Witcher 3 Geralt Cosplay

[Dermax]

Witcher 3 Geralt Cosplay

Hello, fellow Witcher fans. My name is Mike. I have been an actor for a number of years and a member of several medieval reenactment groups. My wife is an amateur costumer, who has been cosplaying since long before I knew her. I've been a Witcher fan since the first game and, like you, have been engrossed in the character and the world for years. I say all that, to say this... over the next few months I am going to be working on a Witcher 3 Geralt cosplay based off of the trailers and pictures from e3; real chain, real leather, real linen. This may or may not be the first Witcher 3 costume completed, it may or may not be the best, but it will be the best that I am able to do.

It is my hope to use this thread to show the progress of my work. There will be days... even weeks with no updates, depending on work schedules and the difficultly of the piece I'm working on. In the end, however, I hope that you'll enjoy the ride and leave feedback.

It is my hope to debut this costume in November. No pictures yet, but I hope to have some up this weekend.

 

[Aaden]

Awesome! Keep us posted and if you need any motivational cheering, don't hesitate to drop by and ask!

Working with the actual materials can be hard and time-consuming. But as you're an experienced reenactor, I guess you have some experience with each material and trust you to be able to pull it off. Can't wait to see some first impressions/concepts.

 

[Sam44]

Show some pics of your wife too.. just kidding, will keep an eye on this .

 

[iris.]

I can't wait, when you show us whole costume in November. Maybe earlier?
Good luck!

 

[Dermax]

Thank you all for the awesome responses. So here, already, is my first update and it's all about chainmail.

With war upon the North, Geralt has taken to wearing armor that is heavier than in the past, but retains the mobility for which Witchers are known and feared. The basis of his core protection comes from a slightly longer than waist length chainmail shirt, known in period as a Haubergeon. Geralt's Haubergeon is sleeveless and reinforced with leather strips on the sides... which will come at a later date. In my opinion the upper chest armor is a leather Cuirass worn over the chain mail and is not attached to the chain underneath.

For my version I was lucky enough to already own a steel, full length chainmail hauberk from my reenacting days. It was the correct 4-in-1 weave which we saw in the CGI close-up in the E3 trailer. Unfortunately it is butted mail, which is when the rings are simply bent closed. Geralt's mail is riveted, which is where each ring is joined by a small metal rivet which locks the ring in place. Here, for the first time, time and money have to trump %100 authenticity. Riveted mail is prohibitively time consuming and/or expensive. Since my mail will be worn in conventions and not in a Striga's lair, I settled for the butted mail.

My aforementioned hauberk was thigh-length and full sleeved. A couple episodes of "King of the Hill" and a pair of nippers later and the chainmail was cut to size. As an added bonus I now have a sheet of leftover chain for the shoulder pieces.



That's it for this first installment. There wasn't a super lot to talk about since it was essentially just cutting down a piece that I already had. Future episodes will have more pictures as well. Now, if you'll excuse me... I have a gambeson to quilt.

*Edited* Although the CGI movie of Geralt at roughly 0:28 seconds of the Debut Gameplay Trailer shows riveted mail, the in-game shot at 0:35 seconds shows butted mail. In case of conflicts I'll be relying on the in-game character model, here then is one spot where the in-game model actually makes things much easier than the CGI version.

 

[nukeheal]

You might want to wait. We had costplay competition few months ago, I think we might have one soon again. All the best

 

[Demut]

Why should he wait? Wouldn’t he be allowed to enter if he had already shown it here previously? That would be dumb.

 

[aleeg91]

Also, good cosplays tend to be laborous, the sooner he starts it, the better it'll be whenever a competition starts.

 

[Dermax]

It's my hope to have this costume all ready to go by November 1st for an Anime Convention that my wife likes to attend. I'm going to keep banging away with that goal in mind. This will, however, by necessity, be a work in progress until the game is actually released. It's my final plan to have a fully kitted out Geralt, complete with accessories, dice board, cloak, and maybe a bottle or two of Temerian Rye

 

[Dermax]

Update time!

We're currently working on two projects: Geralt's gambeson and chain shirt. Both projects are far from finished, although with luck they might be done by the end of the week. I just wanted to check in because, honestly, hearing from you guys is one of the main reasons I'm doing this. Consider this something of a teaser />/>

First of all the gambeson. No pictures yet, I'm afraid, but it's pretty close to complete. The gambeson is a padded, quilted garment worn underneath of mail. Chain mail has excellent defense against cutting, but does absolutely nothing to protect against blunt force trauma. Geralt's gambeson is clearly seen only on his arms, but we can infer that it continues beneath the rest of the armor. I've made some adjustments to traditional gambesons, which I'll get into more once the piece is finished and ready to be shown. The material is 100% natural linen, the padding is 100% natural cotton. This is important because modern fabrics, like polyester, don't breath as well as natural materials, which would make the gambeson uncomfortably hot. It's also nice because the devs put so much effort into character models that you can actually see the weave of their clothing. There's nothing like linen and it's clearly what Geralt's gambeson and pants are made of.

