Twi'lek Pam

Great news! As of Legacy issue 17, we can make a new addition to the "May Have" section of the standards: Talon is wearing a metal plate and four straps on the BACK of her belt in addition to those in the front. (Sorry I can't scan the reference images right now. My computer desk is undergoing renovations, so my scanner isn't hooked up.) That issue also reveals more of the tattoo patterns on her arms, hands, and legs.... and even lets her slip into something a bit more comfortable for a little while! Pam

. Thank you, everyone. You have really brightened my day. It's funny to look back and remember that very first "should we start a detachment?" email that Wendy sent out. I never thought back then that I would ever find myself working for the detachment as an officer of any kind... much less as DL! I really enjoy the EU costuming and friendships that are found here, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things work out. I've already informed Wendy that for her there is no true escape from the detachment. Without her, this detachment may not have ever been created, and it certainly wouldn't have made it as far as it has. Enjoy your (semi) detachment retirement, Wendy... you've earned it! I'm looking forward to meeting you next summer! Pam

. A wonderful costume portrayed with wonderful photograpy... you just can't go wrong with that! My favorite image is on the bottom right. It captures that "Actually, he forbade it" sense of humor that Ganner has shown in the comics. Well done! Pam

Yup, Solvy is good stuff. It works really well as a paint-on temporary fabric stiffener, too. If you tear some up and soak it in a small amount of water, it dissolves into watery paste. If you then paint that onto fabric and let it dry, you end up with very stiff fabric. Do your sewing, and then rinse... and the fabric gets soft again! I use this trick for embroidering or fancy topstitching on material that might have issues with stretching out of shape. Pam

. Aak! I just typed up a nice long response for this thread, but when I hit send my post went poof! Okay... we'll skip to the short-short version this time! Kudos: Good thread with lots of great advice! Nicely done! Thread: Polyester is best for a standard machine, and I highly recommend wooly nylon for a serger. It's good stuff!! Needles: Leather needles leave a visible hole and ball point needles have a hard time punching through the fabric. I tried both, and didn't like the results. I ended up using a standard (universal) sharp point needle in size 80, and that worked pretty well. Tissue: I like this trick as long as I have tissue that is the same color as the fabric, so any stray fibers will be nearly invisible until they come out in the wash. Make sure to sew the tissue with the grain running along the sewn line. Just like when you tear an ad out of a newspaper, it's easier to tear with the grain than against it. Pam

. ::geeky jealous sigh:: I wish I had the right equipment to cut perfect sections out of a saber like that. It looks so cool.... Thanks for posting your updates; I'm enjoying the chance to follow your costume overhaul progress! Pam

Ah, okay.... armor. I originally thought the discussion was about material used for a vong type mask. Foam latex is the best for that. (Or mask latex, if foam isn't feasible.) For body armor, however.... definitely don't need or want foam latex! If those costumes are made from a foam of some kind, I would guess that it is a sheet material that was shaped rather than an expanding foam, which would take a mold with both a front and back surface. Cool looking costumes, though. That represents a lot of work! Pam

Hmm... I would guess that it's an expanding polyurethane foam, then. Soft and somewhat flexible... but considerably stronger and stiffer than foam latex. There are differfent types with a variety of qualities, ranging from soft and self-skinning to types that are quite rigid. (Problem is that while I know the different kinds of foam, I don't know the costume... so I can't picture what the pieces look like!) Pam

It was most likely foam latex... which is very challenging stuff to work with, but creates AMAZING results if you can do it right. It's lightweight, fairly strong, flexible, and it takes the texture of the mold stunningly well. This is not the same stuff as mask/slush latex. Casting costume pieces in it is as much an art as a practical use of chemistry, and you have to have the right equipment, such as the mixers, temp and humidity guages, a good exhaust system, an injection gun if you're going that route, molds that have a core, and a convection oven large enough to hold your mold. (Once used for this purpose, the oven can no longer be safely used for food preparation. The heated foam latex leaves behind a chemical residue that isn't so good for us.) Pam

Fantastic! I truly regret that I won't get to see the finished costume in person... but I know that there will be lots and lots of pictures! Pam

. Over and under dresses, each about halfway finished. The belt sash is just a length of fabric tied about the waist as a stand-in so I could see how everything is looking so far.

