstones…





Hours of gemstone painting…

And circuit testing… (In this video you’ll see how to create these gemstones.)

For this costume the painting of the armor is even more important than in other projects. Since Protoss are recogzinable for their runes on their armor, I tried to build my stuff pretty easy and give more focus on the final paint job.

So the first test for my husband’s painting skills in this project was a hair accessoirce and I guess you agree with me, that he did and awesome job!

I also really enjoy to play with LEDs and followed one of the images in my dream again: A glowing Protoss energy source in form of some Wizard scrolls. The design is pretty much the same design I used for my own Wizard, but instead of paper I used this time a transparent surface (plexiglass tubes) and adjusted two LEDs in every scroll. Visit me on facebook to see their full progress.

While the two, three weeks of this project (You see I used my Christmas holidays well!) I dreamed almost every day about this costume and in every night my image of the final costume changed. I made over 5 different designs over the time and never knew what I will built next.

So the most details and parts of this costume were created pretty spontanous and without any plan or fixed design in mind. Despite of I tried to followed a special theme. I worked with squared but also round shapes, used thin and thick lines and tried to create a special look.

I still plan to place the focus on my head and torso. So I tried to build pauldrons, headpiece and breastplate detailed and huge enough.

In the same time I gave the lover armor parts a bit less attention. The hip armor turned out pretty simple…

And also the bracers were not as big and complex as usual.

Despite of I was not able to manage to create a simple leg armor design. I don’t know… I just started to build then and added here some details there some details…

… and at the end I’ve got a pair of a pretty nice but a bit too detailed amor boots. Well, well… I still didn’t tried the full costume on and hope this visual weight won’t destroy my plans about focus and balance of the Protoss Wizard. Guess, I will just chance some parts a bit if there is a need, but so far… aaaawwww, I just like my leg armor!

Well, and my current work is… applying Gesso, sanding, sanding, more sanding, adding a basic paint and be amazed by Benni’s painting talent. I guess, only some weeks are left until this costume is done and I will be able to show it to you pretty soon. Until this feel free to follow all my current work on facebook, order also some Worbla and try this awesome material or ckeck out Benni’s painting tutorial.

See the final progress steps in the next post: Into the Light