Shae Vizla Costume Build

If you happen to follow the Sexy Star Wars Girls page on Facebook, you may have spotted this photo a couple of weeks ago:


That's the Lady Shawnon wearing her Shae Vizla costume at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim.

Shae Vizla is a mercenary character that shows up in the trailers for the MMORPG Star Wars: the Old Republic.  You can see her being a supreme badass in this video:


So here's Shawnon being a supreme badass:


To see how the costume was made (and a bunch more pictures of my smokin'-hot girlfriend showing it off) read on...

Shae Vizla Blaster, aka How to build a Decent-Looking Science Fiction Weapon in About Four Hours

Somewhere toward the end of the big rush to prepare a bunch of costumes for Star Wars Celebration: Anaheim, I realized that I'd nearly finished the Shae Vizla costume for the Lady Shawnon but I'd neglected to come up with any weapon props to carry around.  If you saw the last entry about the Shae costume you know I managed to solve this crisis:


What you may not realize is that I knocked it out in a mad rush in the middle of the night while my crew cranked out a bunch of parts for the big Mandalorian project.

For details on the blaster build, read on...

Building Captain Phasma Part 2: the Armor

So a couple or three years ago I made a replica of Captain Phasma's helmet.  Here's how it came out:




Now I'm almost done with the rest of the armor.  At this point I've completed everything but the painting and rigging.  It looks like so:


To see how it was made, read on...

Old Republic Sith Acolyte Costumes

A while back I had the pleasure of attending Star Wars Celebration: Anaheim, the 7th such  convention in the history of the Star Wars franchise.

The Lady Shawnon had bought our tickets fully nineteen months before the actual event with the statement that "that should be more than enough time for you to come up with costumes for us to wear."  She was right...   ...kinda.

Among the many outfits I ended up putting together, were these four:


The girl with the blaster rifle was the Lady Shawnon in her Shae Vizla bounty hunter costume based on the trailers for the Star Wars: the Old Republic MMORPG.  I'll get around to writing that one up.  The important thing to know is that she looks even cooler when she's not all by herself.  You can read about that build here: LINK.

The three lightsaber-wielding gentlemen were Sith Acolytes from the same game.  You can see one of the videos that inspired the build here:


Here's a great photo showcasing one of the finished costumes:


For more photos and details showing how it was made, read on...

Time to Catch Up

It's been a while since I've had substantial time available for bloggage.  For that, I apologize.

That said, I'm going to be doing a lot of writing in the coming months and I've decided to use the blog as a tool to help me shake out the cobwebs and overcome writer's block.  So you can expect all sorts of articles in the coming weeks and months and I flesh out a few things and catch up on a variety of little things I've written over the past few seasons.

Specifically...

I just finished unpacking from my fifth consecutive appearance at the Bay Area Maker Faire.  I pulled out all of the boxes and set up quite a display of finished works:


So I need to go over the story of the mad rush involved in getting all of that stuff spruced up, packed, loaded, transported, installed, and hauled home after the fact.  It was a good time.

Going back a bit further, my crew and I went to Star Wars Celebration Anaheim last month, so in addition to writing about that experience, I've got to go over the details involved in making our platoon of Mandalorian costumes:


There's also the Shae Vizla costume I made in cooperation with DW Design Studios for the Lady Shawnon:


There was also a handful of Sith Acolyte outfits I made to accessorize her.  Here's one:


Going back even further, I've still got to finish up a couple of articles about the building of my Mark III Ironman suit:

It's been finished for well over a year now, but I never finished writing up the steps involved in the paintjob as well as wiring up the lights.

On that subject, I've got a couple of other variants of the helmet that I need to write about:


Hopefully I'm over my Ironman helmet building phase at this point.

There's a few other projects I'll be writing about as well, but these are the first that come to mind.

I should point out that these are all hobby projects.  My professional projects are even cooler, but it'll take a bit longer to write about them while I await permission to release images.

So in other words, stand by for more.  It's coming...


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January 2014 UFO Sightings in the Workshop

The holidays really took their toll on workshop projects, so it's taken me a couple of weeks of 2015 to really gather steam and get to working on my various projects again.

Back in what seems like forever ago, my amazingly gorgeous girlfriend bought a couple of tickets for us to go to Star Wars Celebration 7 in Anaheim with the condition that I had to come up with stuff for us to wear.  Once some of my friends got word of the fact that we were going, they started making plans to go along, so I'm dressing many of them as well.  One or two of them have even showed up in the workshop to help me build the outfits for them.  

So looking around the workshop there's a lot of Star Wars stuff going on.  Here's my friend Matt putting together a jetpack prototype so we can dress as a unit of Mandalorian Death Watch Mercenaries from the Clone Wars series:


In order to include our significant others in this plan, we're also making a handful of sets of Nite Owl armor.  Here's some of the helmets in progress:


Another thing I'm planning on making a few of are the Sith Warriors seen in the trailers for the Old Republic MMORPG (like this one).  Here's the first couple fo pieces of the armor out of the molds:


I'm laying them up in fiberglass, so they'll be unnecessarily sturdy, but using silicone molds to ensure that they'll have all of the details in place.  Here I am test-fitting the chest armor:


Also from the Old Republic there's the Shae Vizla costume I'm building in cooperation with DW Design Studios for Shawnon.  If you don't know who Shae Vizla is, she's the redheaded badass that shows up prominently in this video.  Here's the prototype for one of the gauntlets in progress:

Still not sure if I want to make the flamethrowers functional or not...

