Legendary Wall Trophy (V3)

[Revenant1988]

So I've been making these things since 2014, but never got around to posting a build thread.

Well, no more!

The design has gone through several changes over the years and I'm currently on version 3.0 of the kit. I do have plans for a V4. Originally I wanted to make one because I've always wanted one in my gaming room. Since you could not buy them, I decided to learn to make it and thus kicked off my journey to learning to sculpt, some CAD stuff, molding and casting. V1 started as a humble pepakura model to get the scale, and then from there everything has been hand made my dudes.

I thought once I made one for myself I'd be "done" but I just keep tinkering with it, making improvements and learning lessons. Here is one I did recently.



We're getting ready to move soon, and I have an unsold kit in my garage I want to find a home for before we go, so check the classifieds if ya want it. My V3 mold still has life left in it as well. I really enjoy getting these to my friends and other makers. It is humbling. My biggest achievement with it is that 343i has one of my kits in the Halo Museum! If you see it, give me a shout


I'm going to be adding to this thread as I go with my build process. I'd love to hear your feedback, or take any questions.

For now, I'll share some finished examples over the years done by myself and some others.

I did this one in 2017 for a client. This is a V2 and has the old style of teeth.


This one is also a V2, 2016 I think and hanging in my local makerspace's display area. I love when we do tours and folks gawk at it. It gets mistaken for a Predator skull frequently.


This is one of my old V1 kits painted up by JUSTINIAN 117


This one was done recently by a client, they don't have a handle or social media


Thanks for looking!

 

[PlanetAlexander]

THAT. IS. BEAUTIFUL.
WORT WORT WORT

 

[The Wolf]

 

[Sean Anwalt]

*obligatorily* wort wort wort! Hahaha

Those are awesome! I love the newer style of teeth. Also, you should make a predator skull and have the elite skull eating it, just to get the point across to those pesky gawkers. Lol

 

[Revenant1988]

So when I started this the first time in 2013, I spent a good amount of time debating how big I wanted it to be.

How big is an Elite skull? And to make things more challenging, how do you translate the skull as it appears in the 2D image from 2001


To a 3D model that has evolved over the years?


A buddy of mine from the fansite halo.bungie.org named Sound Effect \ ScaleMaster is well, a scale master and he was able to do some neat stuff with old Halo 2 assets to help me determine how big an Elite's skull is in real life

[note: if his name 'Stephen Loftus' rings a bell to you, you might have seen his work in several of the Halo guide books. 343 has partnered with him several times to determine the size of all sorts of Halo assets. He's a smart dude!]

Once I had the size, I used the pepakura file of the skull to get an example of how that translates to real life.



This presented somewhat of quandary: the way the artist drew the skull does not quite line up with how it actually is in-game. What I mean by this is, if you took the 3D skull and laid it by depth against the shield you'd see the top of the head, but not eyes\facial features. If an Elite actually looked like it did in the difficulty emblem, he'd be a cone head!

So I took a little bit of liberty and decided that I'd have to angle the skull diagonally to get the best of both worlds.


I then began to sculpt the skull from a hard epoxy clay (Aves Apoxee Sculpt) using the paper one as a guide and size comparison. It turned out pretty good I think



The teeth gave me the hardest time.... I struggled to get a style I liked and to stay true to the image as possible. These are the V1 \ V2 teeth. They presented some challenges for molding, but they looked menacing enough.

Once I had the skull more or less "done" I then moved on to the swords and shield. I used the Pepakura file, the old McFarlene toy and the logo image as reference and then sketched it out in Google Sketchup at the time. Then I got a membership at a local Maker Space where we have access to a laser cutter (woo!) and re-drew them in Corel Draw (gross!).

My plan was to take the schematic I drew and cut each layer out on various thicknesses of acrylic and build them up. I'm not much of a wood worker, and this was before 3D printing became affordable so for me, this method worked best to preserve the level of precision I wanted that my cave-man hands just could not deliver.

cut it


layer it


glue\clamp it


This process was also used on the swords. I'll go into them in a future post.

Once the parts had bonded, I then had to being the process of blending the layers to remove the layer lines by sanding and filling and sanding and weeping and sanding and filling and etc.

 

[Revenant1988]

Man I've been busy. Lots going on right now in my world but I've not forgotten about this thread. Let's carry on!

Working with acrylic as my chosen medium for the bulk of the pieces has some challenges. I spend a lot (a LOT) of time working to ensure all the edges are blended as best I can, and that things are glass smooth on areas like the sword blades, where you want the "sharp" edge to shine when you silver or chrome it. This involves a lot of the standard fare of sanding and filling and wet sanding and weeping and sanding and filling etc until done.

But well worth it in the end.