. I was supposed to spend the morning today working on the new fish pond we're putting in... so, naturally, I plopped down in front of the computer and spent the morning adding more reference pictures and text to my Mara website instead! My punishment? Now I have to go mix concrete in the afternoon sun.... Oh, well. I'm happy with the additions to the website, so it was worth it! http://chucrew.com/ Pam

. Hi, all. I wasn't planning to talk about or post pictures of my Visas costume until I was happy with the final results... but I have so many irons in the fire right now, it's probably going to be a while before I can finish the costume. It has been sitting untouched for a couple weeks now, still only about 75% of the way done. I've been feeling bad about not sharing the technique I used for adding the pinwheel patern to my outer dress... so I've decided to post some pictures of the stenciling process for now. Eventually I hope to post pictures of my completed costume, but in the meantime perhaps this tutorial might help others as more Visas costumes are created! Pam All credit for the pinwheel pattern goes to the wonderful folks who discovered, enhanced, and posted the pattern images. I simply took what they shared and worked from there. I started my project by enlarging the pinwheel pattern to the size I wanted. While the pinwheels in the reference pictures are not uniform in size, they're fairly close to the size of Visas' palm, so I sized the pattern to fit a similar relationship to my own palm. Starting with the central pinwheel (the brightest one in the reference pictures), I copied that one circle. Then, opening a new file, I pasted the circle into the file. I pasted in a second copy, making this one less opaque so I could see through it. I lined the two circles up as accuratly as possible and then merged them. A copy was made of the double circle, and then I pasted that in several more times, making each pasted circle transparent so that I could match them to the previous circles. The size of the pattern grew quickly since I was soon pasting entire lines and then several lines at a time into the file. Before long, I had a completed square that was about 18"x18" in size. In order to save ink I created a negative so that the pinwheels became black and the background turned white. I then printed it on multiple sheets of paper and taped them together, making sure to line everything up as perfectly as I could. When that was finished, I taped the pattern onto a sheet of styrene and used carbon paper to trace the pattern onto the plastic. Once the pattern was transferred, I used carving bits on my dremel to cut out the lines. It took some experimenting on scrap styrene to find out which bits created lines in the size and look that I wanted. As anyone who has ever used a dremel can vouch, the thing can sometimes jump when you least expect it. Normally that is a problem... but this time I WANTED a rough edge, so I held the dremel loosely and let it snag and jump about as I cut the lines. I had to leave connections between the various pieces of the styrene, but I kept the bridges small and randomly placed so that they became part of the design itself. The process of cutting so many lines began to weaken the styrene, so I covered each area with blue painters tape as I worked. If I didn't, little pieces of the stencil tended to vibrate and flex until they broke off. If you use this technique you MUST wear safety goggles, as the dremel will throw pieces of hot styrene all over the place. (If you're smarter than me, you'll wear more than just a bikini top and shorts while you work, also. Chunks of molten styrene landing on bare arms, legs, and tummy burns just a wee bit.) Here's the back of the completed stencil. (You can see the blue tape still on the other side.) For the overdress I used vinyl fabric from Stretch House. It has a leather pattern on the surface, and is surprisingly heavy. The vinyl had been stored in my closet for over a year, so it was badly creased. I cut the pattern pieces out, and then placed them in the sun. As it heated, the vinyl became very soft and flexible. I straightened and smoothed it until every crease was gone, and then moved it into the shade to cool again. Once it was smooth, I set each piece of vinyl under the pinwheel stencil. Everything else was covered with a protective layer of newspaper, and then I sprayed a very light coating of Presidio Gray SEM vinyl paint over the stencil... making sure to hold the can a foot over the stencil so it would create a light coating with fuzzy edges. When the first coat dried, I moved the stencil down, lined up the top of the stencil pattern with the bottom of the painted edge on my fabric, and then I painted the next section. Each piece of fabric took about 4 moves of the stencil before they were covered completely with the pinwheel pattern. It was challenging to give each section exactly the same amount of paint, so some of sections came out a bit more heavily painted than others. I also felt that the finished pattern was brighter than it should be. In the game renders it looks far more subtle. So.... I gave the whole thing a very light overspray coating of black vinyl paint, holding the can about two feet over from the fabric and keeping it constantly moving. It served two purposes... not only did it tone down the intensity of the pinwheel patterns, it also toned down the shiny midnight-black quality of the vinyl itself and made it look more like leather. Happy Costuming! Pam

. See what I mean..... nice, encouraging responses! That's what makes all the hours of typing and scanning and backtracking bad links worthwhile! If they need any help, send 'em my way... I'm no expert, but I can always answer questions and offer advice based on my own experience. Pam

