Genestealer Build Update 15: Skulls, Thighs, and Big Ole Tootsies

 Alright.  It's been a while.

When last I posted I mentioned we were molding the creature's skull so we'd have something to hold up the face.  Here's the first skull out of the molds:

It came out pretty smooth and nice and lightweight.  The black sharpie marks are where we trim it on its way to being a finished thing:


Here it is with a 3D printed jaw in place:


The teeth and gums will be hand sculpted in oil-based clay on their way to being molded and cast in dental acrylic.  The nose and eyebrows were removed so that we can actuate them with servos later.  That's going to be a good time.

The other thing I mentioned in my last post was the completion of the forming bucks for the thighs.  We formed the first pair of thighs and did a quick rough trimming on them, but they're not quite ready to glue together and try on yet:


The big cliffhanger ending in the last post was this sketch of the foot mechanism:


Since the creature has digitigrade feet (like the hind legs of a dog or cat) we had to come up with a pair of stilts to walk around on.

In order to give them more footprint than the tip of the steel tube they were made of, Jeff modeled up this block that we'll mount to a ball on the bottom of the steel tube before covering it with a big molded rubber sock that will hide everything and look like a Genestealer foot:


I printed the block as he originally designed it, then decided to fair in the hard corners where the toe hinges connect to the foot block:


Since we're going to mold these blocks and cast them in rubber, I figured we should shave away some of the excess material:


After grinding through most of the printed pieces, I remade the new shape with Bondo and started feeling pretty okay about the foot blocks.  Here they are next to one of the foot forms:


Your eyes do not deceive you, this guy's foots are huge:


HUGE:


Still, they're getting faired out and filled in all the same:


To attach the internal foot block, we have to cut the steel strut on the bottom of the stilt to the proper length, then weld a steel ball onto the end.  Here's what it looks like digitally:

The ugly ball on the end of the part we cut off is the tennis ball I'd slipped on the end of the strut prior to scanning me in the stilts.

Between my stilts and Jeff's stilts, we'd need to weld four of these assemblies:


I managed to weld three of them before my dad passed by and said, "you want me to show you how to make that look good?"

"Sure," says I.  

So he knocked out the last one in seconds, reminding me I'm not much of a welder:


This is mine on the left and his on the right:


Mine will work, but his is decidedly better looking.

Meanwhile, we'd molded the foot blocks in silicone and it was time to pour some rubber to make a new, stronger pair with a bit of flexibility.  To maximized the ick and remind me what I'm doing, we tinted them plurple:


The first pair were cast in a dense flexfoam which proved out to be a bad idea.  Still, I was proud of how closely I guessed the exact right amount of material.  Hardly any overflow:


Nice:


A second pair was cast in Smooth-Cast 60D for more rigidity and durability:


For an initial test I have bungee cords holding them onto the ball at the bottom of the strut, but I'll come up with something more elegant later:


First, it was time to take them for a test run:


We've shortened them by about four inches since our last trial run, so they're much easier to get around in.  So I'm still wearing the forearm crutches in case I lose my balance and don't want to tear a meniscus or break my coccyx.  But overall, they're coming together nicely:


Getting a start on the skin, here's my friend Kegan adding a layer of clay over the hardcoated foot form:


Right now they look about like so:


And they've been added to the bench of sculpts in progress:


Out of all of these sculpts, the five-fingered hands are closest to done:


They still need a bit more texture and detailing, but they're getting there:


The challenge is that whenever I'm sculpting some weird little detail on one of them:


I get distracted by the other one and have to fix some other weird little detail on it instead:


Still, they're almost ready to mold.

Next I'll be finishing up polishing the claws for the three-fingered hands:


Once I have all the hands and the feet sculpted, all that's left is the head and the big shorts.

For the shorts, I finally hardcoated the 3D print:


Later I decided it would be easier if I sculpted and molded and cast the tail separately.  So I cut it off and mounted it to a board all by itself.  Here I am contemplating it:

That thing is...

Yeah.

Stay tuned.  The pace is picking up now that we're almost done making the hard parts.

Genestealer Build Update 14: Chest Parts, Hand Parts, Leg Parts, Foot Parts, and So Many Parts.

It's been a while since the last update.  I was under the weather for a few days and had to scramble like mad to complete a few unrelated projects right before that, but otherwise, I can assure you that the Genestealer build has been screaming right along.

As of our last update we'd printed the sculpting base for the waist, hips, and tail.  Since then, I've done a bit of work smoothing the whole thing out:




It'll get a few more minutes of prep work, then I'll layer on a couple coats of epoxy to make it shiny and smooth prior to sculpting out the texture for the skin.

