So I looked around and found some pics of the skull prop.
So I took look along the intertubewebs, and found some cheap Dremel bits that are for carving and cutting. I decided to try that.
So this week I have been working on homework and getting my life back in order. I haven't done much creative-wise. This last week, however, I started a new project. I have decided that Bob's Skull needs to go from the book version to the TV version. That means etching runes on it. So I looked around and found some pics of the skull prop. And I found some pics of a Bob that someone else made. At first I was going to draw all the markings on it then carve them out with an Exacto knife. I found that as I worked I was wiping out the marks I made. Also, the knife was hard to control. I thought about using my soldering tool, but the plastic fumes would be toxic and I don't have a well ventilated area in which to work. So I took look along the intertubewebs, and found some cheap Dremel bits that are for carving and cutting. I decided to try that. They work ok. The results are less than stellar, but I am figuring I need to do some cleaning up and finishing. There may be a better way to do this, but at this point I need to work with the tools I have on hand. So I did the first cuts with the Dremel, then clean it up with smoe needle files I bought for a different project a while back. The plan then is to insert an orange LED light into it and the lines and runes will glow orange, like the skull is supposed to do when Bob is called. I don't have the orange light yet. I am waiting for it to come from Amazon. But in the mean time I did some tests to see if my idea was a viable one. Result...it works! So I will continue as I am. Then I will make a blakc or grey wash to rub into the lines. Once the light is here I will take pics and post them here. I think Bob is going to turn out great. :) I am not really happy about the dot in the middle. that was already on the plastic skull when I bought it. I did not buy it for this purpose, so I did not take that into consideration when I was shopping. But it is from the dollar store, so I will make do. I will maybe try filling it with air dry clay or something.
0 Comments
So school term is over. I did 16 credits in just over 4 weeks. Whew. I never ever want to have to do that again. I don't know if I could pull that outta my ass a second time. Now is time to start a new one. One of these days I will be done. For now, though, I am taking a few days as a breather, then back to work. Next I gotta go pass my Comptia A+ exam. I am sure i can do it. I just need to do it. I haven't really worked on anything new yet. However I did do something I think you might find interesting. My friend has had an XYZ Da Vinci jr. 1.0 3d printer for a couple of years now. It has decided to crap out on him. He asked me if I wanted to try to get it working again. After a "Hell yeah!" (because I love tinkering) he brought it over and I started researching possible causes. Troubleshooting this printer is similar to troubleshooting computer issues, so I did the most obvious things first. Was it plugged in? Was it turned on? Did it have a file to print? So I turned it on. Looked fine. I took the little nozzle declogger and pushed it through a couple of times. Not clogged. So I set it to try one of the standard print jobs already loaded onto the machine. It printed like 2 inches of the base, then nothing came out of the extruder nozzle. It was still moving like it was extruding, but it wasn't. So I canceled the print job and decided to go further into the extruder. Really give it a cleaning. Maybe there was a clog deeper than my declogging tool could reach. This is what I found inside of the extruder casing: In case you don't know what you are looking at....that is PLA melted and hardened to the OUTSIDE of the extruder nozzle, INSIDE the casing. Yup, I started to attempt to chip away at it, but it was so hardened I could only get some away from the nozzle. It was stuck on there tight, and I worry that if I try any futher it would ruin the nozzle and/or the mini circuit board that is in there.
That is not what is supposed to happen. While I am unsure the exact cause of this, I have a hypothesis. When I removed the spool of filament, parts of it broke off easily. Just chipped away till way back on the spool. That is also not supposed to happen. This friend got a bad patch from XYZ. Because in this model there is a chip in the spool that allows it to be used. If you get off brand the chip is absent and it won't work. My theory is that it was flaking off inside the extruder and got hot and make this mess. Who knows how many times my friend tried using it that way, adding more and more material until we got here. However if he had done regular maintenance he might have found this sooner. Might have been avoided, might not. But now, definitely the only options are getting a new exdtruder ($70) or getting a new printer. You are supposed to do a maintenance check every 200 hours. You should be cleaning the nozzle every other print job. The problem with this model is they advertise it as being low maintenance, which my friend thought meant he didn't need to do anything. Granted, there are newer models available now. This is an older printer. They have been seeling them for at least 3 years. It is possible they fixed any issues like this, or added some kind of sensor system. But there you go. Nasty mess. I will leave you with more pics of the mess, and come back in a week when I have more progress on my projects to report. I haven't updated in a while. I am currently trying to finish up a couple of classes before the end of term, so I have put a hold on most of my projects.
