Kratos

Kratos - God of War: Ragnarok (custom commission)

Let me set the scene; Derrek is enquiring about a Kratos
commission, I am very excited and during our conversations regarding the
specifics of the design, ask if he would be willing to give me some (all)
artistic license, because I HAVE HAD AN IDEA!

Derrek is of course intrigued by this and I tell him a tale
of armour that not only looks exactly the same style as Kratos wears in
Ragnarok, but it embues the rich history of his story arc, and has historical
and mythological décor and pop culture easter eggs hidden in plain sight!

DO IT he replies…and so it began, a lengthy build, filled
with research, experimentation and multi material integrations!

More details and finished armour images can be found below these fascinating glimpses at our WIP from the build process.

So, What did I actually do?

The main story arc is something I really wanted to work into the 3 layered belt design.

So for the original brute, his ruthless (God of War) beginnings I created large, waist encompassing panels. The edges are bound, as he is and the sides are scribed with an ancient symbol that represented these elements of his past life. The other panels are blank because he knows there is more to life, he is just unaware of where he fits into it all at this point.

I lived to regret hand stitching a repeating small rune all around the edge of every single panel, but it was well worth the effort!

The belt sitting on top of this is representative of him being very entangled in the whims of the gods in his life, and realising that he has done horrific things in their honour.

*side note*

I was on the train to another comic con and spotted a lovely bloke with runic tattoos. I immediately instigated conversation about my Kratos work and he allowed me to take a picture of his knee which had the most relevant imagry he felt I might be able to use. My plans of where to include this changed and they were left behind for future projects, but if you are reading this, thank you fella!

The top belt is all about his redemption arc, being a better Mr. Kratos than he was before and tentatively building more solid human connections.

All of the pattern work was traditionally hand tooled and all stitching was hand saddle stitched.

I highly reccommend the 3 books I used for research, the art of God of War Ragnarok is GORGEOUS!

The decorative belt buckle I carved from a sheet of 3mm aluminium using needle files and my trusty ancient Dremel. If I am honest, the original design was two of them, mirrored and locking together, but my Dremel died it's final death near the end of the first one and I just didn't have the spoons to hand file another!

The strapped "skirt" was manufactured over some 40mm wide elastic for comfort and I had a wonderful time distressing each strap with my pirate cutlass, wire wool, glass paper and various rocks! I highly recommend this for stress relief hahaha!

We have not yet managed to get our lovely Derrek together with a Tog yet, but here are my finished piece images I took before shipping it all out!

The easter egg...

It was such a silly little detail that I discovered when i was looking into the video game, but I always like to put a little something personal into things I make (when appropriate)

So when I found out that there was a connection to another game that I have spend many hours watching my husband and son play, I knew that was going to be my egg!

Enter sackboy - They apparently created a load of Kratos skins for sackboy in the game Little Big Planet, so I designed a small repeating pattern that was based on sackboys outline. You can see where it finally came to life on the flap of the belt pouch lid as a small silver tooled panel.