. Over the past couple years I've received some very nice emails thanking me for the tutorial information I put on my Twi'lek website. After a while those letters began to inspire me to make some more tutorials, but I never seemed to have enough free time or a desire to sit in front of the computer that long. This summer I solved the problem by working on a new site for just a couple hours at at a time over the course of several weeks.... and I finally managed to put together my second website, a tutorial site for what I've learned about making Mara Jade costumes. The site has the same format as my Twi'lek site, and it covers much of the same information I've shared here on these boards.... it just puts everything into a more organized format than my scattered Eclipse postings. The tutorials are still a rough draft at this point... but I feel that the site is presentable enough to share now. Hopefully it might help someone out there as they work on their Mara costume. I plan to continue adding more reference pictures and improving the quality of the tutorials (including step-by-step photos) as I find the time and that elusive motivation once again. For now, at least, it shows the basic components and gives a bit of information about each one. http://chucrew.com/ Direct Link to the Mara Jade tutorial: http://chucrew.com/Mara/Mara.html If you have any ideas or suggestions for the site, or if you would like to send me a link that you think I should add, please let me know! Thanks, Pam

. Much, much better! Putting in the time it takes to add finishing touchses and work out the kinks are what makes a costume look great... and you've definitely improved the quality of your mask. Well done! Pam

LOL.... yup! Quite an interesting read, too. Thank you very much for posting that. I love seeing how different people go about finding solutions for their costume building challenges. It's funny how many ways we seem to work from opposite directions to get to the same solution. An easy example: you add fiberglass resin to bondo to get a more spreadable paste. Bondo is resin with lots of talc added to it. So basically you're thinning down the talc. While I, on the other hand, get fiberglass resin and dump a ton of talc into it to create a spreadable paste! Pam

. I agree that it does look like bone.... that has been my personal interpretation as well. But, a bone look is better achieved by giving the illusion of roundness and not making it mirror smooth, rather than by leaving the surface bumpy. To my eye, it still looks a bit unfinished. But then, I've always been a stickler for details that many other people don't notice at all... it drives my family nuts! Pam

. I'm impressed! I've never worked with either of those materials before, so I'm pleased to see how well they took on the shape you needed. My main suggestion would be that it needs to be smoother because it's still a bit on the lumpy side. Can the mask be sanded, or will you need to add more material to smooth the surface? Well done so far! Pam

. When selecting clay for a sculpted costume piece, it's always good to use an oil based clay. Unlike water based clays, oil based will not dry up, it will not shrink, and it is far less likely to crack as you work on your sculpture. Tips for Oil Based Clays: - I like to use Chavant Clay and Monster Makers Clay. Chavant is softer and easier to work with on small projects, while Monster Makers is a harder clay that works well for large scale projects. - Unlike the clays you bake and harden (Sculpey, etc), oil based clay is NOT intended to be used for a final costume piece. Instead, it is used to create a sculpture that you can then make a mold from. Once the mold has been removed, you can use the clay over again for another project. - If you are going to make a silicone mold from your sculpture, be sure to get a sulphur-free brand of clay. If your clay contains sulphur, it will keep the silicone from curing, and you will be left with a goopy mess! - If you are going to be working on a large sculpture, be sure to support it with an armature underneath or the clay will slump under its own weight. Wire or plaster are most often used for armatures, though other materials can also be used. - Oil based clay is greatly affected by temperature. When the clay is cold, it becomes very hard and brittle. As it warms it becomes softer and easier to work with. If it gets too warm, it won't be easy to sculpt. If you are working on a project during cold weather, it helps to keep a lump of clay warm by placing it by a light, on a heating pad, in a slightly warm oven, or even in a crock pot! Heat guns, hair dryers, or space heaters can be used to warm up a sculpture prior to working on it... but be careful! If you heat the clay too much, it will melt and slide to the ground, destroying your work and potentially buring your skin. - It helps to get into the habit of holding a small piece of clay in your hand while you work, so you always have a soft piece ready when you need to press it into your sculpture. - Trim your nails. Sorry girls, but this is one time when long nails are a liability. It is very frustrating to get a sculpture looking just perfect.... only to repeatedly gouge crescent shaped nicks out of it with your nails! - Use wooden scultping tools rather than plastic ones. Wood tends to slide across the clay easily, while plastic tools tend to flex and gouge the clay. - It is usually easier to refine the shape of clay sculptures by removing clay than by adding it. A good technique is to add plenty of clay until you get the general form that you need, and then use a scraping tool to remove the extra clay and refine the shape. You can then add small pieces where needed, and follow up by smoothing the surface back out by scraping and blending the edges of the newly added clay. - When you use a scraping tool, a pile of thin clay scrapings will build up at the base of your sculpture. Resist the urge to smash those scrapings back into a large lump... small pieces are much easier to warm with your fingers and apply to the sculpture when you need to fill a low spot! - To smooth a sculpture made from oil clay, dip your fingers or sculpting tools in a small bowl of rubbing alcohol. This serves two purposes: first, it lets your tools slide over the clay surface instead of digging in, and it also softens the top layer of the clay. As you rub the alcohol into the clay surface, small "pills" of clay will form. Give them a moment to dry, and then gently brush them away. Most stores sell 70% Isoprophyl Alcohol, which is good enough. If you can get 99% alcohol from a medical or art supply store, you will find that it works even better. Don't put too much alcohol in the bowl at once... it tends to evaporate quickly and ends up being wasted. - Cut old nylons into 6 inch lengths for smoothing the clay. Dipped in rubbing alcohol and then wrapped around a finger or sculptuing tool, nylon works very well to even out the clay surface. Change pieces as the fabric gets clogged with clay residue. For smoothing a large area of clay, you can dip a long piece of nylon into the rubbing alcohol and then use it to buff the clay in a "shoeshine" fashion, pulling it back and forth across the surface. - Oil clay takes textures VERY well. Experiment with different materials to get the textured surface that your sculpture requires. I have found that stipple sponges make an excellent skin texture, for example, while a house painting brush with stiff bristles can create a terrific mottled texture. - Don't leave problems for later. If your sculpture looks rough around the edges or has a lump that you don't like... fix those problems BEFORE you make a mold of your sculpture. It's a lot easier to fix problems in soft clay than it is to try to remove them from finished castings later on. .

