You played 2 hours to die like this? - In-Game Taunt, Age of Empires 2
The Horus headpiece was Tom’s masterwork. The pepakura model was covered in several layers of paper mache, following by many, many… uh, many… coats of Bondo. The result was a beautiful piece of art. Unfortunately, the Bondo made it fairly heavy we had to come up with a mounting solution. We used a large cell phone mounting plate and seriously strong neodymium rare earth magnets. This will be outlined in the related electronics post.
I spent a month building out the framework for my website. My plan was to simplify and downsize my footprint. That ended up not working out for me and I ended up adapting my design into a WordPress theme, which in and of itself is a slight pain. My plan was to shed the content management, but it ended up being too cumbersome to update. And then I tried forcing some of the static posts into Gutenberg-esque version. And then I tried to stuff the proverbial square peg into a round hole by posting as custom HTML blocks.
Why am I telling you this, you might be asking? I’m not. Just thinking out loud and collecting my thoughts. I spent most of the past year on a self-hosted solution in the cloud, but that ended up not working for me so I’ve moved back to a straight webhosting provider. I’m trying to get back into the groove before CON season begins again in the post-COVID world.
I have a lot of focus issues, so simplifying should help, hopefully. The hosting is a bit slow, but it was cheap and I’ve got the cache acceleration enabled now, so CloudFlare CDN, do your thing!
I’m getting back to my Emperor Zarkon Quintessence Suite from Voltron: Legendary Defender. I should be posting updates soon. **Should**
Bongo is a Beanie Baby that I’ve had for a very long time — probably since my 20s, I would say. I used to keep him at the office and he’d guard my desk or stare out the window in Downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin a few years ago.
This was, essentially, my very first costuming project.
The challenge was to make outfits for a beanie monkey using items only found in the office. This included a few things I kept at work, like my origami papers but I never brought anything into the office intentionally to make a project.
Materials: Post-It Note Top Hat in Sharpie Black, CD Sleeve material cape, and Origami paper bangles.
Materials: Post-It Note Top Hat in Sharpie Black (shhh… yes, it’s the same one), Paperclip Lapel Rose, and Paperclip Rose and Coffee Stirrer Cane.
Materials: Printer Paper Laurel and Eyeglass Cleaning Cloth Toga.
Materials: Origami Samurai Hat made from paper from a failed print job. If you look close, you might be able to make out some postscript errors. Katana made from a Coffee Stirrer, Post-It Note, and a Paperclip.
Materials: Origami Eagle (I don’t know how to make any other birds) with highligher coloring and a napkin arm guard.
Materials: Origami Eagle (I don’t know how to make any other birds) with highligher coloring and a napkin arm guard.
Materials: Mask and Cape made from a CD sleeve. One of those ones that Microsoft Volume License media comes in.
Materials: Yes, he does birthdays too! This one might surprise you… paper, paperclip. Boom. Mind blown.
The other, other son of Mogh. Unfortunately, this one has been lost to the ages. He had a Post-It goatee, forehead ridges, and a Batleth wrapped in shiny origami paper 🙁
Helmet: EVA Foam, Foam Clay, Styrene, Leather
Chest Armor: EVA Foam, Leather, Buckles
Cape: Fleece
Sword: EVA Foam with a 3/8″ Metal Core, Leather
EVA Foam – 4mm & 6mm, TNT Cosplay Supply
Foam Clay – C4 Foam Clay, TNT Cosplay Supply
Styrene Plastic Sheet – TNT Cosplay Supply
Aluminum Chainmail Coif – Split for Kael’s Helmet and Sorsha’s Collar
Faux Fur – Part of my winter coat that I didn’t need. It was removable.
Leather, Gun Metal Colored Rivets, Stainless Steel Screws
The helmet was built as a combination of two templates. The facemask I had already built with no purpose in mind. A little bit of trimming and adjustment and I was able to fit a pivot point for the mask to flip. Hardware was later changed to stainess steel since I have a metal allergy.
Base – Evil Ted’s Viking Helmet (Lower Half)
Facemask – Kamui Cosplay’s Villian Mask (with adjustments descrbe below)
I used auction photos, as well as other reference photos to sculpt the facemask. The base is Kamui’s Villain Mask with a foam block added at the bottom to fill out the jawline. My understanding is that the mask is a Troll skull, like the ones crawling all over the Castle at Tir Asleen.
