We're building a Battle Angel

Hello once more dear readers and today we delve into the world of engineering, craftsmanship and carpentry with nothing more than a hot glue gun and some string.

As part of an upcoming project, we have been given the task of creating a battle angel costume to be used for the lead role. When we heard this, it sounded awesome, then we realised WE had to build it and we'd never done anything like this before.

So we mind mapped and what we came up with was a full suit of armour with wings expanding out the back. Huh. Guess we need to buy a suit of armour then:

Looks pretty nifty. Do you like him? He's called Sir Chafes-A-Lot (thanks to Theo Snoddy for your suggestion). Now to decide how we're going to fix a pair of wings to it. We may want to use this suit for further projects, so we can't alter or damage it too much. Therefore, what we decided was to remove the backplate and attach the wings via straps to the chest plate.

Now to figure out how the wings would work. As this project was filmed rather than photographic, we wanted them to be mobile and retractable. So we designed a pully system in which the wings would be wide open at rest and when you pull a rope, the wings will fold in.

Now onto construction. Again, going for a more natural feel we decided to use a mixture of bamboo and wood, tied together with twine and reinforced with hot glue. This allowed for more give from the materials as opposed to using something stronger, like metal for example. We also opted for rubber bands as our resistance. This also gave us a more natural feel as the elasticity of the band would allow the wings to bounce and move around, lessening the rigidity of the structure without ruining its structural integrity.

So here's a collage of our progress:

And this is where we are right now.

Marcus here giving us some real warrior vibes. As you can see, it's just some decorating and we're really proud of how it turned out. You'll have to wait for the final product.

Thanks for giving this one a read. Check out some of my other blogs for more Fire & Iron and other filming content.

Bye for now!