Corvo Attano's Mask

My second attempt at Corvo’s Dishonored 2 mask. Finally revisited this 5 years after my first version. It’s full brass and steel, Kevlar and leather lined, with an adjustable halo headband. As faithful to the source as I could get, with modern conveniences sprinkled in.

The process was most arduous but rewarding. I liken this project to kitbashing gunpla, in that I maintain a vague idea of what I want the finished product to look like in my head, but it rapidly evolves into its own being as the project progresses.

The inner face is lined with fullgrain cowhide, stitched to the brass inner-frame at key points using kevlar thread. The leather mimics the red velvet-ish leather-ish fabric lining seen in Dishonored concept art.

A halo headband was repurposed from a construction helmet I had lying around. This helped tremendously with the weight distribution of this hulking steel mass. I had tried and failed repeatedly to devise a strapless mounting mechanism. The temple pressure plates depicted in Dishonored concept art is simply not achievable at this weight. An interesting mask that might be easier to construct with such a novel strapless design would be Die-Hardman's mask from Death Stranding, given it's made of ultra light carbon fiber and not 1mm 304 stainless steel sheets backed with a full brass inner-frame.

The inner-frame is pictured above, with the jaw fully wired up with brass wire. The lenses were later replaced with orange tinted ones popped out of sunglasses. If you look closely at the previous image of the leather, the new lenses are present. Returning to this inner-frame shot, one can now see that there is zero welding of any sort involved. The individual plates are largely folded and riveted to the appropriate geometries. While not 100 percent replicating the way Piero Joplin welded the mask together in Dishonored 2, I think the equally handmade process of forming each edge by hand and tacking the shapes to an approximation of my face gives this mask its own distinct identity.

I am especially proud of this example of circumventing having to weld anything. The complex pattern seen above is a collapsed 2D cutout of a 3D paper model that I constructed prior to working on the metal. The job would be much more laborious if I were to weld each individual polygon together like Piero Joplin did. Each side of the face was only crafted from two to three discrete plates, with the largest plate making up the bulk of the sharp angles that Corvo's Dishonored 2 mask is known for. The dotted lines seen on the steel cutout are also present on the other side; they indicate that the part needs to be folded such that the dotted line sits on the reflex angle side. The large plate has 23 individual polygons, not accounting for smooth curves such as the cheekbone plate –– imagine welding all of that.

Pictured here is the first half I completed next to its cardstock model. After building the first cardstock model, I traced the unflattened original onto more cardstock to generate a second cardstock model, which I would later flatten. By simply flipping the flattened cardstock to mirror both halves of the mask, I could now easily transfer the pattern to steel while having the original 3D cardstock reference on hand. The advantage of building a cardstock model first was it could be easily fitted to my face and to the brass inner-frame, while visually ascertaining the mask looked proportional.

Pictured above is one more beauty shot of my version 2 mask on the marble workbench before it went into the display case. I hope to do it justice with a photoshoot in full costume one day when I find the right location.

Below is my version 1 of Corvo's mask from Dishonored 2. My longest-running and most time-consuming project at time of completion. Work hours total to upwards of 1000 hours, spread across 26 February 2020 to 25 April 2021. Interestingly, version 2 took magnitudes less time. I had the spotaneous urge to build v2 in the short week I had left of winter break before flying back to NYC for college. January 8 to 16 of 2025 was how quickly I finished v2, averaging about 10 hours of work a day, totaling to a mere 80 hours.

I attribute the speed and efficiency of v2 to the theoretical knowledge gained in engineering school; ranging from explicit expertise in materials science and mechanical design class to more abstract problem solving and time management skills picked up studying for finals and juggling jobs.

Completely freehanded because I am Piero Joplin and I don’t need rulers... On a more serious note, I freehanded this baby out of stubbornness and sheer will to complete the project I had set out to build.

At the time, I did not have access to a 3D-printer to fabricate a physical 3D bust of Corvo's mask that I could use as reference; I also did not have the technical know-how to construct a pepakura-esque paper model of the mask completely by hand... So I just jumped straight into the black steel sheets!

Relying on my spatial-awareness, I traced each individual fragment of the angular mask onto steel sheet, with only 2D-rendered images of the mask and an aluminum foil impression of my own face as reference.

The mask's individual steel plates were brazed together with brass brazing rods and a cooking blowtorch. The outer-shell utilizes 1-2mm thick black steel (uncoated/raw steel). The inner-frame utilizes 1mm brass plate. The red inner-lining is made of genuine cowhide.

(This was written before I made v2) A version 2 of the same mask is coming soon. Next time around, it'll be more wearable--to not tear my face off--and more proportional--not freehanded from start to finish without rulers or mockup models.