It took several applications to sculpt the mask fully. I went a little thick and it took a while to dry. This part was really a lot of fun and easy to carried away on. In this case, the sculpt was a little less symmetrical but pretty close. I think this added to the organic look of the skull.
I used TNT’s C4 Foam Clay for this mask. The texture is softer and is more pliable. I think they use some sort of flexible PVA in the formulation. I really like it. Pixiss has a similar formula to TNT’s and is sold on Amazon, if that’s easier to get.
The density of the Foam Clay sold by Foam-Mo and SKS Props didn’t feel right for this kind of sculpt. The formulation of these two brands are very similar, if not the same. I used this foam to make the spikes for my shoulder armor. This foam can get brittle.
I can’t tell you how much fun it was to sculpt Troll teeth with the foam. I ended up making a generic upper and lower jawline before added the teeth. I rolled the teeth out individual and smoothed them into the upper and lower sections. It was fun making the broken and impacted teeth as well.
I had less than stellar results with the original fins. I used a thermoplastic sheet that had a lot of flex.
I later changed this to a Styrene sheet, also from TNT Cosplay Supply. I curled it using can of some kind, if I remember correctly, and a heat gun.
The details were fun to put together. I think the leather strip along the center line could have turned out a little better. I used scrap brown leather for this part. After this, I added tassels of hair, made from a cheap, black wig and bead crimp loops.
The strip under the leather weave and along the bottom is 2mm EVA Foam, folded over on both sides of the lip of the helmet. There’s a section of clothes hanger wire inside to prevent the chainmail rings from tearing through.
This poorly smudged out photo (I’m definitely not a great graphics person), features the helmet flipped up. You can see that I’ve fully commited to the part, replicating Kael’s shaved moustache center and I let my beard and hair grow wild.
Front Chest Plate – 6mm EVA-50 High Density Foam, TNT Cosplay Supply
Chest Armor – 6mm EVA-38 Foam, TNT Cosplay Supply
Back Armor – 10mm EVA-38 Foam, TNT Cosplay Supply
Chest Armor Scales – 4mm EVA-38, TNT Cosplay Supply
Shoulder Spikes & Fan Symbol on Upper Chest – Foam-Mo Foam Clay
Faux Rivets – Metal Sewing Buttons, Square Pyramid Rivets
3/4 Length Fleece Cape from Etsy
Leather Sword Gloves
Scrap Leather and Buckles
The chest armor base is another one of Evil Ted’s patterns, resized to my dimensions and modified to fit the cut-out of the armor in the movie. The back of the armor is 10mm Foam so the armor would have a similar weight and feel in the front and back.
General Kael’s armor in the movie is leather with metal shoulders, shin guards, and a gauntlet cover on his sword hand.
Base – Evil Ted’s Basic Male Body Armor
Facemask – Kamui Cosplay’s Villian Mask (with adjustments descrbe below)
Gauntlet – Freehand cut from 4mm TNT EVA Foam with scrap leater buckles.
Shin Guards – Freehand cut from 6mm SKS HD Foam
The scales were cut from 4mm EVA Foam. I used one foam scale as a template and used scissors to cut them out. I sanded the edges lightly with finer grit sandpaper to give it an organic, worn look. The leather look was achieved by crumpling and flattening a piece of aluminum foil and pressing it lightly with a hot iron.
I had to scale the size of each piece to match the number of rows and colums of the movie version. Each one was glue at about 1/3 of the base and overlapped with each row.
Tom usually paints my stuff because I have a color deficiency issue along with red-green colorblindness. He wasn’t too thrilled about having to paint the scales after they were assembled. I tend to get overzealous with the build portion.
I used half-round foam to create a border for the chest plate. I would’ve liked to use something thinner, in maybe a 1/4 round version but… Con Crunch was on at this point.
I learned a couple of lessons working with vegetable tanned leather. This applies only to me though, so if you find a method that works for you, go for it. I have a friend that teaches leather tooling classes and I’m tempted to take a class or buy one of his guides.
1. You really only need a few tools to accomplish this kind of work. I got really overzealous and bought a large kit with too many things to store. The metal tools get really heavy in a single organizing case.
2. Get a leather scribe. Using a gel ink pen was a terrible idea. It’s especially bad if you’re planning to dye the leather when you’re finished. Luckily, might was painted with Angelus Acrylic Paints.