I am doing some game playing for charity, though. Red Nose Day is happening between now and May 24th. It is raising money for children in need. They provide clean drinking water, school supplies, and many other things that are very necessary for kids to grow up strong and educated. I started a page HERE. You can go to that page and donate at any time, directly to the charity. However, if you come watch my gaming streams and donate during them, you also in addition get to tell me what to do. Either in the game or on camera, as long as it does not violate the Twitch terms of service and do not put me into any danger. The schedule is still solidifiying, but the next one is on Wednesday April 25th. I will be playing through some of the Daedalic weirdness I got on sale. I will list a more definitive schedule when everything is worked out, but in the works is a Tiny Epic game-a-thon with one of my friends and a special one off DnD campaign with a Dm who is great at creating funny and interesting content. In order to know when I am streaming, feel free to follow me on Twitch at Teaweaselstopmo. I will be streaming there regularly once the Red Nose Day time is up. I am also moving my cosplay builds to Twitch Creative. Less hassle than Periscope. Because I like to add pictures, I am going to leave this with a pic from my most recent acquisition Ghost of a Tale. THE MOUSES ARE SOOOO CUTE! It really is a pretty game. I will eventually stream that one. Definitely. It was very very well made. I will be more regular after this term is over on May 1st. This weekend is Wizards World. I was thinking of going, so I thought I would try to get together an easy cosplay outfit. One of my favorite games is Viscera Cleanup Detail. I call it my defragging game. In most games you frag - kill. In this one you are cleaning up after the battle is over. After Santa has killed all the elves. After the murder house is completely murdered. After the terminators have all killed and been killed. It is really fun and cathartic, in a different way than my fragging games. So the janitor is the main character. You play as the janitor. I thought it would be simple enough to get together. Brown or yellow overalls, red boots, gloves and hat, 2 shirts. It has not been as easy as I thought it would be. Here is it as it stands now.
The first item to show up were the gloves. When I ordered them, they were labeled as red. There were 2 in the pack. When they got here, they actually were hot pink. I mean obviously really, really hot pink. They are real rubber industrial gloves. I tried searching online for how to dye them. All resources said it was not possible. I started thinking about it, and remembered watching videos of people dying synthetic wigs by spraying them down with rubbing alcohol then coloring them with sharpie. The theory is that the rubbing alcohol breaks down the outer layer a bit so it can hold the ink. So I thought why not try it with the gloves? I went and got several red sharpies and 91% isopropyl alcohol and got to it. It worked a charm.
The next thing I worked on was the belt. It was about an inch too small for me. So I decided to remove the middle tine thingy and glue it to the outer part of the belt buckle to give me some more room. That worked great. However when I put it on over the overalls, it didn't really fit. Much less have room for the accoutrments that will need to be clipped to it. This stymied me for a while. I tried looking for a new belt. Belts are expensive. And small. Even extra large was too small. The cheapest new one I found was $40. And that was a men's belt. I could not find a single womens belt to fit me. Then this Wednesday I was waiting to start a job interview, and it came to me. I could cut my existing belt in the sides, add eyelets and tie it together. Then I can just hide the holes with the clippy stuff. I also made a cover for the buckle out of 1/2 inch EVA foam. Then I rubbed it all down with brushed iron gilders wax to make it closer to the correct color. So now, belt sorted. So the next thing I tackled was the boots. While they are red, they were plain. If you look at the janitor's boots, he has silver things on them. So I cut 6 elongated rounds out of 6 mm EVA foam. Usually I seal the EVA foam with Plasti-dip. This time it was rainy outside and I didn't want to deal with it, so I sealed them with Mod Podge instead. It worked ok. I wouldn't use it for pieces that could squish. Like armor pieces. They turned out a bit crackley. But as they will be near the floor, I think they will be fine. The next thing I need to work on are all the clipped thingys and the front pocket. I made an attempt at it last night. And failed miserably. I will take a step back for a bit then try tackling it again.
