14 Days to the Bay Area Maker Faire

I've been having a lot of trouble setting aside time to blog lately.  I think the main problem is that I want to make sure each article I post delivers a concise, complete thing by the time you're done reading it.

The only problem with that is that usually, by the time I'm done with a project, I move so quickly onto the next thing that I don't pause long enough to write up all of it's various segments.  This is why I've only written a handful of the eight or so articles about the recently finished Goddess Thor costume and I never finished writing about the painting and rigging of my Mk3 Ironman costume from a few years back.  I'll get back to those later.

My goal for the next two weeks is to post daily.  It should be easy.  I won't be able to show off a completed project each day, but what I will have is at least a few progress updates on four things I'm working on simultaneously.

First: I'm making the final great strides on finishing my T-60 Power Armor from Fallout 4.  Today I was focused on sculpting out the rubber pieces for the knees and elbows.  Making the rubber parts starts with figuring out how big they need to be.  Here's my assistant Chuck making an outline of the visible opening that the rubber bit will fit into:


The next step was to lay out a rectangle big enough to fit that shape into and then sculpt a ribbed sheet:


Now I just need to make a mold of it.

Second: I'm nearing completion for my Grey Knight Terminator build from Warhammer 40K.  For starters, I sculpted the rubber bits for the knees and elbows for that guy too:


It came out okay:

I'll be molding it along with the rubber parts of the T-60.

I  had another helper vacform a couple of copies of this fun little detail piece:
I've also made the prototype for the hinge detail piece that'll go all over the armor.  Here it is on top of one of the shoulders:


At this point, it's ready to mold along with a couple of new purity seals:


Once I've got nine or ten casts of the hinge part, I'll install them all over the armor and get to painting.  For now, here's a skull detail from the right shoulder in its first coat of silver:


On the silly, lesser project front, I'm almost ready to mold the body and lower jaw for the Mouser droid from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:


The only other thing I'm planning on having done in time for Maker Faire is a few minor improvements to the display booth.  More on that in tomorrow's post.