3. Don’t use too much water. It makes it too soft and hard to keep a print. Too little is also a problem as well, if it dries out before you can get a pattern to set. It also took a really long time to dry. Use a spray bottle.
4. It’s way harder to do that it looks. I did a pretty terrible job, but it’s a passable specimen for a first attempt. (Actually second. I messed up the first one.)
Painted with Angelus Acylic Paint. I believe it also got a clear top coat after the armor was fully painted.
This took a few tries, but I made the Fan Emblem (above the chest insignia) from Foam-Mo Foam Clay. I rolled out several small lines of foam and curled them. I cut them in half to get the mirroring right.
The shoulder armor was built from a should armor pattern, but I can’t recall which one. I believe it was a generic template. The spikes were made by pressing the Foam-Mo Foam Clay into Pyramid shaped silicone molds. I bought a set on Amazon. They took quite a while to dry. The base is made from SKS Props 6mm HD Foam. To be honest, not my favorite foam to use.
Tom finished up the assembly and got it ready for paint. He used hot glue to simulate the welding lines in the movie prop.
The gauntlet is designed from a generic gauntlet pattern, with extra pieces added to make up the finger guard. I used half-round pearls from the craft store for the rivets. I didn’t want to deal with the sound of rattling googly eyes every time I moved.
This one is coated with DAP Kwik Seal thinned with water. We’ve been trying out different seal coating products for this purpose. Tom gave it the standard metal paint treatment.
Apparently, I didn’t take many photos of my shin armor. They’re in storage right now and a pain to get out, so this picture will have to suffice for the time being until I can update it. I know they’re sitting a little high. That’s why the rest of the picture is there to distract you.
Materials:
– Multiple Thicknesses of EVA-38 Foam (TNT)
– Steel Rod, 3/8″
– Barge TF Contact Cement
The blade is made from two long strips of 6mm EVA Foam (TNT). The core of the sword is a 3/8″ steel rod. In retrospect, it would have been smarter to put in two rods and leave the center open because of the fuller. If you look at it up close, you can see the rod through the foam since the fuller is on both sides. We could’ve also just shaded it a different color, but I think at that point it was too late for that.
This is the same method used for Sorsha’s sword as well.
The design of the scalloping in the edge of the sword is actually offset like it is in the movie prop.
You can see the scalloping on the edge looks really good here. Tom, was the main builder for both swords and had the patience to grind out each groove in the scallop with a rotary tool. I made the guard and rings and Tom made everything else.
Grinding in the fuller was a two-person undertaking, because of the types of tools we had at our disposal. Tom’s drill press needed some maintenance and was out of commission for this. I bought a plunge jig for a drill and after some careful measuring, we locked the plunge depth and ground out the fuller with a round sanding bit purchased at Ax-Man Surplus. This is when we discovered the metal rod was a problem.
The finished hilt.
I bought 2 frogs for the swords. I kept the scabbard simple since I wanted the sword to be visible, even when it was in the holder.
I wasn’t sure if I could get a quality hauberk in my size that would stay together properly during extended wear, so I settled for a fabric version that was passable at a distance. This is the close-up pattern of the weave.
Crown Materials: Worbla Finest Art, EVA Foam, Steel D-Rings, Nylon Webbing, Black Linen
Robe Materials: Linen Cloth
This was my first time using Worbla. It’s incredibly expense to buy in the US, so it’s hard to justify the spend. However, I have a few sample packs I purchased of the different versions of the thermoplastic — as well as some other brands. I ended up using the sandwich method, with a layer of 2mm foam in the middle. It worked out well, but Worbla’s Finest Art is a bit grainy and textured. I worked in sections.
At this point, the details were pretty much finished. The points were also sandwiched Worbla and 2mm EVA Foam, and then twisted into shape and then mirrored on the opposite fin.
I originally planned to make the crown adjustable, but in the end I added D-rings to the front (behind the center piece) and to the center of the back where these 2 strips meet. I installed an nylon strap with a cam buckle so it could be adjusted to rest comfortably on the head without falling down. I tried to smooth out the gaps the best I could and then the whole thing got coated in layers of gesso. I also embedded in some metal wire loops inside to attach the fabric to (I can’t recall what kind of metal it was).
It started with a layer of black primer and then finished with acrylic paint and a clear coat.
Post-assembly photo. I doubled over a black linen scarf and hand sewed it into the 3 anchor points inside the crown. I believe I also stitched it (at least the bottom layer of linen) to the nylon webbing to keep it in place.