Overall, so far it looks ok. Still working on Talleg. It is a very looooong work in progress. :/ This is way harder than it looks. Or seems like it should be. Or whatever. This week I am going to talk about scales. I had decided I was going to put fish scales on her breastplate and upper arms. Fish scales seem so....boring. But they are simple enough. I was still unsure how I was going to implement that part. Last time I did scales, the leaf scales tore the shit out of the rest of the outfit. I need to fix Aoifa's top before I can ever wear her again. So I thought about other ways to get the scale look. The first thing I tried was cutting scales on the foam and throwing the heat gun on it. It looked....kind of cheesy. Might work for something else, but this? Nah. Besides which, it wouldn't work for the sleeves. A friend of mine was going to 3d print a fish scale cookie cutter so I could use it as a pattern, but his printer stopped working and doesn't seem fixable. For a while there I was in a quandry. I guess I was just going to have to cut out 500 fish scales and go with that. Then I went to a meeting. Here in Portland there is an active cosplay community. I have struggled to find anyone who wants to help me or work with me. But I found a group on Meetup.com. It is called the Portland Cosplay Crafter's Association. I went to my first meeting, and it was AWESOME! The people were nice. They are maybe more serious about cosplay than I am. I love to do it, and working with others, but I don'tknow that I would ever want to make a business out of it. But they are talking a cosplay co-op kind of situation. Which I think is a WONDERFUL idea! We can buy supplies bulk for cheaper. We can get together a communal space. We can help each other, fill in gaps in our specialities. This is good. I am all in. And one of them said they have a 3d printer, and if I get something scanable they would print out scales for me. Eureka! That is awesome and totally waht I need. So I decided instead of going plain fish scale, I would go shark scale. Shark scales are different from fish scales. Shark skin itself feels like sandpaper. That is because shark scales are smaller than fish scales, and pointier. That looks so badass. After looking at tns and tons of pictures on the interwebtubes, I decided to make then kind of like the one on the left in the picture on the right. So I got to sculpting.
So now I just gotta get them printed. It is going to take a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it in the end.
So this week I worked on elbow and knee armor. I am still having issues getting rid of the fricken seem. One day I will be triumphant. Today is not that day. Sigh. I started by making a mock up of what I wanted to see how it would turn out. It doesn't look bad, but the stupid obvious seem is still there. I need to get on with the other parts of the armor, so I decided to try one more time. If the seem was still obvious I would just put a strip and spikes on it. I had black plastic spikes I got at target around Halloween that I haven't used, so I thought those would be a good idea. Um, nope. They refuse to stay put. I tried to glue them twice. Argh sigh. So now I am going to go get googly eyes and try to glue those on. I don't know if the glue will stick now that I have the gilder wax down. But as I said, I need to get moving on the other parts of this outfit. After I finish the googly eyes, or whatever I finally decide to do with them, I will glue velcro dots inside the corners, so I can attach them to my leggings. Before I work on the leg armor I need to figure out where to place the velcro so I leave that patch open.
So this is the part I have been really excited about. I decided to get my first cosplay wig! As Talleg is a water genasi, I decided to make her hair blue. As much as I would LOVE to dye my hair blue again permanently, I am still looking for a job. I probably should wait on that. So the next alternative was to get myself a wig. I looked at a bunch of different wig sites. I looked on Amazon. Most were either waaaaaay too expensive or not what I was looking for. The 2 most common places to get cosplay wigs are Arda and Epic Cosplay. Arda did not have a long haired wig in the shade of blue I wanted. Epic, however, had a wide array of styles in the blue-black color I wanted. And they are mid ranged as well. You can expect a wig from there to run you between $30 and $60. Not cheap, but not top of the line either. Still affordable. This one is the Hera in blue-black. I found this one on sale, so I grabbed it. It was way longer than I wanted it, but I figured if I don't like it I can cut it down. Was still cheaper than a shorter wig that was no on sale. One of the mixed messages I got from reading reviews and watching unboxing videos was regarding the thickness of the wig. Some people complained that you could see through the wig easily because it was so thin. This wig was not thin at all. It has a dark wig cap, and I have a white foam head. I figured it should be easy to see the thin spots. I had to dig pretty deep to get white. I am pretty happy with that. It was darn hard to catch a picture that really looked like the real color of the wig, though. It came with really long bangs, as they all do. They expect you to cut the bang to fit your face and the style you want. That is fine, except cutting bangs is not my strong suit. I made an attempt. I will probably try to find someone to fix it for me before I actually wear it. As you can see, it goes all the way past my butt. My opinion is Talleg would cut it off with a dagger before she let it get in her way. Still deciding if I want to cut it or leave it. But overall, I am happy with the wig. I still need to make minor adjustments to make it fit right, but overall it is comfy and not heavy. The next thing I needed to worry about was wig caps. I wanted the netted wig cap and the overcap. I ended up getting 2 different brands from 2 different sellers on Amazon. Both sets cost the same, but they were very different in quality. One set, the net was sewn on one end and the overcap is yellowish and flimsy. The other is the open ended net cap I wanted and the overcap is more flesh color and feels sturdier. I want the kind that is not sewn on the end, at least for the netted one. My hair felts easily. If I have to sit and tuck and tuck and tuck to get the hairs up and in the cap I will experience felting. But if the end is not sewn, I can bring it all the way down under my chin, then pull the end that is not elasticised up and over, trapping all the hair inside with not tucking involved. Then I can pin the unsewn end into my hair with the pins I use to keep it back. It is not a total waste though. I found I can use the sewn end ones over my spoolies to keep them from rolling around and unwinding at night. Works great. As Epic Cosplay wigs don't have clips already in them, I also got some of those. I don't know if I like these kind though. I will have to try them and see how they work long term. I did try styling the wig. It has been a long time since I last did a braid, much less not on my own head. I am going to have to redo it. But I like the style. I still may want to cut it down a bit, but it will definitely be a loose french braid. I did have a lot of trouble with the ends, though. No matter how hard I tried they kept tangling. I used to have hair that was really long. I have hair that is really felty. I am used to having to work to detangle hair. This was difficult. I think the synthetic fibers mixed with the length made it difficult. I had to cut a couple of chunks out completely. Even using detangler did not help those parts. But for the most part, it is a good wig. Go me.
