Deus Vult Dog: The Costume

bestjuleah (39)in #art • 7 years ago

This year's Halloween was fun.

What began as a desire to create my own costume as a Templar turned into, "Hey, I bet I could make a helmet for my dog," and finally to creating a whole dang costume for her. My main inspiration was the Deus Vult meme. It's always been funny to me and imagining a tiny dachshund running around yelling (barking) "DEUS VULT DEUS VULT" made it even funnier.

Prototyping takes a looong time

I eyeballed her head measurements and started modeling in Blender. The first version was too tall, and the next few didn't fit on her nose. I had to curve the nose piece so that she could see out of the visor. Each prototype took about an hour to print at 0.4 mm.

Many helmet variations later, I'd finally created the perfect dog helmet for crusading. It took like 12 freakin' hours to print. Gold paint on the cross helped finish it. The next step was creating a sword and sheath. More Blender designing netted this beautiful sword/helmet combo! Modeling swords is fun. It's just three pieces. I really want to print a larger version for myself.

halp me

I got my dog shirt pattern from Mimi & Tara. She has a lot of free patterns and other premium ones, too, for dogs of all sizes. For fabric, I bought a giant 3x sweater from Dollar General. The lady complimented my choice. Little did she know the fate of that poor sweater. My sewing skills are not perfect, and I consider myself an intuitive sewer. I know enough to do what I want to. What I want to do is usually impractical clothing. Like dog shirts and glowing jackets.

The ill-fated sweater

The dog hates the little tunic I made for her.

The final touches were adding a collar from the bottom of the sweater, cutting and gluing a scrap fabric Templar cross onto the back, and burning the raw edges to seal the fibers and add some wear. Her little belt and helmet straps were a shoe lace I got from the dollar store. It fit perfectly and adds more adorableness to the whole ensemble.

We hiked up a trail just outside of town and got some amazing photos and a great video. I used my Canon 5dMarkIII along with the Canon 24-105mm lens. The dog did not want to stay still, but I still got some great poses from her.

Get the files from Thingiverse.

The desert is harsh.

Silly video I made while I was up there. Click the picture to watch it on BitChute. Music is Sabaton - The Last Stand (the standard Deus Vult meme music)