Achilles Costume for Burning Man

A while back my good friend Trevor, who you may recognize as one of my walking mannequins from various other costuming posts, asked me to help him out with a project.  It turns out Trev was going to this year's Burning Man Festival and participating in a Trojan War reenactment that would take place there.  When he heard about it, he found out that nobody had been cast to play the part of Achilles and jumped at the chance.


The only problem was that he didn't have any ancient Greek combat armor hanging in his closet.  So he turned to the one person he thought might: me.  I suppose he'd heard enough people talking about my last Ancient Greek costume project.  I didn't have exactly what he was after, but once we'd discussed it for a few minutes, we had a plan.


I had a torso mannequin on hand that happened to be just about the same size as Trevor.  So the first thing we did was heat up a sheet of foamed PVC sheet on the vac forming oven and stretch it over the back of the mannequin.  Using damp rags, we pressed the hot plastic down until it was roughly the same shape as the back of the mannequin.  Once it cooled, we pulled it off and trimmed out a back plate:



Then we flipped over the mannequin and repeated the same process for the chest:



To add a bit more strength and finesse, Trevor cut 1/2" wide strips of the foamed PVC sheet and built a border all the way around the armor pieces.  They were bonded to the rest of the armor with solvent cement (just like plumbers use on plastic pipe) and held in place with a few clamps while the adhesive set up:



Since we were excited to see how it would look, we didn't wait for the last of the glue to set before priming a spot in the middle of the chest:



For the base color, we decided on "Classic Bronze" from Rustoleum:



Happy that we'd found the right base color, Trevor went ahead and sprayed all of the parts with primer:



The next step was a base coat of classic bronze:



The same process was used to build the back plate:



And the shoulder plates:



The greaves and bracers were done the same way too:



Once the parts were formed and glued together and the base coat had dried, the next step was a blackwash to make it all look a bit more used.  The shoulder plate on the left in this picture had not yet been weathered:

I think the effect came out pretty good.


Here's Trevor test fitting the parts before he'd done any of the leather work or made the helmet:



To make the helmet, we started by making a fiberglass shell over the top of a child-sized motorcycle helmet:



So we cut some sections out of it to make it smaller, and cleaned up the edges.  Then Trevor made a form for the face portion of the helmet out of some ABS scraps I had on hand:



Then he laid up fiberglass inside of the helmet.  After it had cured, the plastic form was peeled off and he tried it on:



Fortunately, he can fit his breathing mask on underneath.  Barely.

After trimming off all of the rough edges, he stopped looking like the king of the fuzz people:



After a bit more work, he'd added a skirt to the back of the helmet:



Here it is with the bronze base coat:



For the soft parts of the costume, we went over to Barta Hide on Lakeville Avenue in Petaluma and went through their scraps and offcuts for a while:


Barta has the best deals I've ever found for leather of all kinds.  They primarily deal in green hides so the warehouse smells like rotting cow.  If you can deal with that, it's a Godsend for costuming.  After a few minutes of digging through the scrap boxes we'd come away with a trunkload of belt leather and goat skin, all dyed black.


I hate sewing.  So aside from offering a few suggestions, I left all of the leather work up to Trev.  In the end, he developed a strap and lace system to hold the armor on as well as a "battle kilt."  I think he called it "battle kilt" because all of the other options were less manly.  I preferred "fighting dress," "war skirt," and "conflict frock," but none of them caught on.  Oh well.


Once he was done with all that, he stopped by one more time so we could make some boffer weapons and pick up all of his gear.  Here's Trevor as he was riding away on his way to the desert:


Trevor's apparently terrible about remembering to take pictures when he does cool stuff.  Fortunately, he went with friends who managed to snap a few. 

Here's a shot of him in the desert with all of his kit on:


Most of the pictures he got looked like this:


But he did get a few action shots:


As the battle raged in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, you'll be pleased to know that Troy did indeed fall, Trevor died a heroically tragic death, and a good time was had by all. 

There was also something about a horse:

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.

Yesterday I Spent Four Hours Cleaning and Organizing my Workshop

Today you can't tell.




Dammit.

.

SSS Compass Rose, Off to the Yard

Tuesday morning started bright and early aboard the Sea Scout Ship Compass Rose on the Petaluma River:

The ship was headed down to Richmond to be hauled out of the water for some new bottom paint.  While there, we're also pulling the starboard propeller off to have it straightened out.  Apparently we like that prop a lot and we've managed to knock it into something no less than four times since the last haulout.

Since the trip to the yard happened on short notice and it was to be the last day of summer before the crew had to start school again, the only scout who was able to make the trip was Brian, the ship's bosun:

We still had my niece and nephew aboard as well as Melissa's daughter Elise:

Fortunately, they managed to keep themselves entertained:

We left the marina in Petaluma at max ebb, so it was a pretty quick transit to Richmond:

Upon arrival, the Skipper and I went ashore and toured the very crowded yard:

I'm not sure what the haulout is going to cost, but there was no shortage of commercial and government boats there, so it must be cheap:

There was also this gorgeous Chinese junk:

While we were ashore one of the yard dogs found his way aboard the Rose.  His name is "Whitney."

Having checked in with the office and verified that all was secure on board, we left the ship alongside the dock to wait for space to open up so she can be yanked out of the water.

More to come.  Stay tuned...

Star Wars Republic Commando Helmet Part III: Painting and Wiring

The last time I wrote about this project, it looked like so:



Since it was hard to see out of the helmet, the first thing I had to do was cut out the T-visor:



Then I primed it and gave it a base coat of satin white paint:



Once I'd cut and fitted a transparent blue acrylic insert, it was good to go:



Of note, I'd also molded these little detail pieces for the chin:



It's not canon, but looking at this helmet next to my clonetrooper and stormtrooper helmets, I decided that this one really needed to have teeth cut into the frown:



With the base colors painted on, it was time to add some more detailing and whatnot.  The video game is about a four-man squad and looking at the cover art on the box, I decided the first one I should paint was "RC-1138" also known as "Boss."  He's the one with the pumpkin-orange identification marks on his armor and helmet:



Bringing a video game character into the real world can be a bit tricky.  One of the tougher things for me is matching the colors.  After a bit of looking, I was happy to find Rustoleum "cinnamon" satin spraypaint:



After giving the stripe a couple of coats, I peeled the masking tape and let the paint dry overnight.  The next day I drybrushed a few scratch marks here and there.  Then I gave the whole thing a blackwash to pick out the details:

A "blackwash" is basically just slathering the whole thing with watered-down black acrylic paint. Then I used a damp cloth to wipe most of it off, leaving black paint in the details and recesses of the helmet.


Once the blackwash had mostly dried, I used a pad of 0000 steel wool to buff the black off of the high parts.  I also made sure to add a few wear marks:



Here's a shot of the backside:



It looked good, but I couldn't call it done until I had the lights and padding inside:









Now I just need to resist the urge to paint up more casts of this helmet to look like the other three team members. The way these things go, my willpower will fail and I will make more.


Stay tuned...