Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Hooray for Progress!

So, I had every intention of finishing two costumes tonight, but unfortunately I ran out of gabardine before the First Contact style uniform was finished. :-/ Still, I'm quite pleased with the progress I've made!

First thing tonight, I finished the Klingon breastplate! It went together quickly and smoothly, and I think I've finally conquered epoxy.
The first thing was to add the rest of the detailing to the midsection, and to shape the cups. This was the first time I had tried shaping cups using heat, and I'm happy to say that it worked beautifully, and was super easy to do. I just turned on a burned on the stove, held the foam over it until it was soft, and then held the breastplate up to my mannequin and shaped it over the mannequin's bust, holding it in place until the foam cooled.



You can see above, in the left picture is one cup shaped and the other not. In the right picture, both cups are shaped and fit the mannequin nicely. :D

Once the cups were shaped, the next thing was to add the bottom section of the armour. I just eyeballed the pattern from a reference image and cut out the base and detailing from craft foam.



The raised detailing on the outer edge of the lower piece was supposed to be sort of rounded, so I added it in dimensional paint instead of foam. (You can see that detail in the upcoming pics, it hasn't been added yet in the above picture.)

Once everything was assembled, I gesso-ed the armour to smooth out the joins in the foam.



Then, it was time to epoxy! Like I said, I think I've finally conquered it, because it turned out beautifully. Once it was set, I sprayed a layer of plasti-dip over the entire thing, front and back. I also decided to embed some fabric into the epoxy on the back of the armour. This added hugely to the stiffness and stability of the foam, and I'm really happy that I ended up doing it.



Of course, now the armour is black from the plasti-dip, so once the rubber coating was dry, I went back and painted it.



And there she is! Isn't she lovely? You can't see it in the pics, but there are straps that go from the sides to around the back, where the armour is held on with adjustable clasps. I'm super pleased with how the armour turned out, I think it's really smashing, even if I do say so myself.

Once the armour was finished, I went back to work on the First Contact uniform for my friend Stefan. It's nearly complete, all I need to do is tack down a few edges, put the binding down the centre front, and add the zipper. It also needs to be ironed. ^^; But, still, there are pics!


1 comment:

  1. Wow! You are an artist with that craft foam and etc. Truly amazing... I am in awe.

    ReplyDelete

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