SC2 Spectre Cosplay: Helmet

The good stuff starts now. 

 Probably the most interesting part of the spectre is its helmet--the real deal has a multi-piece visor that pops out and swivels and does all sorts of craziness.  While it would be nice to be able to do all that, it's a bit beyond my skill level at this point in time.  However, there are lights galore, which definitely will be added later for effect.  The helmet is locked in the closed position which may be disastrous in terms of airflow, etc. but I'll figure it out as I go.

My bff across the country in NY managed to produce the base form-work of the helmet from which I'll be building upon to eventually finish.  He did a great job up to this point, but time has eluded him so I'll be taking over now.  It started as a nicely detailed pepakura model which was scaled from a life-cast model of my head.  The pep model was affixed to the cast head and expanding foam was used to fill in the gaps.  The outer pep surface was then smoothed out a bit with bondo and a few details were added with apoxie sculpt.  Right now the helmet is permanently bound to the head casting.  This means that once the helmet is finished, it will need to be molded and slush-cast or roto-cast to yield the finished, wearable shell. 

After working with the leg and shoe models in previous updates and having experienced the never-ending perpetual add-material-sand-repeat process--I'll be experimenting with a different approach for the helmet.  I picked up some Monster Clay which is a professional grade modeling clay used for creating masks, props, replicas, and other wild stuff.  It seems to be a popular medium used by those in industry and Hollywood--it should fit the bill I think.  I essentially coated the helmet with monster clay and will next spend time adding details and trying to "sculpt" the surface.  After working with it for a few hours, my impression is that this clay is pretty great.  Monster clay has zero tack which is absolutely crucial for achieving perfect surfaces and textures.  Apoxie sculpt is great too but it has a decent amount of tack which is really annoying when more material sticks to your gloves than the surface you're working on.  Another great thing about monster clay is that it's incredibly rigid at room temperature.  This requires you to heat the clay (microwave / oven) till it's pliable, add material to your surface, and then when it's cool the clay is firm enough to allow more precise sculpting and the adding of details. 

However, I must add that I'm not a sculptor and have not really worked very much with clay, so it's going to be a learn-as-I-go experience.  Right now the helmet looks pretty ugly with my shoddy clay-forming skills but hopefully it'll begin taking shape with future updates.

SC2 Spectre Cosplay Update

Weather has been bad lately, too cold and too rainy, so I haven't been able to think about priming the legs.  I continued sanding the shoes a bit more, and more sanding and smoothing is needed yet still...

Soon in the future I'll likely begin working on the helmet bit as well.

A link to the pep file for the legs / shoes can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?i5f64w5vj64eoaj

Perfume - Japanese Daft Punk

I've featured some Japanese music groups before such as the always-entertaining Genki Sudo, but another group that I enjoy, which I guess you could describe very loosely as "Japanese Daft Punk" only in the sense that both have an electronic sound,  is パフューム or Perfume. 

Perfume is a pretty big-name electronic pop group in Japan with a pretty unique and upbeat sound while not being a "cookie cutter" girl group.  Their music is only half the story though.  While not quite the same style or caliber as Genki Sudo, Perfume's choreography is entertaining and fun.

Their music is featured in various commercials and movies, including in Pixar's Cars 2.

However, while huge in Japan, Perfume like most Japanese music groups has only niche followings in other parts of the western world.  That's fine, but it would be cool to see them branch out into other non-Asian markets.   *hint hint*

A sampler vid is below:

SC2 Spectre Cosplay: Legs 11 + Shoes

I'm making very slow progress as usual--I'm  pretty much limited to working on the project during the weekend as by the time I get home from work during the week, it's pitch black outside.  Temperatures are still on the cold side so that's going to hinder the painting process.  Hopefully things start to warm up soon... California cosplayers probably don't appreciate their amazing weather enough. 

Anyway, smoothing of the "leg bits" continues, they're pretty much done I believe--the next step(s) should be to give them a coat of primer if weather permits.  I'm pretty excited to see what the legs will look like when they're a uniform color, although surface unevenness will be amplified.

The shoes are also going through the slow "build-up and smoothing" process and are slowly making headway.  It seriously looks like I haven't done anything in the picture below due to the ugly patchiness, but I insist that it's a lot better than it was last week.  Baby steps, to be continued...

SC2 Spectre Cosplay: Legs 10 + Shoes

Tried smoothing out the detail bits on the legs but apoxie sculpt is pretty tough stuff to sand down, takes a lot of passes to level.  It's coming along fairly well though.  I think the legs are nearly done and ready to be primed and cut.

As far as the shoes are concerned, the body filler / sanding process is currently underway and the process is pretty terrible (dust EVERYWHERE).  It'll take a few goes at it before it starts getting somewhat uniformly smooth.  I'm not sure if I'm going to  leave the Sintra exposed or if I should coat it with a thin layer of something.  The easy way out it to leave it as it is, but part of me thinks I should cover it...

