Not Completely Dead, Part I

Just a little something I've been working on and off again for the past four months. It's a Dragon Priest mask from Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, an item that I quickly became enamored with when I acquired my first one in-game.

From start to end:

MID to LATE NOVEMBER: First initial sculpt. I only had enough clay to do one half of the thing (sculpted over an old blank party mask).
I could go on forever regaling tales of late nights and stuffy conditions, hunched over a desk sculpting what should've been very easy things (that were really not as easy as I originally thought), but I'll surmise by saying that the cheek alone took me 12 hours straight to sculpt, refine, get upset, destroy, re-sculpt, refine, smooth, gave up, and move on.

EARLY DECEMBER: Having very limited resources and quickly getting fed up, I covered the original half sculpt in silicone rubber (Smooth On Rebound 25, to be exact) to create a mold for what would produce a plastic version to take its place. Using Plasti-Paste Trowable plastic, another Smooth On product, I fashioned a shell around the rubber mold which was encasing the half-sculpt. Once cured, I took the original sculpt out the rubber mold, and destroyed it to reuse the clay to make the other half. I set that aside and used Smooth-On Smooth Cast (40D, if I recall) to create the plastic positive and have it take the original half-sculpt's place.

At the time this photo was taken, I had spent a full week shaping and refining areas to make it as symmetrical looking as I possibly could, before moving on to do the other eye and cheek. A real pain that symmetry business; having to re-do all the same stuff again. Faults and all.

LATE DECEMBER: A couple more weeks spent shaping and refining later.

 

 JANUARY: Shaped and refined some more...

  

 FEBRUARY: At some point later, I got fed up and set to work on the mother mold and negative of the final clay sculpt. Same processes as before but, again, having little resources, I had to improvise.
 I reused my first rubber mold for the half sculpt to help build the final negative. It sounded right, but after pulling apart the rubber from the original sculpt (of which the sculpt did not survive), I realized immediately that there was a hideous seam line running down the middle of the rubber mold: disjointing one half of the mask with the other. I blew it off thinking nothing of it, "Some sanding and that'll be alright. Onto making the mother."

Failing to make a sturdy mother mold, when I separated the mother from the rubber mold, the left half of the mother mold broke. Remade another half and got to casting the full thing before I got fed up. I had an old belt and used it as a strap to secure the halves together and away we went casting in polyurethane resin. 

Another thing I failed to realize, when I tried to salvage the original clay sculpt to give the floppy rubber mold a foundation to keep shape, was that one side (the left) wasn't curved inward as far as the other, so when I pulled my first cast, it came out with a hideous seam line that ran right down the middle and one side was too flat. Stretched outward more horizontally than curving back like a good mask should. However, being that I made a fairly large sculpt (considering the race of beings that wore these masks, Nords, are noticeably larger than average humans), it compensated this mistake fairly well.

 Attempting to salvage what I had, I took this cast to have an appointment with Dr. Emel. Sanding away my mistakes and further refining things like the chin, cheek, lower jaw, face, overall thickness of the piece took about 5-6 hours.

MARCH: More sanding. More refining. More Apoxy Sculpt (I honestly don't know how I made anything before without this stuff). More sanding. More refining.

PRIMED, PAINTED, and COMPLETED AS OF 03/11/12

Enjoy these grand, glorious, glamorous cell phone pictures.

Priming and laying a coat of nickel colored spray paint was easy enough (after some light sanding to make sure the primer stuck properly) but the details and weathering were achieved through a technique I picked up involving an old sock. After the base colors were laid on, (via sock and spray paint method), to darken areas and add dirt, grime, and all these other things to make it look old; simple and basic painting methods were applied. Wet washing and dry brushing being the main two techniques.

However, to really get that really authentic look of weathering, you can't paint it on. As I was painting, I was constantly scuffing and scratching the mask with my fingers and my car keys, and at one point, I was rubbing sand into it. Season to taste and then add a coat of crystal clear acrylic for protection (and to dull exposed bits of extra shiny paint) and I've got myself a Dragon Priest Mask.

Tiny, but acceptable, progress

About one-third of this will not be seen. Now I've got to color the other 162-ish frames in the walk cycle. There's gotta be a faster way for Flash to do this.

Time For Something

 

This is the third time I've had to destroy and reanimate this less than 20 second shot, and I have grown exceedingly efficient at it.

 Still incomplete for the most part. The buildings are place holders right now for when I get around to actually making something decent looking and the timing for the walk cycle is way off. I have to redo it.

Winter Approacheth

Being that I do most of my building (anything that involves sanding or the production of copious tiny airborne bits, really) outside, as it gets colder, it gets harder for me to do things. Tools don't like to work in the cold and neither do I.
However, we have been getting a spots of good weather here more often than usual this late into the season. Still, not quite enough for me to do what I want to get done.

Time to pack it in for now until Spring hits. This ought to give me some good quality time with the pen and paper.

Update On Deckard Gun and Miscellaneous Things

 As no one reads this but me, I might as well use this as a reminder for things I need to do and to bitch about. My digital diary, if you will.

