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Koda Vonnor

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Everything posted by Koda Vonnor

  1. Thanks Deez. I made the fiberglass forearm guard this weekend. Since I wanted a very clean cloth lay-up, and scissors would have been a challenge with all the curves, I tried printing templates on card stock and taping them down to the cutting board with the glass piece in between. This worked like a charm and rendered six super clean sheets. Exacto cut through the glass like butter. For the template I used the same cutout as for the flexible model, but skewed it more vertical. Since the cloth will self-skew back to the proper contour as I lay it into the mold, it made it easier to do the cutouts. As before, I used a Rondo gel-coat with about 50/50 Bondo/resin. The weather was warm (mid 80's F) so I kept the hardener a little on the "cold" side. Thin Rondo, then 6 cloth layers, then thick Rondo finish around the edges. I want to be able to sand down the edges to make a perfect fit to the main assembly. You can see on the rough breakout the Radius side is a very nice fit, but the Ulna side does not sit down flat due to the thick edge and mainly the flashing. This will be trimmed off down to the final contour. Right now the whole thing is about 3mm too big on all sides. The surface edge trim will hide the groove ends. I'm quite happy with the results. More coming soon. ~ Vonnor
  2. You need to finish this J, while I'm still young enough to do Katarn. ~ BC
  3. Made a mold of the forearm plate out of Rebound40 silicone rubber and backed it with plaster. Here it is ready to bake for a few hours (to get all the moisture out) then lay in the fiberglass. ~ Vonnor
  4. As you can see I had to take another mold of the flat forearm plate model. The MoldStar30 did not perform well under heat. I know that it was due to the shelf age of the liquid materials but I wanted to give it a try. The Reoflex 40 was very old as well, with most of the rubber solids having coagulated on the bottom of the resin, and the hardener was almost too thick to stir, but I also wanted to see if it was salvageable. As long as it doesn't inhibit the silicone mold cure I think it'll work OK. The sample in the 1st pix shows the correct cured color. I used a thin sheet of styrrene to form the normalized contour around the gauntlet assembly, and superglued the soft plate model to that. The lines are close enough to straight as not to be noticeable in production. I will take a brush-on mold of this tomorrow and cast the hard model in fiberglass. The final cutout shape and the edge stripping will be done on the fiberglass piece. More coming soon. ~ Vonnor
  5. A 100 watt lightbulb took the 6hr cure of the Mold Star 30 down to 90 min. I'm going to wait a couple days for the plaster to fully dry before pouring the urethane rubber soft model, as any moisture will bubble it up something awful. The casting will be slightly oversize to allow for the fiberglass cloth fringe at the edges, which I will trim off to the final curvature. That way the edges will be a little stronger than if they were mostly Bondo.
  6. After reading back through this thread as posted on the Replica Props Forum (therpf.com) I came across a comment about the edge beading on the shoulder bells. I had used a soft cast urethane rubber beading for the raised edge of the hard model before I took the production mold. It was much easier and cleaner that sculpting a clay edge. That got me thinking. I have had a great deal of trouble in crafting the forearm coverplate for the vambraces. Sintra proved to be difficult to contour properly, so I am going to try casting a soft urethane coverplate and gluing it to a styrene sheet wrapped around the main sections. Then I can take a mold of that and cast it in fiberglass, and add the edging post-cast. I also tracked down a 5/64" engraving bit for the dremel, and used the router attachment to make clean grooves in the scrap model. I'm using Smooth-On Mold Star 30, to be backed with plaster when dry. More to come soon. ~ Vonnor
  7. Hardly anything. This will likely blow away any other Malgus out there. ~ Vonnor
  8. Fantastic shot. Hard to tell if they are buckles or sliders, but there's definitely some metal thingies there. I have seen these series of images (Maris vs. Rancor) but can't remember where. I believe they are an original composition by an artist who grabbed the 3D models/skins from the game and used another app to set up the scenes, but it doesn't look like the skins have been altered. Great find.
