Big Sister

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Loess said:
Unfortunately, we didn't have any way to suck the air out, so we did have to pop the ball. The paper mache was a nice change of pace from fiberglass and polyester resin...

It's also cheaper and less deadly. :p

I'm gonna watch your progress on the Big Sister. Keep it up!
 
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Neat project, can't wait to see how you're going to "Steam-Punk" it up to have that genuine deep sea diver / mechanical look.
 
A bit of work that we did last night.

Got some foam on the mantle so we can sculpt the hump on the back of it, and filled in some gaps on the sides and front under the flange.

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We also got the helm bell epoxied to the helm flange.

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The plan for tonight is to carve the foam on the mantle to shape, and get a bit more done on the tank. Once the foam is to shape, we'll paint the pink foam with mod-podge, and glass everything to make the mantle nice and strong.
 
Well, it's taken me a few days to get these pics uploaded, but here's what we did last weekend.



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The expanding foam filled in all the spots that we needed it to.



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Carved the back of the mantle to shape.



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Posing practice.



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Fitting the helm to the mantle.



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Test fitting the ring for the front porthole.



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Test fitting the helmet greeblies.



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What we have for the tank so far, a 12 inch concrete form tube wrapped with fiberglass, and some mdf flanges.
 
Woo-Hoo! Great to see this up and running Loess! :D Finally, an upside to game delays lol.



How are you going for reference material? Should I do more digging? Looks like you're both doing great so far. :)
 
MightyJohn, Thanks! Hopefully, we'll be able to get some more done this weekend after the trick-or-treaters are done.



juliet76 said:
Woo-Hoo! Great to see this up and running Loess! :D Finally, an upside to game delays lol.



How are you going for reference material? Should I do more digging? Looks like you're both doing great so far. :)



Heh, we were actually kinda glad to hear about 2K pushing back the release. Now we have an extra few months to finish Sister up for the release.



More reference is always better! We've found a bit more, but we're still lacking some really important stuff, like good views of her needle-lance arm thing, and the stuff for her right arm.
 
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Oh, I guess it's been another two months.... oops.



It's been a little busy for us, Thanksgiving in November, then Christmas and two weeks of an art exhibit in December kinda threw off our build schedule.



We finally got some progress to show off though.



The handwheel out of MDF and plywood.

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The wheel on the axle stub. And on the tank, before we glued the axle to it.

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Also cut out an MDF ring for the porthole of the helmet, and carved out the back, so it'd fit the curve of the bell.

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And we opened the main porthole.

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Annie!

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Just over a month till release.... Maybe we'll make it...
 
That looks awesome so far. don't rush it, if you think your not gonna make it. You can't rush something like that!
 
Thanks, guys! We're not going to do anything that'll detract from the quality of the final costume; it's more important to get it right, than to have it ready before mid-February. We are hoping to get her ready for a con we're going to in late April, we even convinced my younger sister to be Annie's Little Sister, and I'm going to throw together a random Splicer costume.
 
Howdy, it's Blogerella, Loess' fiance and the soon-to-be wearer of this costume! Loess finally got me chased onto the computer to make my first substantial post.



We got a little bit done on the Big Sister helmet this weekend, and you can see that it's finally starting to look like the actual helmet. We first laid out all of the greeblies and taped them to the helmet for placement, traced around them, and cut out all the openings.



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We also modified the greeblies themselves to better match the concept art. All of the small ports are basically PVC pipe fittings, so we had to drill out the ends with hole saws, and sand off some of the outside bumps with a Dremel. Sorry that we don't have photos of the items during production--ALL of my camera batteries happened to be dead that day! We also cut out the Lexan windows for the small portholes--they have masking tape on them, so that we could trace the circles without harming the Lexan:



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Here are several views of the helmet with all of the greeblies taped on:



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This project has been a big lesson in Reusing and Recycling! The largest of the small portholes, which is located at about 1 o'clock on the helmet when facing the front, sits on a donut-shaped piece of fiberglass; this piece is supposed to be a flange of sorts. This circular piece was actually the piece we cut out of the main porthole that we shaped up and attached wooden spacers underneath. We're also going to use the ends of the PVC pipe-caps that we sawed out of the little portholes to make various caps and plate covers, as needed.



NEXT UP: Epoxy all the helmet greeblies on, and apply bondo glass where needed to simulate welds. We will also be applying the last layer of fiberglass on the air tank to hold the foam endcaps on more securely. This weekend, we're making a Tandy Leather run to pick up about a dozen more buckles, and the leather for the corset and hot pants. Now I have to teach myself how to sew leather!
 
We've made a little progress these last two weekends, mostly stuff that doesn't really show up well in photos, though.



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We have a bunch of the 'glassing done, the air tank and arm shield are finished for glass, and the mantle is pretty much done with glass.



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We also finished applying the first skim of filler on the air tank, so that's getting close to finished.



We purchased all the leather for the corset, shorts, and legs last weekend, and have the paper patterns cut out for the leg wraps, I've been stuck at home because of a blizzard all day, so in between Fallout 3 and cleaning, I've been working on those.
 
Well, last time I updated this was in the middle of last week's crashes/restores, so the post disappeared. Hope it goes better this time.



Since I posted last, we finished the bondo work on the tank, and got some detail bands on it. We also finished the handwheel. There's just a bit of spot putty work, and it's ready for paint.

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We also have the dive weight ready for paint.

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The helmet is a long ways towards being done, the portholes are mostly all epoxied in place, and Annie drew on the panel lines and detailing. The biggest work left before adding the panel detailing is the tophat port. I just ordered the acrylic dome to go on it, and the MDF work for it is nearly finished. Once we have that dome it'll be about 15 minutes' work to epoxy that together.

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We've also spent time in the last few weekends working on leather for the leg braces. We cut the wraps and straps out of veg-tanned leather, and dyed them to match the chrome-tan garment leather that we have for the corset and shorts.

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We've picked up the steel for the legs, and got my sister to help work up the patterns for the shorts. We made the first mock-up of those this weekend, so we should be able to start the sewing this week.
 
This build is great, I would love to do something like this for my teenage daughter at some stage, time permitting.



keep up the great work
 
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