First up: The Deckard Gun I'm building (to which I've become fondly calling the "Unicorn")
LOTS of cosmetic and technical work to be done:

• The bolt casing shape needs to be refined again. The size of the 'dip' where the sides began to sink inward was larger than I had thought. I've slapped some more Apoxie Sculpt on there and leveled it the best I could so it's prepped for further sanding.
• Innerds still need to be made. I got one of the triggers sculpted and ready to be refined and tested with some compression springs I picked up from the hardware store. 
• Innerds can't really get all too far, as I have yet to determine the actual thickness of the gun. With some new reference material I've found and scaled recently, the aforementioned shouldn't be that big of a problem.
• Magwell and magazine need to be refined and not as pointed. More work.
• The handle/gripframe is about 15-20 degrees off of where it should be when it meets with the gun frame. That needs a-fixin'.
• I haven't even begun to think how the hell am I gonna make those serial numbers and such on the gun. Engraving stamps was one idea and one that I'll end up putting to use, but the STEYER logo is still an issue I have to work out.

Believe me, there is much, much, much, much more work to be done (I've not yet even thought of how to approach the simple electronics of the thing) but I don't think there's enough room for that post.
I will say this, though, this thing is a great way to spend the weekends when there is light out. You see, in order to keep me from losing all of my sanity, I've regulated myself to just work on this thing on the weekends and focus on other things throughout the week. The next being the biggest thing I focus on.

Next year's Spillm submission.
I've vowed to the two time winner at this year's festival that I'd make sure he won't win the next one.
To his face.
That is something that I have to ensure.
The shame is, however, that I'm not only teaching myself the basic fundamentals of the programs I'm using now, but I'm also applying what I know of animation to practice. Having scant experience working with animation before (unless stickmen flipbooks count), it is an arduous, laborious, and extremely tedious task having to switch between doing it and how to do it, if that makes sense. Especially when I'm going over things that I think need some retooling that I think I can just do, but end up fucking it up anyway.
In any normal case when this shit happens to me, I usually just start over again from square one or give up. The only thing that stops me is this idea that I have of winning, going up on stage, claiming my award, and pulling this gag where I bring up the previous winner to present me with a second award that I made just for the occasion. Rubbing salt into the wounds, as it were.

Besides technical shit, the more I work on the simple stuff (tweening and key frames and that sort), the more my mind wanders on how to make this better. Better backgrounds would be the first thing. Since day one of starting this, I've had in mind of having shifting weather within this 5 minute-or-less feature. It sounds simple enough, I mean, who honestly thinks about something as simple as the sun coming out from behind the clouds? But animation wise, that means I have to have two sets for backdrops for each shot they're in but they have to be affected by the light and the parting clouds. As well as the things on top of the backgrounds being affected by the shadows. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I know it will be worth the trouble if I can pull it off, but I think of that line from Alice In Wonderland every time I begin to think about it, "...whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain is worth getting up and picking daisies..."



Ah, well, I'll probably end up doing it anyway. I usually do.


Oh! And P.S. - Some more fan builds coming.
A friend recently introduced me to this game called Snatcher and it's successor, Policenauts (which I'm working through, at the 'office') and they're really playing up my Blade Runner fantasies. So, after not-a -lot-of-thinking, I've added Random Hajile's modded shotgun/raygun to my build list, as well as Gillion Seed's desert eagle raygun thing.

Other things I'm thinking about constructing are some original designs from sketches/concept work of robots and character costume pieces I drew up for my short (I'll update this post with pics, if and when I get around to it) if it ever gets big enough to incorporate them. Hell, I'll probably end up throwing them in there for good measure, any way.

And just because I know you're gonna read this, I'm giving serious thought to building Old Bruce Wayne's Bat-tle Helmet from the Batman vs Terminator short.

Let me tell you what I've been thinking about, Sweetie...

 

   So, I was sitting in the tub thinking about why I was destined for greatness....

 

   Not really, but I was thinking on some potential builds earlier (and all last week, come to think of it). Now, some I can make and some I can't off the bat, either way, I'll jot them down here so won't forget:

- Hanar lamp

- Working BANG flag gun

- Shepard's salvaged N7 armor 

- Actual shocking joy buzzer

- Darth Vader's helmet

- C-3PO's head

- Obi-Wan's ANH Lightsaber

- Luke's v.2 Lightsaber

- Garrus' eyepiece

- A shoe knife

- Mr. Freeze's bio-dome/Freeze Gun/Nora Music Box from BTAS

- Headpiece to the Staff of Ra

- Scale sized Ark of the Covenant

- The Fertility Idol

- Sankara Stones

- The Holy Grail

- A Crystal Skull

- A Batarang

- Penguin's knife umbrella

- A v.2 of Emperor Palpatine's robe

Can You Guess What This Is?

   Just a project added to the my already overflowing plate of things I want to get done.
 

    Lots of sanding and drilling ahead of me. LOTS of drilling and sanding.
    Then comes the making of the interior mechanics. (Can't wait for that part of the job)
   Also, gotta work on modifying the shitty recast above it even more. The bolt casing is what I need to do the most work on. It's not as even upon closer inspection. It's hard to see where some areas dip but you can certainly feel it. Along with that, I have to do some touch ups on the magazine; the tip is too narrow for my liking.

   A lot more research on the anatomy of guns is going to have to be done, as well.


   Oh, and before I forget: I'm working on this, sparingly, too.

   Revisiting a few animations that could do with some smoothing. Godamn timelines, I hate how it makes everything looks so cut-and-pastey. Ah well, gotta work with what I have. The sequence after this is done in flash and I'll have a better time fixing stuff there because, you know, frames and all. Much better results.

   Can't let golden child, Stephen, win three times in a row, now can we? My ultimate goal is to set the bar so high, no one can touch it. In fact, I just want my submission to be better than his or the ones he's submitted. I will have won if it is so. I want my hands so tightly gripped on the bar that I set, that it won' slip my grasp when I bring it down onto his shit's skull. My quality bashing it's godamn brains in.


Too much?