Growing up in rural Northern California, there were long portions of my childhood where we had either no television or just whatever local stations we could pick up with the rabbit ear antennae. Fortunately, somewhere on one of those stations I was able to watch the old GI Joe cartoons.
In hindsight, grown-up me has no trouble thinking of each episode as a 30-minute toy commercial. But that didn't stop 9-year-old me from having one heck of a crush on this lady:
This is the Baroness, aka Anastasia Cisarovna, the intelligence officer for Cobra, an evil terrorist organization, determined to rule the world. She was one of Cobra Commander's top lieutenants, responsible for all kinds of espionage operations. But more importantly, her long black hair, black-rimmed glasses, skin-tight black leather outfit, and over-the-top Eastern European accent meant that this ruthless femme fatale was largely responsible for a whole generation of fetishes and fantasies.
Fast forward a couple or three decades and my friend Rachel mentions that she's thinking of dressing up as this character for Halloween. Since I'd been meaning to make this outfit for the Lady Shawnon for quite some time, this was all it took for me to embark on a rushed build of all of the armor parts, pick up some airsoft weapons and skin-tight catsuits, and churn out two copies of this costume in a hurry.
Here's the nearly finished result:
To see how the parts were made, read on...
A while back, I made a pretty decent MkIII Ironman costume. In the midst of a series of distractions and various commissioned projects, it took just a shade over ten months to build the whole thing.
Among the many distractions was this particular helmet:
It's the helmet for the Space Armor MkIII which Tony Stark uses throughout the "Godkiller" story arc in the comics. I'm not sure what prompted me to make this particular helmet, but once the idea was stuck in my head I couldn't shake it until the thing was made. I'm sure it'll turn out to be some sort of brain tumor...
Anyhow, for more photos and some details about how it was made, read on.
As usual I find I've got way too many irons in the fire and there's a shortage of time to sit down and blog about it. That combined with the fact that I tend to only write up full articles about projects once they're done means that I haven't been doing near enough blogging lately.
To make amends, here's a stack of photos of current UnFinished Objects in and around the shop.
First off, I've started tinkering with a lot of Star Wars stuff again. I've decided to move my Episode 7 flametrooper build a little higher up on the priority list, so the D-93 Incinerator is now a work in progress. Here's the digital model I'm starting with:
Because it's made of so many tiny little parts, it's not very well suited to CNC carving. Instead, I've had to settle for 3D printing the whole thing. Here's how it looks right about now:
The barrels and muzzle block are currently printing, so it's only a matter of time before the whole thing will be assembled and prepped for molding.
On the subject of First Order props, I've also printed the "quadnoculars":
These are the clunky, huge binoculars that showed up in the visual dictionary for Episode 7 and were on display at the Star Wars Launch Bay at Disneyland, but so far haven't actually appeared in the films. Still, I'm making them because I'm about to accidentally reproduce the entire First Order.
The other thing I've just barely started is the Sisters of Battle armor from Warhammer 40k. I started with the helmet:
I'll probably make a handful of copies of the costume and most of them don't wear helmets, but I wanted something that would make the armor present well on a mannequin and allow people to wear the costume even if they weren't all pasty and pale like the women in the artwork.
For scale, here's my new workshop assistant Rachel trying on the sculpt in progress:
The other 40k project that I've been tinkering with again is my replica of the Wolf Helm of Russ. Here's how it looks right now:
It's a little stuffy inside, but I'm liking it:
I've also built a custom display stand for that one:
On the subject of nearly done things, there's also the Fallout T-60 power armor I've been working on off and on for the past year or two. So far I've managed to take the (nearly ready) costume out for two location photoshoots. Here's a teaser photo from the first shoot:
As you can see, the rigging still needed a few tweaks.
Here's a shot from last weekend:
So it's coming right along.
But as soon as I finish that project, there have to be at least four or five to work on in its place. So I've started tinkering with more Halo props again. Namely, I've decided to start making the helmet for Locus from Red vs. Blue. Here's the assembled prototype:
Once the nose piece is installed, it'll be impossible to see out of this helmet. So I'm using a pair of video goggles inside the helmet to allow visibility:
The video feed comes from a tiny camera mounted in the helmet's mouth:
The resolution isn't great, but it'll keep me from walking into walls while I'm in costume.
As long as I'm screwing around, I've also picked up a kit to build a Patrol Trooper helmet:
If you don't recognize that guy, don't worry. He's one of the new variants of Imperial stormtrooper that showed up for all of five seconds in the Solo movie.
And last, but certainly not least, I've been collaborating with my friend Jon to bring the War Machine armor from Ironman 2 to life. Jon just pulled a set of legs out of the mold a little while ago:
Meanwhile, I've been making slow progress on the chest and back:
So that's getting closer to done too.
I'm sure there's more stuff in the works that I'm not thinking of at the moment, but stay tuned and there will be more. This is a big year for finishing projects for me.