So I found a refurbished iPad on the Apple site for really cheap.
My old one...the one that I won as first prize in the Douglas Adams contest back in 2012.....she has had a long a fruitful run. I blogged it all if you wanna look back at it. I believe it is Jan through June of 2012. She was a Ipad gen 3. I won it like 4 or 5 months before the gen 4 came out, but right after it was released. Yeah that year they released them really close together. It is a signal of my accomplishment. It is a reminder of what I can do. It is a memory of Stephen Fry (aaaaaaah) calling my work a love letter that was cute but not too precious. It is a memory of Bob Stein looking me up and giving me a call and saying he thought my comedic choices were good, and that he thought I had talent and potential. He told me to contact him when I was ready to go pro. It is also a reminder of how petty people can be, as it is the only part of the whole prize package I actually recieved. She has served me well. However, years and years of use and a buse has made her....weary. I have struggled for years to keep her going. I personally replaced the battery andthe bluetooth, and I replaced the screen and digitizer at least 4 times. I have an issue with my joints, and that means from time to time my hands just release and stop holding whatever it is I am holding. Sometimes that means the ipad she ended up on the floor. 😞 When I had a good case for her it was fine. When I didn’t....well that is the reason the screen and digitizer was replaced so many times. This last time when I went to replace the screen I found some internal damage that was fatal. Well, almost. She had been dropped so many times the metal tags that hold the LCD screen in place were completely sheered off. Even though the screen works fine, this means it is floating around inside the iPad and it cannot sync with the digitizer. I can’t just get new tabs....I have to get a whole new LCD screen. Which no one has. iFixit has them off and on, but now is not one of those on times. They also charge $45-$50 for one, without the shipping. So I had to make a decision. Do I persist in keeping her going with bubblegum and duct tape, or do I move on? Moving on felt...wrong. Like cheating on a spouse. She has been a loyal friend, and a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life. It feels wrong to just give up on her. But she is now old enough I can’t update her further than ios 9. And it will be harder and harder to keep her in action. But.....they engraved “Don’t Panic” on the back of her. But if I have to keep putting $40-$50 into her every couple of months, and she will still only be limping along, is it worth it? Well, perusing the Apple site and finding the cheap refurbished iPad made my final decision. I bought it. And now I am testing Weebly’s newer app by posting from it. It is sad. I feel like I betrayed a friend. I feel like we have been through so much together and I am just tossing her aside like yesterday’s jam. There is so much I have been able to accomplish just because she was there in my life. So much more I plan to accomplish, and she won’t be there by my side (or on the floor). I am not going to just throw her out though. I will eventually get the new LCD screen and make her work again. Or I will gut her and put her shell in a shadowbox for my wall. For now I feel like I am mourning a friend. Is that wierd? So A lot has happened this week. I think I am going to concentrate on one thing per post, though. And today I am going to talk about...you guessed it...the tabard. I did do a mock up tabard to figure out how to make it work. I learned what does work....and what doesn't. I found 2 sheets on Amazon for cheap. Fabric is flippin expensive these days. I think I paid around $10 for both together. One was red, one white. I think that those will be enough to make the white center and the red strips on the sides. I am an idiot when it comes to sewing, so I decided to use the frabic glue strips I used for Aoifa's skirt to hold it together. I cut the white bit a little too short, so I decided to use it to test the construction and weathering techniques. I then cut some of the red into strips. One side of the sheet was already sewn, so I decided to try to use that. I put the freyed side out though so you can totally see the cuts. After I did both sides, the next thing to do was to practice weathering techniques. I have seen many YouTube videos of people doing it. I thought I would try tea staining, rubbing in dirt, and adding paint blood spatter. Some of it worked, some didn't. The first thing I did was to cut the edges and frey them. I did not get a picture of that or the process. Sorry. But I just cut it up with scissors then rubbed the hell out of it with a steel wire brush. Just a quick note here, when I can I always get my supplies for this at the local dollar store. My scissors came from there and they are still reasonably sharp after a year of abuse. I also got a set of wire brushes from there. The set had a steel, a brass and a plastic bristle. I used the steel because I felt it would do the most damage in the shortest amount of time. Next I tried tea staining. Instead of putting the whole garment in a boiling pot with tea, I opted to make strong tea in a mug with salt and blot it on to make the staining less than uniform. Apparently I don't know what that means because it turned out way too uniform. Next time I will make it much blotchier.
