I'm currently planning and trying to get ideas of how to make his boots.. What seemed easy and just hotgluing reinforced craft foam armor to the boot turned out to be a nightmare. My first attempt to recreate the boots, shown above, broke horribly and is torn to pieces now. Why?
I made a quick diagram of how a boot would act when walking.
The two red lines represents how the upper part of the boot will work when you take a step with the other foot and move your body forward. Without allowing for this kind of movement, you will not be able to walk at all. This also causes creases roughly where the yellow line, this will cause the boot part marked with the yellow line to become shorter, hence the armor part attached there have to be able to follow that movement somehow. It means you can't just hot glue it there.
The pink line represents the part of the boot that is bent when you take a step with the other foot again. The green lines indicates roughly how much movement that has to be allowed, roughly. A bit less might be possible but not much.
Another problem is the actual armor in front of the toes. For 20 years I've learnt how to walk in a specific way. When I walk normally, my toes does not hit the ground while the foot moves to take a new step. The problem is that in Advent Children, Vincent's boots are so long that it would add around 15cm spikey armor in front of his foot which causes a lot more trouble while walking than you'd think.
This piece of armor will not be made out of metal as I cannot work with it. I don't have any materials, tools or experience for working with sheet metal.. I'll somehow have to attach it to the boot so strongly that light hits won't cause it to fall off and also so sturdy to resist breaking if hit by something. I'll obviously not be able to kick a wall with it or so but at a con things gets hit a little bit regardless how careful you are.
Adjustments.
Strength and decreased flimsyness at the price of lowered accuracy, but adapted to be working for human anatomy as opposed to a game's/movies' noneexistant rules for physics.
"Toe armor": To even nearly work the toe have to be decreased in length by a lot. It can be a maximum of 5cm in front of the boot for me, and atleast 1cm above the ground, preferably 2cm. This would allow for almost normal movements. To retain some of the correct dimensions the toe armor will have to be moved further in on the foot.Mid foot armor: I'm thinking of modifying the pattern a bit here and move the middle armor further up the foot, as the toearmor was moved.
Ankle armor: This will be moved a bit further up the foot and be attached higher up, where the boot doesn't crease as much as it does where it's normally attached (see the yellow line on the reference picture way earlier).
Golden ring armor: If I can't find a sane way to do this... I'll just ignore it. It's impossible. That's right. The ring is whole, in 1 piece that goes all the way around the foot. It's also perfect fit against the skin. Now imagine trying to get that ring there. Your ankles are about twice as thick. It would have to be made in 2 separate parts, which I might just skip, but we'll see.
Attaching it all to the boot: I'm thinking of attaching the 3 armor pieces to a thin leather strap and then attach it to the boot with quite hard elastic bands.. perhaps this (not attaching them to the boot, but indirectly to the boot, and then the elasticity of the bands allowing the foot to move a bit. This could go horribly wrong but I'll give it a shot. Making new craft foam armor will take roughly one and a half week (~4-5 layers glue and 4-5 layers reinforcement on it's back, then 3-4 layers color and then polish on top...). Thinking of doing a quick guide on craftfoam armor but I'll decide that on a later date as I currently have a lot to do.
