Isaac Clarke Meets His Makers

After pictures of my Isaac Clarke costume from Dead Space 2 started making their way around the internets, it turns out my work was eventually noticed by some of the crew at Visceral Games, the studio responsible for creating the original concept that it was based on.


A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Ian Milham, Art Director for the Dead Space series, inviting me to come down and visit the development team in Redwood City so I could show off the suit. I drove down there on a Friday and after a quick tour of the campus I went out to the car, stepped into the RIG, and headed upstairs to meet the folks behind the game. Here’s a shot of me and Ian:



Here I am in front of some of the promotional posters:



And the money shot:



The best part about walking around at Electronic Arts dressed as Isaac Clarke was noticing how few people actually reacted to the costume. It must be fun to work in a place where science fiction characters just wander around all the time. In any case, it was great to get a chance to shake hands with most of the folks who invented the character that I based the build off of.

It wasn't until I was 20 minutes away on my way home that I finally thought of asking any of them to sign my helmet.  Blast!


While I was there, I also got a chance to compare my build to some very high resolution renders of the costume in the game. Given that I was working from screenshots captured from Youtube videos, I’m still pretty proud of how it came together.  But there are a few parts where there’s room for improvement. I’m also thinking I have to put together a few props to carry around. Now that I’ve finished the build and I’m back to having a bit of time for gaming, I’m really in love with the look of the Pulse Rifle.


In the meantime, the RIG will be waiting in the box:



Stay tuned for more madness…

Isaac Clarke's Engineering RIG Costume

A while back I posted about building the helmet for Isaac Clarke's engineering RIG from Dead Space 2



Wearing the helmet and nothing else looks wrong.  Plus, it tends to disturb the other patrons in the coffee shop I frequent.  This means I absolutely had to build the rest of the RIG.


Here's the end result:

For details on how I made it (and a few better pictures), read on.

Isaac Clarke's Helmet from Dead Space 2

For some time I've been wanting to make Isaac Clarke's engineering suit from DEAD SPACE 2, and was finally prompted to get it started.  Since most of my projects tend to take a long time (the curse of having plenty of time), I decided to give myself a month for the helmet as an exercise in meeting deadlines. That's one month to sculpt, mold, cast, paint, and wire up the electronics for the helmet.  I failed, but only because I was interrupted by a major nuclear disaster.

Here's a snapshot showcasing the finished helmet:



Complete details about the build process after the jump.

Current Works in Progress

I dislike posting about unfinished things.  For me it's not much better than posting about things I'm thinking about doing.  Until a project is finished, it's not much more than a notion.  I figure if I write something like "I'm about halfway done building a functional jetpack," I might as well also go ahead and post "I'm making a cure for cancer," or "any minute now I'll write a novel." 


Still, sometimes I think there's not enough stuff getting finished in the workshop and I'm suffering from a lack of interesting things to post about.  So here I am reluctantly posting pictures of things that are getting done even if they're not getting finished quite yet...


First up, my friend Trevor has enlisted my help to build an Achilles costume for an upcoming Trojan War reenactment.  Here's a very early picture of his helmet coming together:



On the subject of helmets, I'm still making progress on my Isaac Clarke engineering helmet from Dead Space 2:



Here's the back of the helmet compared to a screenshot of the game character:



Since I'm gearing up to start molding helmets, I dusted off one of my Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine Mk7 helmets and started modifying it like crazy to turn it into a Mark 8 helmet.  The dome still needs to be re-shaped and I need to sculpt out the grill, the brow ridge, the mohawk, the ears, and so on.  Still, you get the idea:



Since I'm on a roll with helmets, I pulled my Star Wars Republic Commando helmet off the backburner and started smoothing it out a bit more:



Speaking of backburner projects, I've begun tinkering with my HALO shotgun build again.  Here's the main body with the proper texture in place:

The grip and the butt will be getting a much rougher texture before I'm done with them.


While I've been doing all of this, I've also had Lopez crank out slices of a new build for the MA5C Assault Rifle from HALO3:



I'm also finishing up the forming bucks for the last four pieces of my HALO3 Marine armor:



Not feeling like I've got enough going on, I've taken on a commission to build the Predator M-3 heavy pistol from Mass Effect 2:



Meanwhile, I'm slowly putting together a batch of my kneeling garden gnome riflemen:


Stay tuned.  I'll be posting more about all of these projects as they come together...

.

Forgive me, Readers, for I Have Sinned...

...It's been nearly a month since I wrote anything about my goofy projects in the workshop. 


The problem is: everything's just "in progress" and I prefer to write up projects from start to finish.  Still, just to keep your interest, here's some of the irons I've got in the fire right now...


First off, I've been painting my Warhammer 40K Space Marine chaplain helmet:



I'm also building some UNSC Marine costumes from Halo 3. For now I've made a helmet prototype:



It's halfway through moldmaking right now:


I'm also making tiny progress on my M90A Shotgun from Halo 3:


As long as I happen to be building damned near everything the Humans ever used in HALO, I'm also working on a pair of ODST costumes.  The other day I finished assembling the backpack for one of them:



In other video game costuming news, I've started sculpting the helmet for Isaac Clarke's engineering suit from Dead Space 2:


I'm also making progress on my Caboose helmet, doing prep work on a batch of Kneeling Rifleman Garden Gnomes, painting up a raw cast of a clonetrooper helmet from Star Wars Episode III, making a few new products for my Etsy Shop, occasionally checking in on my father's Frankenbarn project, doing preliminary design work on my display for the Maker Faire, and hopefully next week I'll have drive sprockets on my tank.

It's all sorts of interesting stuff, but for now none of it is done enough to write about.  Stay tuned...

.