Interludes in Costuming and Game Writing

It's been a crazy week in the world of DarthGM.  My brother is getting married this coming weekend, and I'm the Best Man.  The week has been filled with travel seemingly all over New England, preparations, machinations, and execution of several surprises. 

Hopefully, all well received.

#GenConMod

In the meantime, I've made progress on the pivotal encounter in my GenCon Module.  Two playtest sessions under my belt has led to some good data-mining and feedback on mechanics and character stats.  I'm debating going into more detail about the encounter, although I suppose it's kinda out there now as to what it is.  Still, I'll keep it "officially" under wraps for a later date.

#PepakuraSWTORJedi

The costuming bug has bit me again, and I've started work on utilizing those foam mats that I have taking up space in my house, purchased so many years ago for a Darth Malgus build.  Inspired by a construction thread over at the RPF, I'm starting work on my own SWTOR Jedi Knight outfit utilizing EVA Foam and Pepakura files.  With the right files, the foam, and a few layers of Plasti-dip, you can make some really impressive costumes.  A bevy of Iron Men have cropped up over the past few years, and a whole host of Specters from Mass Effect, all thanks to the skillful manipulation of those rigid-foam mats folks use to protect their floors from machining equipment and exercise contraptions.  The work is AMAZING, a lot faster than other costume making methods, and a lot cheaper too.  The amount of mileage and wear and tear they can take is much less than hard-plastic counterparts, as expected, but it's also a lot easier to make replacement parts.

I've printed out and assembled the files for the bracers for the Jedi Knight.  I'd like to make the foam bracer sometime next week, and if that works print out and assemble additional parts for construction at an upcoming Build Day.

Ideally, I'll be making the Jedi Knight to get practice with Pepakura and EVA foam construction, and repeat the process to make the Sith Acolyte.  They use almost the exact same armor templates, just that the Sith Acolyte will require the acquisition of an appropriate mask.  If I do it right, I might be able to submit the Acolyte for 501st Legion approval.

#WelcomeToThe21stCenturyPhil

You may have noticed a theme with my sub-headers today.  I'm on Twitter now.  It's weird, and not really conducive to my usually-long-winded approach when it comes to writing out my thoughts and arguments, but it is handy to keep in touch with things.  We'll see how it affects my blog, using #FragmentsfromtheRim and #FFTR as hash-tags for this column.  Feel free to follow me over there, I'm @DarthGM.

Maybe next week, after the craziness of this week, I can finish off the Jedi Consular's team and post up their stats, and come back with revisions for the previous posts.

May the Dice be with you.

Dammit, Jinn, I'm a GM, Not An Electrical Engineer

Changing it up this week to talk about the other intended subject for this blog; costuming.  More specifically, costume prop-making.  I'm fascinated by the construction of props and do-dads that help round out a perfect costume.  This time around, I wanted to build something unique and personal; my own lightsaber.

I may have a problem...I need more Blues.

I own a lot of lightsabers.  Well, okay, maybe not a lot by some standards of folks in this hobby, but certainly more than your average Star Wars Nerd.  Eight of them sit on a rack behind my head, one on a stand on the shelf, and a few more tucked in a corner of my office.  About half are FX Sabers from Master Replicas.  Every year for several years my folks would get me another 'saber for Christmas.  The rest are mostly from Ultrasabers, one of the more public saber-building company out there.

All these are nice and all, and are really cool, but ever since I found the Custom Saber Shop, I've wanted to get parts and build my own saber.  They have hundreds of parts that can go together in millions of combinations.  Kinda like Legos, but in T-6 aircraft aluminum.

Over on the Custom Saber Shop (or TCSS), they have a system of parts called the "Modular Hilt System"; a series of main bodies, pommels, blade holders, and accent parts.  You can even get some parts powder-coated.  Lit blade activation switches.   Sound boards.  Lithium ion power supplies.  Battery status LEDs.

You know, bells and whistles.

So you build a saber with a MHS Builder program the site has, add the parts to your wish list. Ever since I bought my house, I've been selling off a lot of my old hobbies on ebay.  Mostly old WizKids Mechwarrior miniatures and old LEGO sets I really don't need.  Every now and then I'll buy another part from the list.  Recently, I finally picked up the last part I needed to construct my saber.

At least, I thought I did.



"WHY YOU NO WORK-EY!?!"



You see, before this year, I'd never soldered anything.  I've done some practice on other sabers I have, replacing simple activator switches with ones that light when the saber is on.  These were on "stunt sabers" tho; sabers that had no sound, and just lit up.  This is my first foray into the joys of soundboards.  Tiny, tiny soundboards...



I'm having a bit of bad luck trying to get the electronics working.  Soldering is still new to me, so trying to melt solder onto the tiny little holes on the sound board is proving to be highly difficult.  I can't get the solder to do anything but bead up, and connections are not being made.  I'm having difficulty getting the momentary LED switch to work; it's constantly on instead of only turning on when it's pressed.  The blade LED is doing the same thing when I have power running through the board, on those rare times I can angle the board and the pins to connect.

