His Brother's Keeper - Crafting a Diablo Crusader Shield

Blizzcon is over, and with Blizzcon comes amazing cosplay. This year, I wanted to be the Crusader from the concept art for Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls. Unfortunately, I didn't get the armor fitted properly in time, so I couldn't wear full gear. I did, however, still get to walk in my favorite pieces: the shield, which I call His Brother's Keeper, and the double-headed flail, which I call Great Vengeance and Furious Anger.

My greatest mistake this year was in succumbing to the pressure to be competitive. I found myself struggling to finish pieces that I wasn't completely satisfied with the quality, and that were untested before I discovered they didn't actually fit me. It should be obvious, but the work that I wasn't enjoying also didn't turn out as well as things I had fun with. Parts of the costume were a chore, and they suffered. My great successes were in the shield and the flail, which had their challenges, but I loved making them and I love the results. These are the lessons to carry forward.

Please enjoy a gratuitous amount of photographs of the shield build, and a few of the flail as well, with a few comments by me...

The shield main body after being palm-sanded and heat-knifed from a 72x48x6-inch block of pink foam. Those frustrated gouges from the heat knife would eventually become cool battle damage. 

I figured a huge shield that spends a lot of time with its tip in the dirt could use a replaceable leather shoe for protection. I made this by templating the shield's tip with aluminum foil and duct tape, and transferring that to EVA. I then hand-stitched the two pieces with upholstery piping and reënforced it with hot glue.

I made a lot more templates for this costume, like this paper template for the frontispiece. When in doubt, I would start measuring things and seeing how elements in the art compared to each other, and then I would usually find the solution.

Here's the kite with the shoe and a 2mm craft foam overlay. The divots are meant to simulate a hammered effect on the bronze. The hammering is a bit aggressive, but it was done with a Dremel tool and a 1/2-inch grindstone, individually, by hand.

The typical way I've seen to give support to costume shields id to have a strong layer sandwiched between layers of foam. Since my shield is carved from a single block of foam, this wasn't an option. So I drilled 1.5-inch holes down through the body of the kite and installed to pieces of PVC piping, cut to fit flush to the shield's surface. The PVC was slathered generously with epoxy to make it stick.

The pipe then served as a mount point for bolts and washers, which were held rigid with expandable foam. As far as I can tell, I haven't seen this method before, and it worked fabulously. I flung this shield around my arm all day and noticed not the slightest amount of tearing around these mounts. If it's appropriate for your project, give it a try.

The bolts let me mount this martial arts foam bracer, which acted as my arm band. This eventually was too weak to hold the final weight of the shield, but I thought it was pretty smart at the time.

Here's my crude flail handle: PVC cap, corner molding, wood dowel, a banister topper, wood glue, epoxy, a screw, and a large ring bolt, all from Home Depot.

The cuff wasn't enough to make the shield wearable, so I installed a PVC handle using the same method as before. Easy peasy.

The shield at its current weight of 6 pounds was quite comfortable. This would change in time...

This small belt sander was a boon for shaping the cross frontispiece, made from four layers of EVA that I stacked and sculpted (not unlike myself -_^ )

Rough mockup of the assembled shield for heat-knife battle damaging. I wanted to have the pieces together so that gashes that hit the kite and the cross would match up. At this point I still thought I was going to paint each piece separately. Nope...

Two pieces epoxied together, after a coat of Plastidip that I didn't like.

After a coat of Epsilon plastic coating. The divots on the kite ate up a lot of the Epsilon, so I wound up with not quite enough in the bottle for two full coats all over. I gave it what I could.

Primer white spray.

Here's the flattened craft foam applique that would go on the flail heads. I came up with the design by joining images from Tyrael's sword, with a bolt of energy striking an image of Diablo, and that energy is passing through the bodies of the Crusaders. I wanted to give the basic iron flail a little flash and I think this turned out great.

Bronze spray paint with a dry-brushing of copper.

Great Vengeance and Furious Anger

I used a craft burning tool to take this image from the Book of Tyrael and put it on leather. This leather would be my handle-wrap for the flail.

Here's the wood-tone paint job on the back of the shield. There are loads of tutorials on YouTube for painting a faux wood look to your needs. I feel this paint job was a huge step up from the Training Dummy armor.

Remember those big, nasty gashes? I imagined those as the result of some big, flaming claws or blades or something horrible, and I turned them into fire damage. Rough brushing and buffing of some grey and black craft paint, making sure to get deep in the cracks.

With this giant piece of wood, why not a little carving to remind you of your sweetie back home? For this I Dremelled through the paint job with an etching bit, then painted over in a light tan and towelled off the excess. Töbayaz + Molly.

Gold spray on the cross. Easy job, but the masking is tricky.

Back to the other side to paint the iron supports. I used a hammered iron spray paint and dry brushed a little grey over the rivets.

Back to the other side, getting ready to paint the shoe.

Full paint, with a faux leather finish on the shoe. The faux leather technique is pretty fun: basically lay down a light color glaze, then layer on on eor two darker glazes, and while that dark color is on you mash crumpled-then-uncrumpled sheets of plastic wrap on it to get the wrinkles.

Full paint on the back.

My gem turned out pretty rough in the front, but here's the acrylic rods that I set while it was forming. This gave the gem a secure post to socket it into the shield's face.

By now, the shield was too heavy for the martial arts cuff to be useful, so I switched to these leather tool belts. I trimmed them, and they mounted beautifully to the shield. With a little darker paint to match, and an EVA cuff for support, the held the weight of the shield. Really, I'm pretty impressed with how tough the whole rig is.

A couple with the gem in place, Queen-size hotel bed for comparison.

Finally, a couple costume selfies! Here I'm wearing a modified costume out of the pieces that worked, basically so that I can show off this beautiful shield and flail.

I really did love making this shield. Turns out at around 12-15 pounds, it's a bitch to carry. Even if I had made a working set of armor, I doubt I could have held it all together all day. I probably won't revisit this costume without major modifications, but I take satisfaction in knowing that I built what I wanted, and in some ways it was even better than I had imagined.

What I'm Playing:

• Main Campaign: Diablo 3, Hearthstone
• Side Quest: Steamworld Dig, The Binding of Isaac