After all the pieces are to a point where I can't get them any better, it is time for molding!

Here I am pouring my silicone of choice (MoldStar 30) for the shield. This mold is the "easiest" being a simple one-sided mold, but it is very large so it requires plenty of reinforcement.


Blue goo


all done


The sword handles are a 3-part mold, and a little more of a challenge. I've revised these ones a few times, but I'm sure it won't be my last.



kinda looks like a little dachshund right?


Here is one of them being clayed up and the registration keys. Taking the time to get the clay wall super smooth is tedious but pays off- trust me.


When you don't know how much silicone to pour, you can take some rice and pour it in to get you an estimate. Just pour the rice out into a measuring cup and start there.


You can repeat that for the other side when you remove the clay wall after the first pour. Just be sure to clean the parts. This one came out pretty well. The blue part at the top is the 3rd part of this mold.


The sword blades are a simple 2 part mold. I was kinda stingy on this one and should have made it a little thicker. I was trying to be thrifty and save as much rubber as I could, but sometimes even for a small, thin piece you need to use what you need to use. Bleh.

 

[Revenant1988]

The next thing to mold was the skull. For this guy, I've stuck with a 2-part brush on mold using Rebound 25. The whole process goes something like this:

Take the skull, clay him up. Smooth the clay as much as possible. Set registration keys for the mother mold for later.


Set the registration keys for the first half with some clay tools.


Mix up the first batch of silicone and do your print coat. Just a thin coating. Anything that falls off the model gets caught by the clay wall, and becomes part of the seam line for the mold. Then when the first layer has tack'd, pour another layer that is a little thicker to build thickness. Then let that tack.


Prepare another batch of silicone and prepare to brush it on in areas to build the thickness you need for the mold, especially in areas where gravity wanted to pull the thinner silicone layers down. To make things easier, tint your layer a different color so you can see where you need to add more as you go and the difference in layers.


Here, I did another layer of red after my previous layer of orange. I also added in registration keys at this point as well.


Then when that tack'd I added one final layer of orange goo to smooth the rest out. This will make demolding easier later.


After the first half has cured, the whole thing gets flipped over, old clay removed, some new clay added around the border to catch runoff and then a liberal amount of Release agent is applied to the exposed silicone. Then when that has cured, you can start repeating the process above for the second half of the mold.

Here I added the pour spout for where I'll eventually put resin in.


After orange print layer, red was applied, then orange registration keys.


Then a layer to smooth it out


Once the silicone was cured, the next part is the mother mold. I took some cardstock and cut strips, then placed around the mold where I wanted the seam line for the mother mold shell to be.


When I had that where I wanted, I then removed the paper and transferred the shape to cardboard for more rigidity. I then placed that back around the mold.


Before I can start the mother mold, I need to apply a release agent so that the fiberglass shell does not stick to the cardboard. I used sonite wax since I had some on hand. It works really well.


I then start the process of applying fiber glass resin and strips to the silicone (remember, nothing sticks to silicone except silicone) until I had it built to the thickness where I felt it was sturdy.


Then when cured, you flip the mold over, remove the cardboard in my case, apply more release agent to the exposed fiberglass rim, and then apply fiberglass to the second side of the mold.

When done, you get something like this


Here are all the pieces. It is a big mold. It is also a pain in my ass to roto-cast by hand.


I've used Free Form Air before, but I prefer fiberglass for this mold. Of course, every time I have to re-mold it, I get a little smarter and use less material. Still, I'm going to invest in a roto-cast machine lol.

Thanks for reading. I'll have more posts and news soon!

 

[Revenant1988]

Been busy lately, got a helmet project going in another thread (if you're a Gungnir fan, go give it a read) but have not forgot about this post. Actually doing quite a bit of work on a few kits right now!

So where was I?

Molding. Still molding.

The last set of pieces to mold were the sword blades and the jaws. The blades themselves are very thin, about 3/8 in. For them, a regular 2 part mold is sufficient. To save silicone, I clayed it up in the same general shape as the piece, and not a straight rectangle.



The jaws are a little different. These molds are regular 'box' molds. The reason for this is that while I could try to be thrifty and save silicone, the reality is that I need these to be easy to cast, and the best way I've found to do it is a seam line by the teeth. There is wasted space doing this, above the teeth but it is necessary. This method allows me to pour the teeth first, let them partially cure, combine the mold halves, then pour the rest of the jaw. This process minimizes bubbles and trapped air in the teeth, had I just done a gravity pour. If I ever get a pressure pot, I won't need to do it this way. Someday.





Once it is all said and done, I'm left with a lot of molds for each part. Check it out!


Now that all the molds are done, I can then start casting resin and pulling pieces.