Let's go to Germany

Germany has not only the best economy in the world--but also some of the coolest things to see, eat, and do as well.  I just recently discovered Miniatur Wunderland, the world's largest mini train set in the world.  You may scoff and say "who cares, train sets are for babbys." but an exception should be made for this one.  The level of detail and recreation is amazing.  Check out these screen captures I took for instance:

These shots look so real it's insane.  Miniatur Wunderland is evidently a pretty big tourist attraction--no surprise.  Check out the vid below to see the shots above in full motion and prepare to be blown away:



Also, while you're in Europe you should take a ride on something amazing.  In the mountains of Europe (at skiing destinations during the summer?) there are apparently lifts you can ride which take you up to a high elevation to do whatever it is you intend to do at the top of a mountain, hike? take pictures? Nope, ride lifts only to come back down on an alpine coaster!

The alpine coaster is an amazing concept and consists of a single car equipped with a simple seat belt and hand brake, floating on a monorail track ~1 meter off the ground through dense forest.   There's video of one below in Austria and it looks like the most fun ever--I'd want to travel there just for the sake of experiencing this thing.  Maybe one day... (つ-̩̩̩-̩̩̩_-̩̩̩-̩̩̩)



Watch out for deer!

SC2 Spectre Cosplay: Legs 9

Smoothing the legs continues and I think I may have reached my breaking / satisfaction point.  I forgot to add the raised detail bits on the sides of the legs earlier so the preliminary version of these detail bits were added (seen below).  The next step will be to sand and shave them to spec, which may be extremely difficult because they're hollow (pepakura shells underneath apoxie sculpt).

In the disaster strikes update (#7) I mentioned that I couldn't get my feet into the modified shoes until after cracking the fiberglass shell at the top.  Continuing from that point, I cut out the fiberglass formwork and constructed a new piece from sintra (closed-cell PVC foamboard) and glued it into place.  The new piece was extruded outwards about an inch to give sufficient clearance for my foot when trying to put the shoes on--and it works, I don't need to cut chunks out of my feet now!  Seams were filled with apoxie sculpt and will be sanded down later.  Next steps will involve lots of bondo, shaping, and sculpting again.

Here's the reference again:

SC2 Spectre Cosplay: Legs 8

So the current state of the Spectre project is that progress on the shoes are currently on hold for now.  I think the current plan is to cut out and remove the pep/fiberglass material and build a similar shape out of sintra (pvc sheeting) that's spaced out from the shoe itself.  Once that's done and looks good I'll begin work on smoothing out the exterior of the shoes.

I've also been slowly trying to smooth out the legs more and more.  I found there to be a lot of holes in the body filler that require filling with apoxie sculpt and the entire process is a gigantic pain.  I don't know if it's my bad technique but I find the body filler to be extremely sticky--setting way too fast.  If I try to smooth out an area that I've applied material over, the filler will catch on my spreader as I make a second smoothing pass and mess up the surface.

I also nearly forgot to add the raised detail slats to the sides of the legs--so I'll do that, make some finishing touches, and then determine where to cut slices out of the legs so that I can actually wear them.  It's gonna be pretty nerve wracking making cuts after I've spent so much time getting the legs to this point.  Not sure how I'm planning to fasten them to my legs either, might need to make two cuts or a single giant cut through the entire backside.

SC2 Spectre Cosplay: Legs 7 (Disaster Strikes)

It's been a while since I've been able to work on my cosplay stuff due to going to ALA last week, work stuff, and the horrid weather here in Seattle.  It's been snowing a bit here but I can't sit through the entire season without making any progress--so I'm taking baby steps.

Last I left off, I was working on the Spectre's shoes and I mentioned how well the pepakura model fit to some dress shoes I had laying around.  Well, I went and filled the gaps with some flexible expanding foam (great stuff by the way), let the foam cure, trimmed the excess, and went to try putting them on... which is when disaster strikes.  Apparently binding the pepakura model to the shoe and reinforcing them together made the "tongue" of the shoe completely rigid, meaning there's no way my foot would go in unless you were to slice an inch off the tops of my arches.  This isn't cool at all because they're starting to look cool, or I should rephrase, they're starting to look like something at least.  I tried shoehorning my foot in, but the rigid tongue / fiberglass combo was cutting into my foot.  I eventually pried hard enough and got my foot to squeeze in after cracking the pepakura model in several places.  I'll need to somehow repair the top bit and make it bigger without making the underlying shoe rigid--hopefully it's doable. 

I also spent some time focusing on smoothing out 1 of the legs (the better one) and I think that maybe it's nearly there (the other is hideous right now and will be worked on later).  It's feeling impossible getting the thing perfectly smooth and round and I feel like I might be wasting my time trying to do so.  So I'm hoping to get it a little better than how it's picture below and then prepping it for paint as I believe the painted finish is pretty much 90% of what determines the quality of a piece as a perfect prop with a mediocre paint job will look infinitely worse than a less-than-perfect prop with an outstanding paint job. 

  

That just leaves into question whether I have any painting skills... I dunno, lol.

Anime LA 2012 - 02

Here's the second and final installment to the ALA video series.  As I mentioned in the previous post, I didn't capture nearly enough footage as I should have so scene lengths are a bit longer than I'd like in this video.  I feel there's still some good stuff in there though.  Check it out below: