Quick and Easy Project: Fallout 4 Fusion Core

Every once in a while, in the midst of a huge project when it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I'll start to feel run down or overwhelmed.  When that happens, it's helpful to focus on some small thing that I can finish in short order so I can get a glimpse of the feeling of accomplishment that will come at the end of a build.

So when I was starting to feel swamped by the T-60 Power armor build, I was thrilled to come across a high resolution, printable 3D model of a fusion core by Daniel Lilygreen at myminifactory:


You can download it for yourself here: www.myminifactory.com/object/fallout-4-fusion-core-17423

Ignoring the original scale of his model, I resized it so it would fit into the port on the back of my armor:


Then I went ahead and uploaded the files to my Zortrax M200 3D printers.  A few hours later, I had a thing:


After a quick pass with 120-grit, then 150-grit sandpaper, the parts all got sprayed with a couple of healthy coats of primer.  Then, without any additional sanding, I went ahead and sprayed the base colors onto each piece:






Once the paint had dried overnight, final assembly took a few quick minutes:




One of these days I'll dirty it up a bit and give it some proper wasteland weathering.  But for now, there it is.  A done thing.

Stay tuned for some more Fallout builds.  There's about to be a lot.

Thor, the Goddess of Thunder Part 3: Getting Hammered

Without the hammer, Thor is just a lady in a funny hat and cape.

About the time I started this project, I ordered up a couple of Mjolnir kits from Branfuhr Studios.  You can see their current offerings here: www.etsy.com/shop/BranfuhrStudios

The two kits arrived at about the same time as my fabric swatches:


The castings were nice and clean.  Free of surface flaws and with only a tiny bit of cleanup work to do on the sprues and seams.  I ended up getting a bit carried away:


Here's the parts of the heads glued together with the handles dry-fitted into place:


Once I'd sanded the filler smooth, everything was primed and the metal parts were painted with a gunmetal metallic paint:





The handle was painted in a tan enamel:


Once that had dried thoroughly, I added a thick coat of darker brown acrylic paint, wrapped the whole thing in plastic cling wrap while the paint was wet, then peeled off the plastic wrap to reveal decent faux leather effect:





After that had dried, the next step was to mask off the "leather" parts so I could paint the metal bits:


The masking was a bit on the rough side, so there was a bit of leakage around the edges:


Still, it was good enough to continue assembly:


After a quick blackwash, the dark metallic parts were drybrushed in order to bring the details to life.  Then I added the leather strap to the pommel and it was good to go:


"But wait," says you, "I thought you said there were two of them."

Good catch, dear reader.  Stay tuned to find out what happens to that one.

Interview Segment on the New Screen Savers

Yesterday I had the honor of being interviewed on an episode of the New Screen Savers.  I brought along a handful of recent creations from the workshop:

I also dragged along a few characters in costume:


The show was fun to shoot and you can see the whole thing here:


My segment starts at about the 51:50 point.  Check it out and be sure to leave a comment!

August 2017 UFO Sightings in the Workshop

I'm doing a terrible job on the bloggage front, but in the workshop, stuff is definitely going on.  So just to make sure you don't think I'm slacking, here's this month's round-up of Un-Finished Objects around the shop...

First off, there's the E-22 heavy blaster rifle carried by the Scarif "shoretrooper" stormtroopers in Rogue One.  At this point I've finished prototyping and molding and I've cast a complete rifle.  Here it is in black primer and waiting for a real paintjob:


While I've been tinkering with that, I've also been working on the helmet of the Goddess Thor:


The wings are cast separately, so I'm keeping them separate until I'm finished painting them:


Work also continues on the T-60 Power Armor from Fallout 4:


I still have to prototype the rubber parts and work out the rigging for the hands, but for now I've been stalled for a moment while I experiment with different paint schemes:


The other day I decided to spend a few minutes on some sewing projects.  Among other things, I made a pocket:


So now I guess I've taken the flametrooper project off of the backburner:


Finally, because I had the 3D printers sitting around with nothing else to do, I cranked out a Covenant Carbine from the Halo video games:


So there's still a steady stream of prototyping, preparation, molding, casting, sewing, design, cleanup, painting, and more going on.  Sooner or later I'll do some proper writing too.

