wow! lol even though there are a few downsides, it is still amazing! I am jealous lol
Hah, tendency to catch fire... no biggie, right? I will say though, the laser makes for some really neat looking edges. Makes it look like the armor was manufactured. Looks great so far!
Haha, that's genius! I can't believe nobody's ever tried laser cutting foam before. Just dont burn down the place in the process XD.
Man, I want a laser cutter.....
Did u know someone there, or did u get charged to use there laser cutter? By the way awesome work on ur costume and props!
To be honest, user of the laser cutter was born out of desparation. The deadline for comic-con was looming and there was really no way to cut all the pieces by hand. I certainly love the speed of the laser cutter but the downsides are all the pieces end up smaller and not fitting precisely because of the amound of foam being burned away and the cost! So, the maker lab let me have access to the laser cutter, but they charge $2 per minute of laser cutting time. As a bit of perspective, it appears the average sheet of foam takes about 4 to 5 minutes to cut out all the patterns so that's $10 right there, and something like a chestplate takes 7 sheets. You can do the math right there
. In anycase, this is probably the most expensive Christmas gift I've ever given my sister. Though, f I get a yearly membership, I get like a half hour free a month, and if I teach a class (I guess I'm teaching foam armor making!) I get a free membership. So I guess I'll be steadily cutting pieces out over the course of the year...
Awesome work
Looks really good, btw you did have good pepakura skills !
I'm new at this point, and have some troubles with paper and glue
Thanks! Though at this point, I've pretty much abandoned pep for foam work. Still, don't give up. I'm utterly embarrassed when I look back at my original ODST outfit. It took a few iterations of armor before I made something I wasn't totally critical to look at.
And those swords look beast, I'd be interested in buying one once they're up for sale.
I'll be sure to set one aside when I get them done, but it may take a while as you can see in the following update:
I'll get the bad news of out the way first. I had a few epic vacuform fails in my rush to get something done for comic-con. Suffice it say, I damaged the mold and couldn't really make anything in time for the con. With the time pressure of SDCC 2013 out of the way, I'm going back and restarting the swords, to fix a few issues that came up with the first set, I promise, they'll be done before SDCC 2014, or at the very least Wondercon.
So first, let's start with this pristine innocent mold before all the madness:
Going to bask in this for a little bit, because it's about to go downhill....
So, this shot was my last ditch effort to get the swords done. It looked so hopeful and just ready. But before then, I'd already made a few screwups. Firstly, In an attempt to save time, I figured I'd use wood filler instead of the usual spot putty to fix the blemishes on the swords:
Terrible idea. That wood filler came out extremely rough and cracked. I had to keep sanding and sanding and eventually retreated to using drywall spackle. At that point, the surface still looked a little rough, so I thought I'd coat it with a thick glaze that even everything out and seal it so the primer wouldn't rub off:
So screwup 1: It turns out that the glaze will soften and melt a little in high heat, like when you press a sheet of really hot plastic to it. Parts of the glaze ended up sticking to the plastic and pulling pieces of the mold with it:
It took some spot putty and a lot of sanding, but I got repaired the damage within a few days. But with the clock ticking and me needing to actually get other parts of the armor done, I forged ahead:
I coated it in this high heat resistant paint, hoping it would protect the sword and make sure I don't get a repeat of what happened previously
It's probable that since I waited a little less than a day, I didn't give it enough time to set, because I got an even worse result. The paint adhered to the plastic again and this time severely damaging the mold as I pulled the plastic off:
You can see the bits clinging to the plastic here:
At this point, because of the effort it's going to take to just patch the damage and there's some imperfections I not happy with from the original build, I'm going to scrap this one and start another sword. It should be the exact same dimensions because of the wonderful cutout from the laser cutter, so it shouldn't pose too much of a problem later when I have to cut out the plastic.
Ok, so now that's out of the way, I post some happier news in the next post: