HOW TO BUILD A JUDGE DREDD COSTUMEBY KEVIN GOLDSMITHARM ARMOURThen the arm armour. I studied the 'Making of' book, and cut 2 pieces 2 1/2 inches by 10 1/4 inches by 3 1/2 inches and bent it length ways. I then cut 3 sausage-shaped holes, and backed them with spare bits of plastic. I then made a 1-inch border to go on the upper and lower surfaces - the lower one to make the assembly look thicker. For the sides of what I can only describe as strap holders (2 on each arm), I cut strips 7mm wide and 3 inches long, bent them, and built them up to form this shape: I needed four for each 'wall'. I happened to notice on one publicity shot, that Dredd's arm armour had three strap holders. I checked the film, especially those scenes where he and Judge Hershey arrest a food droid. Good job I did! Sure enough one shot showed that his armour had three straps %%&***&^*&^!!! I was tempted to scrap them and start again, but in the end I made modifications which meant that now only one of the sausage-shaped holes was still visible, but I compensated by cutting a 2mm wide strip and gluing this in the remaining holes, so that it looked as if there were two very close together: After building the 'walls' I glued further pieces (three for each piece of armour) to the top of the walls, and then trimmed the sides and bevelled the ends. For the straps I used trouser belts - well the buckles do look similar, and managed to scrounge up six - five had gold buckles and one was silver. Doing one at a time I fed the belts through each of the holders on the armour. I then belted the armour to my wrists, and marked on each belt where the maximum length of it would be. Then taking each belt in turn, with the ends of the cloth belts covered in Bostic glue to stop them from fraying, I removed the odd bits of cloth belt from the leather ends with the holes in by undoing the stitching, after which I re-stitched the main belt to the leather end. With the all leather ones I simply overlapped the joints by about an inch and sewed them - and that was that done. (1) Top and bottom view of armour (2) Gauntlet and armour on left arm. Straps made from trouser belts.The back of hand detail can be seen more clearly. (3) Assemblies of underside and topside of gauntlets and arm armour can be seen more clearly here.
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Judge Dredd and 2000 AD © Rebellion A/S 2008. |