Bard the Bowman impersonation cosplay costume, Luke Evans impersonation cosplay costume
Darrell Green
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Inserted Update 7-11-24 (now including hair and makeup effects, completed bow/arrows/quiver and stained/weathered costume):
Final split picture comparison with Luke Evans pasted in on right side of the photo.
Outdoor pose, redone, with the above listed improvements:
And one pose from the boat scene:
The prop process and makeup effects walkthrough will be found at the end of this thread (below)...
Now Back to the original 2022 posts:
Bard the Bowman from The Hobbit - This build was only possible because of a temporary job in Salt Lake. Elk hides are abundant in the area and I was able to purchase a fully tanned hide for 100 dollars. I trimmed out arm holes and wore the entire pelt as a single piece coat. The arms, leg wraps and hand wraps are all scrap cuttings from the same. I grew the hair including facial hair and colored it to match. The shirt was hand sewn and the pants were a found thrift item in size 8x. I made the shoes from a prefab mocassin kit painted to match. Sashes, rope ties and belts were the final touches. I intend to retake posed photos when I am down to a comparable weight like the actor.
Final split picture comparison with Luke Evans pasted in on right side of the photo.
Outdoor pose, redone, with the above listed improvements:
And one pose from the boat scene:
The prop process and makeup effects walkthrough will be found at the end of this thread (below)...
Now Back to the original 2022 posts:
Bard the Bowman from The Hobbit - This build was only possible because of a temporary job in Salt Lake. Elk hides are abundant in the area and I was able to purchase a fully tanned hide for 100 dollars. I trimmed out arm holes and wore the entire pelt as a single piece coat. The arms, leg wraps and hand wraps are all scrap cuttings from the same. I grew the hair including facial hair and colored it to match. The shirt was hand sewn and the pants were a found thrift item in size 8x. I made the shoes from a prefab mocassin kit painted to match. Sashes, rope ties and belts were the final touches. I intend to retake posed photos when I am down to a comparable weight like the actor.
Post edited by Darrell Green on
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This is me getting caught working on my costume in the living room. I was notified by my wife that I was "shedding" too much and needed to take myself outside. I would have said it was too cold outside if maybe I hadn't been wearing an entire elk hide at the time.
This was my max facial likeness percentage from my likeness app:
The prop build thread is located on therpf.com at https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/bard-the-bowman-impersonation-cosplay-costume-the-hobbit-trilogy.345653/post-5472970 which covers the staining and weathering of the costume, the creation of the arrows, bow and quiver and little details about each step. Here, I want to focus on the makeup effects and staging.
I had intended for quite some time to lose weight and retake the final pose pictures. After a 20 pound loss, this went to full stop for a long time. I decided to work on the crazy idea of the comb over (comb forward) and found it can be done but is very time intensive. I have only successfully done it twice.
The process starts with pulling the hair back and masking off the hairline intended. Then spraying extreme hold hairspray onto the skin. Wait for this to dry to tacky.
Pulling the hair up into a flat wall, I sprayed the area that would come in contact with the sprayed hairline already on the skin.
I then pulled the hair forward, carefully, and pressed the two tacky surfaces together, like the process used for contact adhesives.
I waited for this to dry and then I sprayed the same hairline from the top while, again, shielding the remainder of hair. I flipped the hair up along the top but separated out the hair that would lay straight back from the temples as does Bard's hair. I styled each accodingly as the top needed to be pulled up for full body but the sides were tight, straight back and intended to look tied back.
This created the entire additional hair coverage shown in the red circled area, aka, THE WORLD'S GREATEST COMB OVER!!!!
In the following, Luke Evans is pasted in on the right half of the photo for comparison:
I shaped the eyebrows, mustache and added brushed in makeup lines for faux hair in bare locations to match Luke's. The side chops were added after the above comparison photo as it was one of the things to strongly show as a remaining difference. All of the hair along the front is part of the comb forward, even on the sides. My hairline is fairly receded as shown in a previous picture, above.
I used Plexiderm, a tip from Chris Ellerby, to eliminate my allergy eye bags. It works very well. I did not do my usual 3 day keto diet, a process that does an amazing job reducing face puffiness and making me look much slimmer.
My jawline was not a true fx fix but rather a long term use of mastiha resin gum, basically it is exercise gum:
After completing some outdoor poses, I returned to my hobby room where I have my photography stuff set up. I tried to take pictures with poses that were inspired by actual scene poses. Here are my final Bard the Bowman pictures ( more will be slowly added as I do background overlays with movie scenes). My rule, for myself, is no photoshopping me or my props, so all are real world effects. I will often borrow scene backgrounds from the movie and may change overall color tones to match the background lighting but no touchups or fixes on me or the costume.
/Chris
The following two are scene overlays. I posed purposely with the intent of cutting out my photo to overlay Luke Evans in scenes from the movie. This includes changing some lighting to match the scene tones.
All three were taken by me using my mouse on the floor to trigger the remote camera shutter.... with my foot.
I have so many more pictures to go through, I hope to get one higher than 85 but, if not, it still keeps my faith in the ability of the facial app to see the differences.