The chain shirt is coming along more slowly, mostly because of the process of lacing leather to chain. The leather reinforcements on the sides of Geralt's chain shirt are, in my world, made from six ounce buffalo leather. The lacing which is, again, cotton, was dyed blue; roughly the color of Geralt's pants, since the colors of the ties seem to change depending on the lighting and the pictures. I should have the Aiglets in the mail on Thursday. Much like the gambeson, I'll go into more detail once the piece is finished. For now I'll leave you with the picture below. I cannot stress enough how much of a work in progress this is. Besides the obvious aging of the leather, the pieces need to be attached at the top, the back pieces need to be added in, the lacing finished, and edging added around the bottom. This was mostly a mock up just to make sure that everything fit!



Until next time! Have a good day!

 

[Aaden]

After re-watching the trailer, my impression is that those laces you added so far, those holding single leather pieces together and fixing it to the chainmail, are just plain thin leather straps. Only the ones on the sides (supposedly to pull the back and front portion together tightly, idk) are thicker cords like the ones you're using now.

Other than that, looking really good! The curves of the leather are spot-on. Any plans yet on how to make it possible to pull it to a tight fit? Will you remove some side parts of the chainmail shirt between the front and back leather pieces? Or are you aiming for a looser fit and just add the straps for show? Or did my unexperienced crafting eyes miss something and it actually works some other way?

Need pictures of gambeson (and some elaboration on how you did it)! I really want to see how it turns out, self-made. I'll have to get one myself, sooner or later, but I'm currently not willing/able to spend that kind of money. So, maybe making it myself is a valid alternative, if it's fairly easy and considerably cheaper.

Could you upload future pics at an external hoster and link them here in higher resolution? I guess your pictures are in such a tiny resolution because the forum won't allow you to upload more, right?

 

[Dermax]

Hi! Just a short response, I'm afraid, because I'm in the process of waking up and getting ready for work.

Regarding the straps/lacing on the leather pieces, the way that I have them attached right now is via the long blue lacing that comes out and is tied at the bottom. This makes the pieces full adjustable, since I can tighten or loosen the pieces at will. Due to the stretchy nature of chain mail the "give" from the lacing is important to having it fit right. Between the stretch of the leather and the give of the lacing, the mail can still work as mail. If it was more permanently attached the mail wouldn't be able to stretch and you'd lose range of motion and mobility. It's the same reasoning behind lamellar armor. That's the technical reasons. The character model clearly has four ties protruding from the armor; while they could be the old medieval version of tying your pants to your shirt to keep them up, I surmise that they are, in fact, the ends of the cord used to lace on the leather. As for the material, it very likely could be leather cord. At 0:34 seconds in the gameplay trailer we see a nice close-up that appears to be braided and the same color as the ties holding on the leather. In the scene at roughly 0:48 it appears that the color of the lacing matches the color of the pants. As this is one of the few clear daylight shots, I went with it.

Due to the way it's laced on, I can tighten or loosen the entire piece without having to remove rings. When I provide more shots (larger, hosted elsewhere, the forum limits the size of your upload), it will show better. Also I had to keep it a bit loose in order to fit the gambeson underneath. Once the pieces are assembled, I'll be able to demonstrate better.

Finally, regarding the gambeson, I'll have a rough "how it's done" with the release post. It's not a super difficult piece to make yourself. Commercial gambesons fit like a sack, which would destroy the 'tapered' look I'm going for, are extremely hot, and very movement constricting. If you're using it for live steel or reenactments, those are necessary evils. For cosplay, however, you can get the same effect, but thinner, more breathable, and still accurate by working on it yourself so that it fits and conforms to your own body.

A last word on price. Costuming can be as expensive or as cheap as you want it to be. So far I've spent exactly ten dollars on materials I didn't already have. Granted, not everyone has linen or chain mail or a buffalo hide laying around their house. The mail was around $80, the linen around $20, and the hide (which has been used for many projects) a $100 investment. You could cut that way down by using cotton instead of linen or buying small pieces of leather rather than a full hide.

And, well dang it, that post went a lot longer than I had anticipated... so it's off to work I go />

 

[Dermax]

A few photo updates of the mail shirt and gambeson. I uploaded these on a third-party website, but they are still cell phone pictures and chainmail doesn't photograph well because of how much it reflects the light. Hopefully it will be better than the pictures you can upload on the site here. If, for some reason, they show up grey at first, just refresh the page.

