ShadoKat's Samus Aran (Metroid Prime 3) helmet sculpt - WIP

[thorn696]

I used Fiberglass resin, bondo, rondo, rondoglass, and smoothcast 321. I tried the smoothcast for the low oder during the winter months. I like the fiberglass resin mix'd hot with a rondoglass inner core best for Pep. As for casting even tho I've done 50+ molds they all have been for Latex. But I think the smooth cast will work great for casting as long as you're not planing on tooling it much.

You're build on the other hand is so much easier to follow and has allot more information as you go along. I find myself looking forward to seeing a update from you, and the longer the wait the better it seems it is. So keep building such awesome projects and I'm be more then happy to watch them.

[ShadoKat]

Well, Halloween is over (BOOOOO!!!) Time to get back to work on Samus (YAAAAY!!!) After I clean up this mess (BOOOOO!!!) Wasn't done with Samus (of course... again...) so my backup plan was Nightcrawler, which turned out okay, but I just thought of it like two weeks before Halloween, so it could have been better. Worst case scenario, I have a backup costume for PAX next year, also I tried making the three-fingered Nightcrawler gloves out of silicone, which was mostly disastrous. Also made my wife some Leeloo (Fifth Element) suspenders out of silicone, so that was fun, if time consuming. Pics eventually. No other update, really... I'm just typing this up... you know, procrastinating the post-Halloween-construction cleanup. *sigh* Well, the sooner I'm done, the sooner I can get back to work. Hope everyone else had a great Halloween, too!!

[Road Kill]

WOW that looks great man, keep up the fantastic work =D

[ironfett]

just read the ENTIRE thread...but awesome, this is something ive been wanting to try out for awhile now and there is loads of good info on here. Kudos man, your amount of perseverance is commendable!

[JBetts97]

Any updates man?

[ShadoKat]

May, 2012, in which I attempt to discuss, at great lengths, what I’ve been doing on the Samus project for the last six months.

It's been a long time. How have you been? I've been really busy being dead. You know... after you murdered me? Oh, wait, sorry, wrong game... anyway, I’m actually NOT dead, but progress has been really slow, as usual. I’m sure I’ve said this far too many times, but I don't get a lot of time for myself and, given the choice between working on projects and turning on my computer (which, unfortunately, includes making posts) with that little bit of time I do get, I tend to head for either the workshop or the studio, where I spend too much time just figuring out what I’m going to do. At the moment, I’m waiting for the latest round of epoxy clay to cure… it takes 8 hours, so I’m hoping I can get a post in LOL!! So, please, sit back, grab a drink, and enjoy the post!

Mostly I’ve been working on the helmet, which I really should just consider “good enough” and move on, but I just can’t seem to do that, for some reason. There are just these things about it that have been bothering me, and I just work too slowly. Basically, I don’t think this project is going to be finished any time soon. So, what have I been doing? Well, I have two casts that I am alternating between working on, the “Red Cast” (which is no longer red, but I still call it that), and another, which I call the “Heavy Cast” (because I used too much resin when I cast it… so, it’s… well… heavy). On these casts, I’ve been experimenting with the heat-sink-fin-louver things (seriously, what are those things called?), testing an idea I had about the detail lines, messing with the shape, fixing the symmetry (gawd, THAT again!!!) and basically just doing what I can when I can.

The Fins:

After knee-jerk consideration, I decided that the fins were just not right. They were very difficult to rework as one solid piece, so I am experimenting with two different methods of correcting them. On the Red Cast I removed the back wall, tried to reshape the fins, and added the wall back in with a small bit of Lexan.






On the Heavy Cast, I removed the fins themselves and filled in the holes with epoxy clay.







After having done so, however, it occurred to me that I have no idea how I’m going to add them back. Even though the mold is damaged, it is still intact enough that I was able to create a partial cast for experimentation purposes.




So, we’ll see how that goes, eventually.