So I'm in a bit of a slump.  I can't get my electrics to work.  I'm worried I killed a $70 sound board.  I'm pretty sure I killed a $8 2w speaker.  Who knows, maybe I didn't kill it because I can't tell without knowing if the sound board works.

I've received a few more tips, and a few more words of encouragement.  I'm probably about a week away from contacting a local sabersmith and dropping the parts in his lap asking to help fix it.

Either way, I think I need to get a few more LEGO sets and Mechwarrior minis up on eBay...



Flashy Build: Phase Six - Payoff

It's been an interesting few weeks around the DarthGM homestead when it comes to Flashy.

After three rounds of priming and sanding, Flashy was ready to mold.  You all saw what state he was in last week.  This week, the plan was to use some mold-release on the first half and pour the second half of the mold.  So Sunday night I sprayed it, mixed 3 starter kits of Moldstar 16, and let it "bake" for a half hour.

It seemed to be ready...

 The intention was to pull off the sides of the mold and be able to just pull the mold into it's two sections.  Instead, I got this.

 

...a nice brick of blue rubber, with my master encased within.  The coating of Mold Release failed.  Completely.  Maybe it was too warm, maybe I didn't use enough.  Who knows.  Who cares!  After going to town on it with my box-cutter, I was able to sever the mold in half and remove Flashy.

Sadly, all my guide keys were gone.  The mold was in rough shape.  The master broke off one of it's details.  I was disappointed, and thought that I'd just blown a couple hundred bucks worth of chemicals with nothing to show for it.

So tonight I invited over Erich, one of my colleagues in the 501st/Rebel Legion, and we tried to save the mold.  After three attempts, the cutting of a few more channels in the rubber to let air out, and the construction of a wooden shell to go around the gun to keep it from being squished in key points, we ended up with this.

She may not look like much, but after a few passes with an x-acto knife, we got something else.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you "Flashy-Version 1.0"

 I had to trim away a lot of flash (ba-dum dum), and sliced my pinky open pretty well while doing it, but I think it looks pretty good, and pretty workable.

This build has been a real learning experience, and I'm not just saying that to sound wise, or to sound like an after school special (do they even have those anymore?)

I got really discouraged yesterday after all the failures with the mold.  I want to be good at it, and I want to be good at it now.  I need to accept that things aren't always going to work out how I want them too, no matter how badly I want them to.  Some things takes time, and practice, and you're going to fail along the way, or stumble, and it's important to learn from failure and pick yourself up when you trip, because you may still make it to where you were going.

This is the first time I'd ever done something like this, and I can tell you it won't be the last.  I'll probably do a Flashy 2.0 at some point, incorporating the knowledge of what I've done on this build into the next, and improving it.

My second suit of armor was better than my first, and my third was better than my second.  Practice, experience, and patience are hallmarks of this hobby.  I need to remember that, and enjoy the process as much as the product.

But man, when the product works, even partially, it's really neat.

I likely need a night with her and a dremmel before working on her apperance, but all and all I'm happy with my first pull. Now it's on to cleaning up the pull, detailing, and painting.  And that's something I have experience with.

Big thanks to Erich Schafer for the hands on help, and Brian "stormtrooperguy" Anderson for the inspiration and words of advice.

Costume Updates, Cacophony Style

So it's been a while since I posted anything about any costume or prop, so I'll just post it all!

Flashy

Casting Flashy got...interesting...

We started with a box and a lot of clay.  Next time I do this, I'm going to remember to fill in the clay more, and smooth it out better.

 

We thought that one container/package of mold mix would be enough per side, and we had a third kit in reserve.  I grossly underestimated the amount of volume this box could hold, and ended up using all three kits just to make one half of the mold.  Not just that, but I had to tilt the box and stick one of the empty bottles into the mixture to force the volume of the mix to shift so there would be enough over all of the gun.  

She hardened up nice, and left me with half a mold.  My buddy Erich is heading to Reynold's Advanced Materials later this week, and picking up another 3 mix-kits for me.  Hopefully late next Sunday I'll be able to pour the last half of the mold, and maybe pull a blaster the following Monday.

  
Darth Malgus

My work on Darth Malgus is interesting and entertaining.  I'm having fun experimenting with building his armored parts from Pepakura files and EVA Foam mats. 

 

The don't look too bad, if you ask me...

 

 

There are slightly thnner mats out there, so I may make yet another pair of gauntlets soon.  I guess I'll just have to use these for LARPing or something.

 
Jedi Consular

The Jedi Consular is coming along, dammit. I wish there was more to show, but Sarah has been working on a lot of aspects of it at once, and it's sometimes dizzying to try and keep track of it all.  We're actually pretty well along.  I'd say it's about 60% done.  All the pieces are cut out, and are starting to come together.  We're just finishing up on a lot of the detail work that needs to be done when it's in it's component pieces.  I can show what I'm going to be doing for the glowing runes that run up the seams of the leather over-robe.

I'm cutting them out of leather, so that we can place a material behind them to illuminate them.

EL Tape, my friends.  EL Tape. 

