Magic Meat March - Tumblr Posts

My submission for Magic Meat Week! It’s a Tumblr celebration of fantasy males in empowering outfits of the style that fantasy women get stuck wearing. I made this set of leather armor over the last week. The codpiece I had already designed, I just needed to make a new copy. The shoulder armor (spaulder), arm (bazuband) and thigh (cuisses I think?) are all new designs, though, and were designed and hand-cut this week. It was a busy week of designing, and it was great.

These things will be up for sale on my Etsy shop soon, but I’ll need to CAD up the patterns so I can make more with the laser cutter, and also take some photos with more clothes.

I just finished this set for @magicmeatweek! I was going for a rogue/assassin sort of vibe. This was my first foray into garment-style design, rather than armor-style! It was fun.

The lace-up-the-side hot pants I actually made early in the year. They were laser-cut and hand-stitched together. Man that stitching took a long time. 

The open-front hoodie I just finished this afternoon, squeaking in just before the deadline for Magic Meat Week. I cut it all by hand and riveted the leather together.

I’ll get some nicer photos with a proper non-kitchen background sometime after Thanksgiving. Maybe toss in some extra straps and harnesses. But for now, this will do.

Leather outfit I made for Magic Meat Week back in November, and I did post it then, but didn’t get nicer photos until more recently. So it’s going up for @magicmeatmarch! I was trying to go for a dark rogue/thief sort of aesthetic, but I think it needs some sort of asymmetric holster/strap arrangement to really sell the look. Something to stick a dagger, or a bunch of smoke bombs, or what have you.

I’m pretty busy this month with a pile of commissions, but I’ve got a few days of waiting at the moment to get more materials in, so maybe I’ll be able to work on that now. I’m a bit low on ideas too, though, so if anyone has an idea for how the straps should go to maximize the beefcakiness of this getup, feel free to scribble your thoughts on one of these photos and shoot it back to me!

Here’s my empowering warrior armor for Magic Meat March! Got it done just in time! I made the whole get-up out of leather, save for the shoes and the prop dagger. I just went to town this week with the strap cutter and the rivets. 

It’s got a jointed spaulder for the shoulder, held in place by an asymmetric harness, zig-zagging down to a supple pouch to hold the necessaries comfortably in place. Onto this attaches a cuisse to guard the thigh. 

Then there’s some accessory pieces: A thigh piece made of three panels laced together; an arm band with shearling trim for warmth; and a corset-like bracer to protect the wrist and forearm. Oh, and there’s that mass of straps for the left arm. I’m not even sure what that’s supposed to be for.

If I’d had a bit more time I was planning on adding more fur trim to the other pieces, but since it’s spring time now I don’t think that’s necessary. Wouldn’t want to overheat, after all. That extra padding would just get in the way during a battle anyway.

Some close-ups and silly shots from my @magicmeatmarch submission. (More “reasonable” photos here.)

The only piece didn’t make specifically for this costume, this week, was the strap thing on my left arm. (That I made the day I got a strap cutter, and just really wanted to make something silly to test it with.) Nearly everything else was made with a pre-finished leather that I got recently to try out. I maybe should’ve gotten a somewhat thicker grade than I did, it’s a little bit floppy for the armor parts, but it’s really nice to work with for the straps. And it saves a lot of time, since I don’t need to dye it and seal it with a top coat.

Definitely the hardest part of the Magic Meat Month challenge is finding a secluded place to take photos. This time we only had one pair of people wander by and look Concerned at us. One of them pulled out his phone, and since the cops didn’t show up by the time we were finished, I can only assume I ended up on his Snapchat feed. I waved to him, that seemed to scare them off.

My contribution to @magicmeatmarch this year! It’s a set of armor fit for a light and swift fighter. It protects the important parts while avoiding restrictions on mobility.

I’d been wanting to make a larger breatplate-type item for a while, this felt like a good excuse. I went with the overlapping plates motif that I’ve used in a number of other projects. It’s secured in place with Too Many Buckles along the sides. When it’s all tightened up it has a bit of a corset nature, straightening up your posture. Made it a bit tricky to do the over-the-top twisting-to-show-off-tits-and-butt poses. But I persevered.

The codpiece, bracers and cuisses were older designs, but it’s always good to fit them into matching outfits.

This sinister but highly capable healer is ready to bring your adventuring party back to fighting shape--for a price. 

It’s my contribution to this year’s @magicmeatmarch, a sexy plague doctor! Inspired by the global viral pandemic, because that’s a perfectly reasonable sentence to write in the year 2020.

I designed the mask in the last couple weeks, and modified one of my codpiece designs to work with the red cross yesterday. The chaps and jacket I’d made over the last couple years for different outfits, but I thought they fit with this idea nicely. 

Also, haha CORVID-19.

Here’s the process of constructing my paladin’s armored corset. I started from measuring myself, designed to those measurements in Rhino (3D CAD program), printed out the pattern, and then built the whole thing by hand. I put a bit more detail in the captions if you’d like to follow along.

Here’s the photo from the night I finished it up:

Making a corset had been on my projects wish list for a long time, and I’m glad I finally was able to tackle it. I was really worried it wouldn’t fit properly or something would be wrong with the design and I’d have no way of knowing until I’d gotten to the end, but thankfully it all came together cleanly and fit really well! On top of that, this was the first time I tooled a leather project, so it was cool to work that process out.

Next up is making accessory pieces for this to flesh it out to a full costume. Current plan is armor for shoulders, shins, and arms. For expediency’s sake I’ll be buying some patterns for those and modifying them to match this style, rather than designing them from scratch (which would probably take a couple rounds of prototyping). If all goes well, I should have the set ready to take good photos before the end of Magic Meat May!

The paladin is a noble warrior. His blessed armor protects him from harm, and his holy vows help him resist the temptations of sin. Those who receive his aid in battle are assured of victory, but those who meet him afterwards consider themselves the truly lucky.

I made this suit of armor for the Magic Meat March challenge (delayed to May this year), which is about putting men into the sorts of costumes that fantasy women get drawn in. Check out other people’s stuff over @magicmeatmarch​!

In place of a standard breastplate, this one is built in the form of a corset, providing protection and support while shaping and accentuating your profile. The pauldrons connect to the codpiece with a harness arrangement of straps, tying them together into one cohesive piece, supporting the necessaries and accentuating the assets. The greaves stand on their own.

I made everything by hand--cut, burnished, tooled, shaped, dyed, painted, sealed, and riveted together. The corset-breastplate and codpiece I designed from scratch--you can see a progression of the corset design here. The pauldrons (shoulders) and greaves (shins) I built from patterns by Prince Armory, partly because of time constraints, and partly because I wanted to see how other designers dealt with those pieces. (The greaves I was really impressed by, the pauldrons restrict movement more than I’d like, which was a problem I hadn’t been able to solve previously either.)

This is the most ambitious armor project I’ve tackled so far, both in scope and design, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out! I’m looking forward to making a few more pieces to go with this set in the coming months.