The Detail Lines:

I’m pretty excited about this part! The detail lines now have a definite method, I think! First, using a Dremel and a depth-limiting attachment, I totally cored out the detail lines, much deeper and wider than necessary. Then I slathered this funky gunky stuff called Magic Smooth (from the makers of Magic Sculpt) into the channels. After that I laid in some 1/8th inch, square-profile rubber cord extrusion (obtained from McMaster Carr) into that. Using a wooden rib, I smoothed the cord into the resulting mess, being careful to keep the cord aligned in the channel and… VOILA!! Nice, smooth, even detail lines with a consistent depth and shape! I don’t know if you can see how great it is from these pictures, but it’s just GORGEOUS! I’m TOTALLY doing this for ALL my detail line work from now on!



(I seem to have hit some sort of limit on how much I can type/upload in one post, so this will be continued shortly... sorry if that counts as double posting...)

[Satchmo III]

This looks awesome. I hope you do start posting more. Thanks for sharing.

[ShadoKat]

The Shape:

As I mentioned in my last update, I really didn’t like the way the face plate was looking, so I culled it back and straightened it out a little bit. Here’s a before/after shot on the Red Cast…




In the first pic, you’ll notice that where the ear banana meets the face plate, it kind of curves outward a bit. Hopefully, in the second one, you can see that it now comes straight down. It’s still a bit rough, but that’s where the Red Cast is now. Since I’m using it primarily as a test bed, it can stay like that for a while. Meanwhile, I’ve moved on to working on the Heavy Cast.

Using what I learned from doing the Red Cast, I did the same thing to the Heavy Cast (sorry, no before/after shots there). After that, I did quite a bit of sanding, which seems to have changed the shape WAY too much, and now, much to my bottomless reservoir of chagrin, the helmet is no longer symmetrical. The dome, especially, was just horrid! Because it’s in hard plastic now (and because I have no way to set it up anyway), the Symmetrizer is, unfortunately, not an option at this point. However, taking inspiration from this post right here in thorssoli’s WH40K Space Marine build, I purchased a laser level. Let me tell you, this thing is frickin’ AMAZING!! If you can, I HIGHLY recommend it!! Thanks for the idea, thor!! Right when I got it, I went a little crazy and came up with a couple of things. First, I wanted to see if my reference points were good, so I checked those out, and they seemed to be okay.




Then, in what turned out to be a waste of three entire days (mostly because I ended up sanding most of it off, and it really wasn’t that accurate anyway because I was still trying to figure out how to use it), I did this…




The lack of symmetry is much easier to see this way. You’ll notice the vertical (blue), horizontal (red), and depth (green) lines don’t intersect in the same way on both sides, and that the curves have a definite skew to them. Originally I just got it so I could use it to make straight lines in space on an uneven surface but, after thinking about it for a while, I figured out a way to use it for symmetry, as well. It took me a while to figure out how to adapt it for this purpose, and there are some MAJOR caveats, but I think I’ve finally got the hang of it. I tried to make a “Laser Level Symmetry” video, but it ended up just me babbling for 20 minutes. I managed to edit that down, though…




This shorter version is missing some important caveats, so I will put up the full version eventually.

Doing this on a point-by-point basis is EXTREMELY tedious. To try and speed things along, I tried experimenting with contour gauges and cardstock templates, but I’m having a bit of trouble there, as well.


The Rest:

And then there’s this…



It’s only about two days’ worth of work, total, but I think it’s coming along quite nicely. I have an idea for it that might drastically cut the time it takes for smoothing, if I pull it off correctly, so stay tuned!

I also got sick of sitting around staring at the helmet trying to figure out what to do when I really should be working on it, so I came up with a plan… more an order of operations, really. There are three major problems I have when I’m working. The first is lack of time. The second, lack of direction. The third, lack of knowing what I’m doing. The plan I have now should help with the second, which should also help with the first, as I won’t be throwing away as much time jumping around from part to part and idea to idea.

So, that’s pretty much what I have going on right now. Just working to finish these two helmets, and agonizing over how I’m going to do it. It’s my way. I’ve said before that I really want to make more frequent updates, so I will again endeavor to do so. Tomorrow I'll try to upload a compilation video showing all the pics I've managed to take of my progress so far.

Thanks for stopping by! And, please, do comment, especially if you have any tips or tricks to share!!

[ShadoKat]

As promised...



... and the last few pics on their own to show where I am with this right now...




The "beak" has been re-measured and is now symmetrical. Next up on the list, fixing the faceplate. Wish me luck!

[Shadowind]

That is amazing work Shadokat.