  9. I can clarify this a bit, since the "they" that asked Krista to make changes for Rebel Legion approval was me. The main thing to remember is that there are two distinct versions of this costume. There is the Padawan Maris, who appears in only one cut-scene, and the Dark-Side/Sith version who appears later in the game. The version that Krista built was clearly the Sith version and as such would not have been approvable as-is in the RL. The discussions on the RL are naturally focused on the Padawan version, which as you can see in the RL thread that Doc-GF linked above has the braided chest-strap going all the way around the back. You can also see it if you look closely in this pic: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... lucian.jpg ...which is also the Padawan version. Whether the sith version game-screenshots prove or disprove the "chest-strap-around-the-back" or not I have not seen. Since my focus is on the Padawan version I have not yet studied the Sith as closely. Generally for video game character costumes, in both 501st and RL if and where non-game image references conflict with in-game screenshots, the in-game reference takes precedence. The fancy leg-guards do not conflict with the cut-scene screenshots of the padawan version and as such would be RL approvable. I pasted some screen-shots on the above mentioned thread that vaguely show the three straps holding the leg guards on as well as the tab ends of those straps. Bill Costigan RL EU Jedi Costume Judge
  10. I checked as soon as I got home, and yes this is an un-lockable costume in the TFU2 PC game. (The costume has some interesting elements too, I might add - I got $20 for anyone that can read me the Aurebesh on his chest-box) The first thing you need to do is buy the PC version if you do not already have it, then go to C:\Users\(Logged in user)\AppData\Local\LucasArts\Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2. Open the Config.xml using Notepad. At the bottom of the file should be the line No. Change "No" to "Yes". Then play it until you get to a hallway in Cato-Neimoidia. Pause the game and go to the Cheat Codes in options. Enter "VENTRESS" as a code. This will open up the costume in question. Then go to Costumes and select it. Then return to the game and your guy should be wearing this costume. Kill all the stuff in the hallway. Jump up on one of the tables near the side of the hallway. Position your toon so that when you rotate the camera view you get a close-up of the toon. Take your time and experiment. When you get your guy in the perfect position, hit PrtSc. Then since you're in Windowed mode, open up Paint or some other image editor and choose "New From Clipboard" or just hit "New" then v. Edit, crop, enhance, w/e to the screenshot then save it. Go back to the game window and move/rotate your guy a little and do it all over again. I took almost 100 reference pix of General Rahm Kota using this method in this game. Cheat Codes are a costumer's best friend. Google stuff if you have trouble. ~ Vonnor
  11. Yep. There is a way. 1. Post up full head-to-toe reference images, preferrably 360° turn-arounds (Is this an unlockable costume in the game? I can't remember). 2. Build an accurate recreation of the costume that looks exactly like the reference images from step 1. 3. Submit the costume for approval. As long as I've been following the 501st and The Flagship Eclipse, I have never seen a costume "approved" before step 1 and step 2 have been completed. ~ Vonnor
  12. I made another armor part yesterday. Used paper to measure out a template and to get the "lean" angle right, then drew it up in Turbo-Cad. I cut the main piece out of 3mm Sintra and used a straight-edge and a sharpened eye-glasses screwdriver to cut the grooves. I cut out the raised edge trim from 1mm Sintra and used Azek PVC cement to glue the two together. I can't heat-bend it yet since it takes a couple days to completely dry. Don't sound like much but still took about 4 hours, mostly tweaking the curves till they looked like the references. I'll bend it to shape and add the closure system probably next week. I did see after fitting it, that I'll need to cut about 0.5" to 0.75" off the elbow end of the radius and ulna plates to get the scaling to look right. Little bits at a time, it goes on. ~ Vonnor
  13. Posted with the permission of the artist Brian Rood, this image appears in a much smaller version on pg 122 of The Essential Reader's Companion: Star Wars, which was released by Del Rey in Oct 2012. It appears I am now an official Rahm Kota reference. ~ Vonnor
  14. Hi Krista, I saw that you submitted your Maris Brood for Rebel Legion membership as well. I did open a standards thread in the Jedi forum over there to talk about some of the differences between the Padawan Maris, and the Dark Side version you present here. I welcome your input and am open for discussing the visual details of her Light-Side version. Feel free to PM me at either forums, I'm a regular here as well as at the RL. Sorry for the rebel thread hijack. ~ Bill C.