The next part I had to wait a few days. I tried to use the paints I have, but none of them had the right color. So I went online and found a paint for DnD minis called Dried Blood. They also had a Dark Rust and Fresh blood, so I got those too. I couldn't find where I put the fresh blood one, but it looks roughly the same as these two, with the exception of the title and a slight variance in the color. I added a bit of water to make it runnier, and tried it out. To be honest, this brand's dried blood is a bit too burgundy. I added some of the rust paint to the dried blood color and it came out perfect. It was roughly one drop rust to 2 drops dried blood. So overall, I think I know what I am going for now and how to create it. When I do the next one, at the same time I will also do the side pieces for the belt that are meant to match. I need to figure out how wide to make them. Do I make them the same width as the tabard, or wider? I dunno. We will find out. :) I still have no bloody clue how I am going to make that belt work either.
So I have been busy on working on Talleg. I started out trying to figure out how to do the breastplate. Boob armor...my nemesis. Sigh. Last time, I had several failures before I got a pair of oblong boobs that had a bunch of flaws. That did not matter, as most of them were covered up by leaf scales. This time round there will be no scales to cover my sins. I don't know why I did not get pictures, but I failed at trying to make a pattern 3 times. The last time I kept the tape boob as it was, so I had a model and basic shape to compare to if I get something else. I then found a dome pattern set online, so I bought it and printed it out. That is what I have been playing with. I decided based on my mock up that I should do the 7inch for the boobs and the 5 inch for elbows and kneese. I started with the 5 inch patttern. The white trim is door strip insulation. I was going to do trim with it, but I think it is too thick for that purpose. As you can see, the lines are crooked and puckery. Overall though, it is a workable shape. It is what I was looking for. If only I can get rid of the buckles and gaps. So next I tried a 7 inch dome. this is for the boob parts. The seems turned out a little better, however there are still gaps. My biggest issue seems to be the very outer edge of each seem does not want to stay glued. It pull back just enough to make a visible seam. Argh. It is the right size and shape, though. It looks good next to my tape mock up. So I did a bit of research, and most people who have this problem use siliconized acrylic caulking to fill gaps in seams. So I pulled out my dollar store caulking and had a go. It was so hard. The end result....not so pretty. And just when I thought I got it looking decent, I sprayed it with Plasti-dip and rubbed it with silver gilding wax...and there I saw how terribly obvious that was. It looked like welded seams. Which would be fine if that were the look I was going for. But it isn't. So try number 3. This time I used sandpaper to try to knock it down. After a couple of hours my hand got sore. It was not a practical solution for someone who has joint issues. Most people seem to use a Dremel. I don't have one accessible to me right now. There is one in my Pod, but I cannot get into my Pod easily, due to the nature in which they store the Pods. I hesitate to buy a whole new one. Especially when they are so expensive. I did a little looking around though and found a little 2 speeder low powered used one for $20. Even had a case. So tonight I used the Dremel to sand down the latest test. Then I thought since I can't use the others as they are, I might as well see if I can sand them down too and rescue them. I ended up having to sand off all the Plasti-dip, and this cause divots and dents. Who knows...maybe it'll look like armor wear. As soon as we have a dry day I will go out and spray em all with Plasti-dip and rub with gilded wax to see how they look. I did do Periscope livestreams of this process. In several different scopes. If you wanna see all the fails, feel free to go take a gander. My handle there is @TeaWeaselStopMO.
|
AuthorEleanor...nerd, musician, stop motion animator, techy, crafty. But not in the crafty crafty way...I just like making things. You can find me on Twitch & Twitter @TeaWeaselStopMO & Tiktok. If you feel like contributing to help me upgrade equipment or pay for building supplies, feel free to click this button. Anything you contribute is appreciated muchly.
Archives
July 2022
Categories
All
|