In the last update, we'd also lifecast some copies of my hands and my friend Ian's hands so we'd have a starting point to sculpt the creature's hands.  I decided to start by making claws for the five-fingered hands which will eventually be integrated into the silicone skin once we get to casting those.  I started by smoothing out the hand casts and giving them a coat of Epsilon Pro epoxy:

The three-fingered hands still need a bit more smoothing, so at this point they're not mounted on bases or coated in epoxy yet.

Once the epoxy had cured, I covered the fingertips with plastic wrap and masking tape, then used Magic Sculpt epoxy putty to sculpt out some finger extensions and claws:


Once the Magic Sculpt had cured, I popped the claws off of the lifecast fingers and tried them on:


Pretty schnazzy:


Then I spent some quality time sanding and shaping and polishing up each individual fingertip before giving them all a coat of glossy lightish red paint:


The next day, after the paint dried, my friend Rachel went ahead and made molds of them.  When the molds were cured and ready to go, she cast a set of the claws in urethane resin which I glued back onto the lifecast hands:

Now they're ready for me to sculpt out the shape of the skin for the hands.  The final claws will be cast in urethane rubber to make them safe for whoever the character might bump into.

Meanwhile, the three-fingered hands got a bit of sanding and smoothing and a couple coats of epoxy:


Geri the shop husky helped in his not-so-helpful way:


From the last update, we'd just stared adding the cardboard edges to the chest piece:


Once the cardboard was glued on, I layered over it with oil-based clay to give us mold margins.  Then the whole thing was coated with PVA:


After the PVA dried, the whole assembly was coated with orange tooling gelcoat:


Then I built up a few layers of fiberglass on top of the whole thing:


"But wait!" you exclaim, "with all of those overhangs and undercuts, you've now locked the master into the mold!  There's no way you'll ever get it out."

You'd be right, of course.  I'll have to cut the mold apart.  But first, I'll have to add flanges so I can put it back together afterwards.  I start by marking the places where I'll separate the mold with a Sharpie:


Then I bust out this nifty little air saw because it has a very skinny blade and cuts a very small kerf:


I cut along each line stopping just short of each intersection.  This leaves the tiniest little tab connecting the pieces together so the whole thing doesn't just fall apart:


With all of the cutting done, the chest looked like so:


Then, to create the flanges, I inserted sections of aluminum flashing into the cuts:


Then I used aluminum ducting tape to connect all of the parts and make them as smooth as I can:


Then I go back and layer up fiberglass over all of the sheet metal shims to create the mold flanges:


The next day, Rachel drilled bolt holes into the flanges and pried the parts of the mold apart:


It ended up being a lot of parts:


Fortunately, I had her in the shop to wet sand and polish all of these parts in preparation for casting:


After the mold sections were wet sanded and waxed, they were coated with a liberal amount of PVA release and bolted back together:


Jeff mixed up a batch of gelcoat and we got started laying up the fiberglass:


I didn't take photos of myself laying up the glass for the chest, but once it was out of the mold, I did a quick and dirty test fitting:


The chest and back mate up perfectly.  So next time I'm doing any fiberglassing, I'll bond them together permanently.

Now I just need to finalize the shape of the last piece of the chest.  Then I can mold it and glass it and that'll be that:


The only other fiberglass piece to be done is the inner skull that will be built into the head.  I started with a 3D printed skull that was given a quick bit of prep before filling in the eye and nose holes:


The jaw will be made separately.

Once the skull was smoothed out, it was coated in epoxy:


Shiny:


Here's a shot of Jeff trying it on after the epoxy coat had set up:


Silly Jeff.

Prior to molding, I used a hacksaw to cut a seam down the centerline:


Jeff built up the cardboard and clay margins around the bottom edge of the skull.  Then I inserted the flashing for the parting wall and gave both sides a heavy layer of PVA:


Then gelcoat:


After laying up the fiberglass, the mold cured and I popped the halves apart:


Then the edges were trimmed, the molds were wet sanded, and then waxed.  Here's the two halves being force dried in front of the fan between layers of wax:


Tomorrow I'll lay up the first fiberglass underskull.

On a completely separate note, I finished carving out the forming bucks for the thighs.  Here's the inner thigh forms all stacked up and assembled:


And here's the inner thighs with the outer right thigh in the middle of smoothing out the seams:


I still need to assemble the outer left thigh:


Once that's done, I can hurry up and vacform the shells for the thighs.  While I'm doing that, Jeff is fine-tuning the models for the lower leg shells and then we'll have all of the hard parts done in pretty short order.

Speaking of Jeff, we've done the fiberglass work on his pair of stilts:


And we've got the earliest beginnings of the foot parts coming together.  This little benchtop sketch is the beginning of where we're going with those:

Stay tuned.  Things are about to speed up.