Pattern Base:
Evil Ted’s Samurai Helmet (top section only)
Freehanded Parts
Helmet Materials: EVA Foam, Foam Clay, Styrene, Leather
Sword Materials: EVA Foam with a 3/8″ Metal Core, Leather
This is the earliest in the process that I started taking photos. I used the top part of Evil Ted’s Samurai Helmet as a base to work from. The brim, nose guard, and the fins were freehanded pieces from scrap foam.
The finial was fun to sculpt. I used a circle cutter to cut out rounds of EVA Foam and then stacked together and glued. I used a round toothpick to hold anchor all of the pieces and to center the point on the top of the helmet.
Preparing for attaching the “rivets”. I measured the sections and marked off rivet points at even intervals.
The rivets were simulated with Half-Round White Beads from Michael’s. I liked the rounded look better than googly eyes. The gaps were filled with EVA foam after wetting them down with water. I tried making the vertical pieces on the brim from Foam Clay, but they fell apart during sanding so Tom added strips of foam instead.
Post-paint photo. Tom did an awesome job with the coloring on this onen
Styrene Plastic sheets were used to create the diamon shapes for the helmet. I know I could have done some parts better here, but I’m still proud of the work.
This is the completed helmet. Excuse the mess behind it. While there are some things I could have done differently with this build, I think it turned out fairly well.
This is a replica of Worf’s Baldric from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I found some information on building this baldric on YouTube. I had been researching the project for quite a while. I was able to source the proper parts to make it.
Materials: Aluminum Rings, Square Saddle Rings, Leather
Sources:
– Aluminum Spacers: AluminumSpacers.com
– Saddle Rings: PET Hardware in Prague, CZ
– Black Cow Leather: Red Wing Shoes in Red Wing, MN (a gift from my sister)
Yet another redeployment of my website. My hosting account with InMotion expired last month and the pricing felt steep for what I needed, so I started searching for a new place to host. I looked at:
GCP felt powerful but like a lot of Google products felt clunky and not that intuitive to use. I still have a credit on my account so I’m still playing around with it. I’m using G Suite for mail hosting and I like it so far, but I could do without a monthly subscription fee.
I purchased the Bootstrap Studio editing software, which is actually kinda neat to use but there’s a steep learning curve, especially for someone who hasn’t messed around with web design in almost 20 years. A lot has changed. There are things I like and dislike about the platform, but it has the features I need. To further complicate things, I decided that I wanted something more interactive, and easier to insert updates but didn’t want the hassle of managing a database for such a small amount of data. So I started building a Bootstrap-based theme for Get Simple CMS, which stores its data in XML flat files.
I started looking at AWS because the services I need are essentially free for the next year. I can spend some time re-familiarizing myself with web hosting. I’ve been an IT Professional pretty much my entire adult life. The free/discounted services gives me the opportunity to setup micro instances in AWS so I can play around with systems and setup a sandbox, in case I want to look at getting my Red Hat certification back. Luckily, this all ties into my professional career, so why not, eh?
Anyway, thanks for visiting and hopefully, I’ll stay on top of posting updates here and on my social media accounts again.
I built an IKEA LACK Enclosure for my Creality Ender 3.
This was my compromise instead of buying another 3D printer to collect dust in my craft corner while I neglected to even learn the basics. You got me… I wasn’t really going to buy another printer.
I also switched to using PETG Filament which is easy to work with at lower temperatures and less problematic than ABS. 3D printing works more reliably without a lot of temperature fluctuations, in general. I spent a lot of time researching so I could calibrate my prints. After fixing a problem with underextrusion, my prints have been coming out worlds better.
I built my enclosure from three IKEA LACK tables in black and a set of CAPITA legs. These bad boys set me back around $46 with tax. There were only 138 left in stock so of course I got there before they ran out! I did seriously consider the $10 delivery fee, but I would’ve missed out on the joy losing my car in the parking ramp and driving in sleet and ice.
LACK Table – https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lack-side-table-black-20011408/
CAPITA – https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/capita-leg-stainless-steel-60263574/
I sandwiched the first 2 tables together with 7 out of the 8 legs, leaving the front open for storage. The last leg, I cut into 4 equal pieces to extend the next tier. My printer needed about 17″ for clearance and I wanted a little room overhead. I ended up with just a little under 20″ of height for the printer.
OK. I got a little lazy with this build log from here on out! Take a look through the images for build notes.