These runes are gonna glow.

For the large runes on the bottom of the Skirt, sarah's basically embroidering them with mylar "mint green" thread over a white shimmery gauze, and then running an iron over them to fuse them together. 

What she's done so far (not pictured here) LOOKS great, but it takes so damn long to do.  Sarah is giving herself a recurring back ache working on this part.  Each rune takes about an hour to do, because the machine needs to chug along at it's slowest possible speed or the mylar thread snaps.  And it snaps a lot.

501st Clone Trooper

My 501s Clone Trooper has actually been down for a while now.  To get into this helmet, I actually cut away the faceplate and have it secured with a series of Rare Earth Magnets and metal brackets.  Well, it wasn't really holding too well that way, so I replaced the Rare Earth Magnets with  Even Stronger Rare Earth Magnets.  This seems to work well.  I also trimmed out the visor a little more so it wasn't completely crushing my nose (which was contributing to the old magnets not being able to hold the face on properly).  The suit is wearable again, even if I do still need to upgrade my ab plate.

Going Forward


Got a bunch of projects to finish up, a few more I want to start, and eventually to start gathering pieces for the lightsaber I want to built. (Boy, is that going to be inexpensive...NOT...)  Most of it will need to wait, tho.  I really need to kick my packing into high gear and get my house packed up. 

Flashy: Phase Four-Almost There...

Today involved a whole lot of sanding, filling, and fabrication of the neat little details on Flashy.

I didn't take any progress photos, but I'll talk about what I did.  First, I took some wood filler and filled in a lot of the gaps and crevasses in the gun.  The trapezoid and the back where the flat "slide" meets the cylindrical barrel were filled and smoothed out as best the paste would allow.  When it dries, I should be able to sand it nice and smooth.

I took a 1/2" poplar dowel and bisected it, with these I glued them to the slide just above the trapezoid.  I then took another section of the Poplar dowel, cut and sanded 4 grooves into it, and made the front and back...I'm not sure what they are in the gun...maybe a laser sight mount?  Anyway, that stick-thing coming out of the trapezoid.

The quarter circles in the grooves above the trigger were quarters of a simple 1" wooden toy wheel blank, cut into fourths.  I took another complete wheel and set them in the trapezoid, along with two short, thin strips of sintra.

For the back of the gun, I cut off the end of a rubber cap that you'd find on the end of a cane or walker and smoothed it out for the "butt-cap".  I used plumbers two-part epoxy putty and made a sloping ridge from the wider part of the barrel to the gun barrel.  Once this dries, I'll take a dremmel and smooth it out to make a nice sharp 45-degree angle.  Finally, I placed a wooden cap in each of the carved recesses in the grip.

The last little detail I needed to figure out were the two "switches" on the back, in-line with the half-dowels.  I knew I'd seen something like them before, but it didn't dawn on me what they were until I was carving away the rubber cap for the end of the gun.

They're the locking switch from a snap-blade box-cutter.  Tomorrow, I make a trip to the dollar store, buy two, and cannibalize them to make the last switches.

There are some details that I just didn't do, and I'm not sure I'll get to them.  There's the oblong recess under the barrel by the trigger, and some details in the front of the trapezoid.  These I may just leave off.  This is "Flashy Mk I", and if there's a Flashy Mk II I'll try to incorporate those then.

All and all, she doesn't look too bad.  And she feels great in the hand.

Really looking forward to finishing this master up, so I can see how I do with molding and casting.

Flashy: Phase Three-Flash and Function

A little more work tonight, a little bit further.


First thing I worked on today was filling in the gaps in the recessed section of the trapezoid and in the indents along the barrel.  I used cut-outs from a very thin sintra sign, trimmed and fir them to place, and hot-glued them where they needed to be.

Next part is placing the end cap on Flashy.  Eventually I'll be layering on some bondo and smoothing out a sloping cone from the barrel to the width of the endcap, but first I need to make the end cap.  I cut little lengths of sintra and glued them around the inside of the pipe.  I glued on this black end-cap pipe that came with a set of shelves I had, and it made a perfect seat for the end cap, the cap to an old pill bottle.  The pill bottle cap actually works out well, because Flashy has all these indents at almost the exact spacing and shape as the pill bottle cap.

 

 I also cut some details into the trapezoid, the little "keyhole" marks.

 

Finally, I made the "clip" out of another piece of thicker sintra.  Trimmed it down to the right shape, glued it into place at the butt end of the grip, and it's good to go.

This thing is really starting to come together.

Time to make the trigger.  After dremmeling out a recess in the frame for the trigger, I cut the basic shape of the trigger out of sintra.

The trigger fits well, and looks pretty good.  I may afix the trigger into place, or I may mold it as a separate piece. I'm not sure at this point.

 

Things are definitely starting to come together for Flashy.  I really like the look and the feel of the pistol.

The next task will be the tricky one; I'll be taking a stab at Bondo.  I need to create the bevel from the barrel width to the end-cap width, and fill in the trapezoid a bit.  After that it's all about finding a few detail pieces, and hopefully getting it ready to resin cast.