Make Your Own Skyrim Helmet

Make Your Own Skyrim Helmet

By: Steve on April 4, 2012

We recently celebrated our Exec. Creative Director’s birthday by creating a full-blown Dragonborn Helmet from the enormously popular Skyrim videogame.

We’ve had a few emails from people asking how it was made, so we thought: Blog it!

The helmet was actually masterminded by our Studio Manager, Hannah, who has a natural affinity and enthusiasm for arts and crafts.

Despite having never made a Medieval ‘helm’ before, Hannah decided that papier-mâché would be the best route to take and, in the absence of the recipients head to measure for size, a large balloon was used as an approximation.

The balloon was wrapped in strips of paper taken from the China Daily (but you can use any broadsheet or tabloid that you have to hand) that were laid on with thick wallpaper paste.

The detailing around the helm was, again, sculpted from strips of paper covered in thick wallpaper paste.

“I thought I’d get it done quite quickly, but it took about a day and a half. The horns were quite fiddly.”

The painting process was undertaken by Charlie, who brought with him no small degree of useful experience having spent many a splendorous hour painting miniature warriors and weapons at the Games Workshop.

To create a solid base to work from, the helmet was given an undercoat of Chaos Black and Burnt Umber was used for the horns.

The metallic effect was achieved by building up layers of black and metallic silver, and dry-brushing with a finishing layer of White.

The horns were dry-brushed with a mixture of Burnt Umber and White, with a tiny bit of black to take the edge of their brightness.

To give the horns an organic feel, Charlie created some horn-like textures, or ‘bone grooves’, with an even lighter brown.

Further dry-brushing with a bleached bone colour (in much the same way that the metal effect was achieved) the whole thing was covered in PVA for to give it the kind of durability that acrylic paint just doesn’t offer.

He notes that it was a different experience working to a larger scale than the Games Workshop models he is familiar with. We know, however, that it wasn’t his first time building a life-size prop though as he also crafted his own Mjolnir, hammer of The Mighty Thor, for his trip to Bestival a couple of years ago.

Overall, Charlie is very pleased with his work, despite his girlfriend suspecting that he doesn’t actually have a real job.