  15. Darren, Your armor looks sick man. From a costumer's perspective, I like the lines detailing on all the parts (shoes especially). But I think what I like best is something a lot of armor wearers overlook, and what makes me shun off-the-rack kits for myself in favor of scratch-builds, that is the well balanced black-space at the waist, hips and knees. See AcolyteandHavoc2.jpg. Impeccable fit. Bravo. ~ BC
  16. The weather was warm enough for fiberglassing today, so I shaped the straps and bonded them to the radius and ulna plates using polyester resin. They came out very solid with just enough flex to get my hand in. I still have a bit of cleaning up to do and gaps to fill but all-in-all I'm happy with the results. I tested the fit with a 6mm soft neoprene band between the armor and my skin. The scaling of the original sculpt turned out perfect. The armor squeezes the rubber which holds it from slipping down to my hand. Once the wrist-clip and the forearm plate get on there It'll be one solid unit. It was really great to finally be able to wear this thing. Next up is the gauntlet closure and wrist-clip sculpt. ~ Vonnor
  17. It may not be a belt, but just the waistband of the pants, like my example here: I use velcro to close the tab but snaps could be used just as easily. ~ Vonnor
  18. First gather as many visual references as you can, of the costume you want to recreate. These images must be from official LucasArts (now Disney) sources. Custom made action figures and/or non-official artist interpretations may not be used as the sole reference(s). The references should show the complete costume from head to foot and from all sides of the model, and need to be non-conflicting, that is all images need to show each costume part as looking the same as in the other reference pictures. I looked briefly on google images and am seeing a lot of different un-official interpretations of the character, with many different costumes. It may be a challenge to find enough references of the same costume to entertain the possibility of being 501st approvable. Assuming you can gather the above described references, the next step would be to recreate the costume/character to look exactly like the references. Only at that stage of the process could any adjudication for approval begin. My advice would be to build a super-accurate recreation of the character, and do it for your own personal satisfaction. There have been cases where, even without initially having complete references, an artist has built such a stunning costume that it has influenced the actual official references for the character, and the two have become one. The recreation became the official reference. Never let 501st approval or disapproval be your goal for whether to build a great costume. And regardless of approvability, do post your progress here. We love seeing it. ~ Vonnor
  19. Today I cast the left gauntlet cross straps in fiberglass. No real issues, just had to use a lot more hardener in both the Bondo and the polyester resin since the temperature was about 65°F. One thing new that I tried was some Bondo glaze putty for the "gel-cote" layer. It's a lot smoother than rondo and spreads very nicely. I painted the insides of the molds with some of that first, then 5 layers of fiberglass cloth and a thick rondo (resin/bondo 25/75) backing coat. Still some pinhole bubbles in the surface but I can fill those. They have a stiff flex to them which will be perfect for opening the gauntlet to get my hand through. Here is the rough breakout of the castings: More to come. ~ Vonnor
  20. I took those strap models and squared up the edges, smoothed the curves and finish-sanded all surfaces. I then super-glued them to a 110lb card-stock backing and sprayed a clear-coat over it all. I built up some layers of Rebound-40 silicone rubber taking care to taper away the undercuts at the ends. I could have used Rebound-25 but this was what I had on hand. It's pretty stiff if you never used it before. Since it's a junk mold for the most part (unless I mess up something) it should do fine. I undercut the side edges of the rubber wrappers a bit so they would hold better in the plaster backing. I hot-glued a box around it and poured in some plaster. Have to wait for warmer weather to lay in the fiberglass, but I'm liking how smooth the curves and surfaces came out. More later. ~ Vonnor
  21. Thanks Katie, I am too. Small update: I cut and thermo-formed the straps for the left gauntlet. They are 3mm Sintra and I used the ductwork mandrel in the background to form the initial curvature. I then stuck one end of a strap at a time into its corresponding slot and manually heat-bent it flat against the curve of the main halves. I did this very slowly so as not to distort the overall curvature. My goal here was to make the strap masters with uniform overall curvature and the little hook bends as they go into the slots. I will take a plaster-backed rubber mold of these and cast them in 5 layer cloth fiberglass for strength with rondo coat on the facing surface. They will be bonded to the main sections with poly-resin and a pinch of Bondo thickener. Going by past experience they should have a slight flex, enough to get them on and off my arm. More to come. ~ Vonnor
  22. I finally got back to this after 3 months off. Today I marked and cut the strap slots in the right radius and ulna plates. It took almost 3 hours to Dremel them and hand-taper the openings. Tomorrow I will cut two sets of straps from Sintra and thermo-form them to fit the slots. Time permitting I will take rubber molds of them. After much study, I decided to make the production straps from 4-5 layer cloth fiberglass and bond the straps to the side plates with polyester resin. That will make them solid units on the palm side and I won't have to worry about tension or alignment issues while worn. I also fit the right plates back onto the sculpting form to check fit and contours. It looks decent. Note the extent lines on the plaster arm, I'll have to trim some off the elbow and wrist ends of the plates which I anticipated. That's why I left the edge trim off the ends for now. ~ Vonnor
  23. Whether a Star Wars: The Old Republic Sith Acolyte non-player character costume has been successfully submitted and approved yet I do not know. Assuming it has not, the "acceptability" or "approvability" of any not-yet-approved 501st costume ALWAYS follows the same process (in this order): 1. Research is gathered - CRLs are developed, reference images are gathered/discussed. 2. An accurate recreation of the costume is built. 3. That recreation is submitted for 501st approval/acceptance. 4. The submitter is either: ....a. approved ....b. advised on needed modifications/refinements ....c. declined due to lack of references or not appropriate/applicable character for 501st 5. AFTER the first one is approved, the costume becomes "501st accepted." As long as I've been following the 501st, that process has never changed. So as you can see, it can be a great leap of faith (not to mention expense) for that 1st costume recreator/submitter, spending many months and many dollars, but from my own experience it is well worth it. ~ Vonnor
  24. Here's one I found of some cool blue people. I did not take this photo:
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