The Front

The Side

Lacing Details

Lacing on the Sides

Compare the lacing color and pattern to this.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the progress so far. There are still tweaks to do. The gambeson needs to be hemmed to the right length and heavily aged to match the darker color of Geralt's (this linen was originally bought for a Witcher shirt from the first game). The leather, likewise, needs some aging to reach that beautiful dark patina. Most importantly the bottom of the leather strips need to be edged; they are cut at different lengths right now.

Honestly this was probably the most time consuming part of the whole costume. Chain mail is made to flex. Leather not so much. A significant portion the lacing had to be done while I was wearing it, which was not easy, since it would not otherwise hang right. Anyway, that's it for now, hopefully you enjoy it.

 

[Dermax]

Been awhile since I posted last. I've been working on the vambraces and will have them done within a day or two. Most of the last month has been spent aging the pieces of the costume that are more or less done.

Before

After

The aging on the leather is pretty easy to see and was accomplished by spraying a couple layers of olive oil on the leather over a period of time. The linen gambeson was stained with tea; although it doesn't show up quite as well in the picture you can definitely see a difference in the before and after shot. I'll soon start work on the cuirass, which will most likely be the most difficult piece of the costume but will start to bring the whole thing together.

 

[Yurtex]

Good to see you didn't abandoned your idea, hope to see final result!

 

[Dermax]

Turns out that "finished by November" actually meant 2014... rather than 2013 lol! As the game developed, so did alot of the screencaps so that I wound up having to redo a ton of what I'd previously thought "finished". With the definative "Geralt guide" put out a while back, I was able to further refine things. Suffice to say, however, that this project isn't dead and will be an entry in the Cosplay contest!

Since it's not finished (and I don't want to spoilt the suprise for the devs anyway), I won't be posting any finished pieces. But I will post the occasional 'WIP" shot becuase 1) I thrive on attention and 2) it's an absolute labor of love that I want to share with my fellow fans. Once the contest is finished, I'll post the whole thing for everyone to see.

So you can essentially disregard alot of what's posted above this point (since it's outdated), but I'm reviving this - rather than starting a new thread - so that anyone that cares to can see what goes into making a costume as well as how much has changed in the 14 months since my last post lol!

 

[Dermax]

Work in Progress

I just wanted to post a few "Work in Progress" pictures. We're about six weeks out from the due date!

A couple of TLDR points from when the thread started - over a year ago lol...

1) This is a "period" costume. The leather pieces are real leather, the soft pieces are linens and cottons, the exposed stitching is hand done with waxed thread, the mail is steel.

2) All pictures are WIP. Even as I'm posting this I'm seeing tweaks and changes that I can make to be more screen accurate. Feedback and constructive criticism is welcome, just be nice

3) Due to the size difference between me and the model things will fit better once we "go live". By point of comparison, I have a 42" chest while the dummy's is 36".

Shirt and Pants

Full Body

Jerkin close up

Tomorrow afternoon is "riveting day", so with luck I'll have some pictures of the strapping, belt, etc. up for the weekend.

 

[HellKnightX88]

Lookin' good

 

[Dermax]

Belt

I was able to finish fabricating the belt last night and begin working on the strapping for the Jerkin.

I hope to be able to show a few "action" shots of making things as I roll along. Once I get in the zone, however, I tend to just work. I did manage to get one decent picture of peening the rivets. When working with "armor grade" costumes, nothing beats the good old rivet... there's a reason it's been in use since the Bronze Age.

Belt in Progress

One of my favorite parts of costuming is aging pieces after they're made. With the belt structurally completed I put on a coat of "age". Notice the difference in the leather between the picture above and below. The belt is basically finished, it will get a bit more aging... and recoloring of the rivets... as we get closer to the due date.

Belt

Finally, I wanted to show a "sneak peek" of what I'm working on next; the iconic shoulder pauldrons. This is among the last "major pieces" that I need to work on and it's going to be a time consuming process. The under layer of the pauldrons is 11/12 ounce leather, shaped wet. It needed to be this thick so that it wouldn't droop when the mail was attached. The obvious caveat applies: the dummy has 37" shoulders, I have 50" before adding on the other layers of the costume. But that's what sneak peeks are for... showing you progress!

Sneak Peek

I plan on the next update coming next Tuesday. Feel free to subscribe to the thread for the latest

 

[Dermax]

Progress

It's Tuesday and here's an update as promised! I celebrated my birthday today by spending six hours in the shop. I finished the strapping on the chest piece and got to work on the shoulders. As it's been a long day, I'll just post of picture of the fruits of the day's labor.

Progress

I've got alot of non-Witcher stuff going on this upcoming week, so if I'm lucky I should have something to post next Wednesday!