Stay tuned...

Thor, the Goddess of Thunder Part 2: Molding the Helmet

At the end of the last post on this project, I had three shiny helmet parts.  The first one looked like so:


The other two pieces looked like this:


Tacked together in a hurry, they looked kinda like this:


The problem: the carved and polished prototype helmet is way too thick, way too heavy, and way too pink.  So it was time I turned it into this instead:



For details on how it was done, read on...

Thor, the Goddess of Thunder Part 1: Prototyping the Helmet

My shop robots had some free time lately, so I got them working on something new carved out of some leftover MDF I had sitting around: 


After a couple of miscalculations, I finally assembled a helmet with a size that I like:


Before the day was over, I soaked it with primer:


The next day I got started cleaning up some of the details:


After a bit of bondo work, it was looking pretty good:






Here's the wings after a bit more love with a file and some sanding blocks:


So the new addition to my routing in the shop is to spend the last few minutes tinkering a bit with this helmet and then adding a coat of primer:


Here's how it looked last night:


Which means it looked like this this morning:




Here's the inside face of the wings with the cutouts that register to the sides of the helmet:



Once that dried, I sprayed the outside faces too:
I'm not sure why, but this is the first time I've sprayed something with my standard high-gloss pink prototype paint and not had it instantly feel wrong*. Once the paint is dry, I'll flip the wings over and give the outside faces a nice, glossy coat of paint.  Then I'll be ready to start molding all three pieces and make them into something wearable.

Now I just need to resist the urge to dive in all the way on this project and make some shiny ARMORED BOOBS!

I'll probably fail though.  This outfit is pretty darned sexy:


Stay tuned...

*Historically, I use pink gloss paint for my prototypes for no reason other than to aggravate a certain subset of people.  In this case, those are probably the same people that will already be upset by the creation of a female Thor.  So that's an added bonus.

June 2017 UFO Sightings in the Workshop

Well, the time has come once again when I can't help but be embarrassed by how little I've been posting in my blog.

While there's been a ton of progress on countless elements of numerous projects in the shop lately, I don't have a shiny, new, huge thing to brag about just yet.  So once again, I'm forced to share a stack of photos of UnFinished Objects currently in the works.  Enjoy.

First up, I've been making slow and steady progress on the E-22 Blaster Rifle wielded by the Shoretroopers on the planet Scarif in Rogue One:


Just a bit more smoothing and this beauty will be ready to mold.  But even now it looks pretty nifty:


While I'm having fun tinkering with that, there's still the much more massive T-60 power armor project from Fallout 4.  Here's most of the T-60 Parts piling up:


At this point, all of the fiberglass work is done.  There's just the rubber parts left to prototype.  For now though, I'm concentrating on making a presentable copy of the helmet:


In addition to the power armor, I've gone a bit off the deep end of building Fallout props.  Whenever I've got down time on the 3D printers, I've been putting them to work on all sorts of little additions to go along with the big suit.  For example, here's the nearly finished AER7 Laser Rifle:


Somewhere in the room, I've also printed out the parts for the Fusion Core, Laser Pistol, 10mm Pistol, Plasma Pistol, and a whole host of other little things Fallout.

Since I need a change of focus, I've got my Carvewright CNC machines started on the parts for the next armor build.  Behold, the rough carved helmet of the Doomguy:


Also, to thank the Lady Shawnon for putting up with all of my insanity projects, I figured I might as well get started making her very own Thor helmet:

This is just the first piece of the whole, sexy, shiny costume.

More to come as I make progress and find a few minutes here and there to actually write up each of these projects.

Stay tuned...