For one of the other Star Wars costumes I'm making, I had to lifecast a copy of Shawnon's head.  Here's a shot of me cleaning up the seam line in the lifecast so you can see what she's look like if she shaved her head and painted herself orange:


Getting away from Star Wars for a moment, I'm also doing some work on another set of Warhammer 40K armor:

This one will be epic.

And finally, since I can't seem to get enough Ironman, I've been tinkering with a prototype for the War Machine helmet from Ironman 2:

It's still got a ways to go, but I'm loving the way this guy is coming out.

Stay tuned for more detailed write-ups of these and many more of my projects...

2017 Bay Area Maker Faire

It's been a few days since the curtains fell on the 2017 Bay Area Maker Faire and I'm just about fully recovered.  After missing last year, I had an absolute blast going back and showing off a small selection of my prop and costume replicas for faire goers.  I'm still sifting through the hundreds of photos I snapped and looking forward to getting quite a few more from the folks I had on hand to help with the display, but I figured it was worth sharing some of what I've got.

For starters, you couldn't have asked for nicer weather over the weekend.  I was running on little or no sleep for the days leading up to the event.  But even my thoroughly sleep deprived eyes couldn't help but appreciate the scene as I emerged from the Robin Williams Tunnel on the way to the Golden Gate Bridge:

My friend Matt had arrived just a little earlier than me and set up ED-209, so once my truckload was on site it was pretty quick work to set up the display booth:


After hanging up a few prop weapons and rigging up a set of Space Marine armor for display, our work was done:


Friday afternoon the Faire opened up for school groups and special invitations.  I had a few characters in costume.  Always a hit with the kids:


Meanwhile, my friend Freddy fielded prop and costume making questions from the crowd:


It was a pretty quick introductory day and I'm happy to say that my girlfriend Shawnon actually managed to make it up from Southern California for her first visit to the Maker Faire.  That's her in the sexy TIE Pilot costume:


And here she is in normal people clothes on our way out to dinner that evening:


Saturday started off nice and easy.  The booth was swamped with excited people as usual, but at noon I had to gather up a handful of characters and make my way to the Show and Tell stage to talk about my book, Make: Props and Costume Armor.  The seats were jam packed and folks were gathered all around to hear my quick little talk.  Still, a friend managed to snap this pic:


Afterward, we made our way back to the madness:


At various points throughout both days, I managed to dust off many of my favorite costumes from the past few years worth of building things in the shop.  While I am proud of all of my work, for some reason it's my Ironman suit that usually seems to get all the love:


As usual, I didn't get much chance to see what else was going on at the Faire.  On the very rare few occasions when I wasn't in my booth, I made it a point to snap pics.  I wish I had more time though.  For example, I have no idea what the story is with this thing:


I saw this mechanical ant parked inside the main entrance on Sunday morning:


I would've loved to chat with her creator, but at least I got a close look at some of the details:


While I was gawking at the ant, there was a cardboard dinosaur harassing the crowd at the fence:


Not far from there was this other thing:

I guess it was pooping.

Then there was this little robot designed to jump on your trampolines for you:


In the dark room there were these glowy inflatable creations:


But back at my booth there was no shortage of photo opportunities.  Here's just a few of my favorites...

Ladies love a man in uniform:


Here's someone trying on my Ironman Space Armor helmet:


And a new recruit for the UNSC:


Ironman getting more attention:


Shae Vizla out for a stroll:


Here's a TIE fighter pilot:


But he's not piloting a TIE fighter:


These are just my favorites that I snapped myself.  I actually had a real-life photographer on hand for most of the event as well.  Stay tuned for more professional images once he's done processing his images.  You can look forward to a whole series of pics of a TIE fighter pilot piloting things that aren't TIE fighters.

March UFO Sightings in the Workshop

I've been running way behind on posting anything at all lately.  As is usually the case, whenever I've got time to write it feels like I've got nothing to write about.  Then whenever I've got interesting projects going on, I can't find time to write.

I will write more detailed write-ups as these projects get completed and I find breathing room.  In the meantime, here's a shotgun blast of photos of UnFinished Objects around the workshop lately.

Let me be clear, there's a lot of them:


Those are just some of the several hundred parts that we've been making for the Mandalorian Death Watch and Night Owl costumes we'll be showing off at Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim next month.  Here's one of them strapped together for a quick duct tape test fit on our smallest wearer:


As part of that project, we're making no less than 19 jetpacks:


On the subject of Star Wars, I'm also making a few Sith Acolytes from the Old Republic MMORPG.  Here's an in-progress shot of the mask:


I'll also be dressing the Lady Shawnon as Shae Vizla from the same game:


I'm a bit touched in the head, so cranking out thirty simultaneous Star Wars costumes* is apparently not enough.  That's why I've also been tinkering with my realistic interpretation of Captain Rex from the Clone Wars:


On the subject of helmets, I'm still making slow headway on my War Machine helmet from Ironman 2:



Of course, there's also the really big, super secret project going on over on the main workbench.  It's starting to get difficult to take any photos in the workshop without having some part of this thing visible in frame:


I can't tell you what it's going to be (other than "awesome" of course) but hopefully I'll get a chance to show off the finished result some months from now.
The next couple of months should make for some pretty exciting updates.  There will be Star Wars Celebration: Anaheim, the Bay Area Maker Faire, and Shawnon's next visit back in the states all coming up in short order.

So stay tuned for further updates...