Kali Costume Part 2: It's Hard to Find a Model With Four Arms

In my last post about the Kali costume for the Hi-Rez Studios game SMITE, I detailed the making of the prosthetic chest.  The main reason for making the chest prosthetic was to be able to rig a harness to hold up the extra pair of arms she needed attached to her back.

Here's how I made the extra arms:


If that doesn't make it crystal clear, read on...

Kali Costume Part 1: Building the Rack of a Goddess

Some months ago, in addition to the Blood Eagle Pathfinder I've already written about, the good folks at Hi-Rez Studios commissioned me to build a costume to turn a model into their rendition of the Hindu goddess Kali from their recently released game "SMITE."

The challenge: make a healthy human female look like this:


No problem.

My first concern was securely attaching a pair of prosthetic arms to her back.  Unless they had a model that would let me drive screws into her shoulder blades, there was no way I could glue them on that would be guaranteed to hold up the severed head and the cup she's supposed to be carrying.  At least not if she's planning on walking around all day on the show floor at a convention.

After some careful consideration, I decided that the best option was to make the chest prosthetic as well.  That way I could make the breasts, collar, and extra arms into a harness that could be strapped on with no risk of having any slippage that might result in unanticipated nudity on the show floor.  As an added benefit, the prosthetic breasts would counterweight the extra arms. 

With most character builds, I focus a lot of time and energy on the parts that will get the most scrutiny.  This is usually the head or some particularly iconic prop.  In this case, it seemed pretty obvious where most of the attention would be drawn to.  It wasn't going to be her eyes.

The rest of this article is safe for work and family-friendly, but be forewarned: there are pictures of an attractive, young, topless woman being coated in purple goo.  If you're okay with that and you'd like to see the step-by-step process involved in making a girl with a 32B bra size into something more like a 32F, read on...

UFO Sightings

I've been working long hours trying to crank out a couple of paid projects that I'm not really allowed to write about just yet.

Not being able to show off my work has been wearing at me though, so here's a collection of pictures of UnFinished Objects (UFOs) that I've got in the works right now.

First up, I've decided to dust off the Republic Commando project again.  To make progress, I printed out a bunch of the remaining pep models.  Here's half a suit of armor in the "before" stage:

Since I'm swamped, I coerced Trevor the Walking Mannequin into putting the peps together.  Here's the gut guard (aka "space-age tighty-whities"):

Here they are reinforced with fiberglass:

Whenever I'm taking a break from paid projects, I've been tinkering with my new and improved Halo 3 EVA helmet:

I've been making molds like crazy too.  In the past month I've burned through fifteen gallons of silicone moldmaking rubber and today I should be getting five more.  Here's some molds in progress for a commission:

All of these molds are for a pair of projects I can't write about just yet.  So I can't show you the insides:

I also can't show you any of the raw casts all put together:

 

I can't show the other pieces I'm working on either:

 

This last pair of projects also has me doing more lifecasting than I've done in years:

 

I've been making arms, hands, heads, boobs, and even teeth:

Suffice it to say,  I'm looking forward to having the current project lineup finished and delivered so I can show them off.  It'll all make sense soon.

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