. Please use this thread to share good resources for sculpting supplies. Local craft stores - JoAnnes, Michaels, etc. Reuels Art Supplies - http://www.reuels.com/reuels/art_supplies.html Chavant - http://www.chavant.com/new_site/index.htm Sculpture Tools - http://www.sculpturetools.com/ Monster Makers - http://www.monstermakers.com The Compleat Sculptor - http://www.sculpt.com/catalog_98/index.html Arizona Sculpting Supplies - http://www.arizonasculpture.com/index.asp Special Effect Supply - http://www.fxsupply.com Artist and Craftsman - http://artistcraftsman.com Nasco - http://www.enasco.com/artsandcrafts/ FX Warehouse - http://www.fxwarehouse.info/ .

Ah... finally I get to post to this thread! (Tried twice this afternoon, but kept getting an 'invalid something or other' message.) Yup, definitely a pretty close resemblance to the character. Good choice! Pam

. No problem! Those are the links that I had handy in my "favorites", but I know that I have some more good ones buried on my computer somewhere. I'll add them to the list as I find them. Pam

. While many local fabric stores offer a good variety of sewing patterns, they rarely carry out of print or ethnic style patterns... both of which are often needed by EU costumers. Luckily, there are many places online that carry out of print and unique patterns which can be easily modified for use in designing EU costumes. Please use this thread to share resources for sewing pattern suppliers. eBay - http://www.ebay.com Sewing Patterns - http://www.sewingpatterns.com/index.php Monster Patterns - http://www.monsterpatterns.com/catalog/ Sewing Central - http://www.sewingcentral.com Butterick - http://www.butterick.com McCalls Patterns - http://www.mccall.com/ Simplicity - http://www.simplicity.com/ SuitAbility Equestrian Patterns - http://www.suitability.com/ Lantez Living Retro Patterns - http://www.lanetzliving.net/ Folkwear Patterns - http://www.folkwear.com/ The Sewing Garden - http://www.sewinggarden.com/ Sewing Central Historic Patterns - http://www.sewingcentral.com/ Saber Designs Oriental Influence - http://www.saberdesigns.cc/patterns.html Paragon Patterns - http://www.paragonpatterns.com/ Ethnic Patterns - http://www.ethnicpatterns.com/ .

. Fantastic work on that, Thomas. The finished armor is going to look spectacular.... and before you know it, we'll have ourselves a real live Ganner Krieg! Ahhh, mouse sanders. How did we ever accomplish anything without them? Pam