3D manouver gear

Revisiting the cosplay scene with an awesome group of friends. I guess I would still cosplay if it was only the props. On this project I didn't have to touch the sewing machine.

Making seven sets of manouver gear was a big challenge for me. It took two months of planning, drawing, building and painting. Could not have done it without the groups support. All of the members put so much effort on both the props and the costumes.

Here are the results! Hope you enjoy!

Gonthrion

Sorry about the silence! I've been waiting for a good opportunity to share a part of a project that took most of my time last spring. I was part of a props team in sci-fi short movie Gonthrion. We made couple of pretty cool armors and weapons. The movie is currently in post production. I'll be sure to post something here when we get the final result. More information from http://www.gonthrionmovie.com/

Coral sketch

Coral chair making of

I finally got the inspiration to continue my masking tape experiments thanks to a material course we had in school. I also had a broken chair in my living room waiting for me to fix it so I thought this was the perfect chance to make it into a whole new object. The chair and the costume are something I wish to get properly photographed in the near future but in the mean time I'll present you the making of pictures.

This is the original chair.

And this is what I brougth to our final exhibition.

I think I spent about 20 hours with this chair project and the coral vest. It took a lot less time than I thought it would. Most of the time I was rolling and painting tape. It was actually quite fun and if I had more time I'd make more of it. Here are some pictures of the process.

First I sanded the whole thing and gave it a rough look. I also shred the fabric a bit around the edges of the seat. After sanding I gave it a very light wash of gray paint and varnish. Then glued a shreaded net to make a base for the tape corals.

Dremel is my new favorite tool. I used a set of small grinding tools to carve holes and cuts on the chair. Added some dark patina and and other layer of grey paint. Gave it a light sanding after that.

Then I spent couple of days just rolling the tape. I think I used at least two rolls for these. So that's about 100 m of tape. Should have had even more variation with the sizes. Making the smallest pieces took a lot of time but the bigger rolls don't really look that good in close up.

Painting these things proved to be a challenge. I didn't have access to the perfect shade of spray so I had to sink all of the pieces into paint in order to get the color inside the tubes. After a day of  drying I sprayed a thin coat of white to make highlights.

Finally I glued the stuff on the chair. Should have had more of it and in much smaller scale to get the look I really wanted. But as we all know there are only 24 hours in a day.

Stay tuned for the photoshoot!

Material testing

Recognize these materials?

Aztec

 

 

        

Headdress and necklace by me, photos by Eveliina Lakso.

Turban

This is an older piece, from 2008 if I remember correctly. Photographs (c) Maija Karppinen.

 

Monster hands (or how i learned to relax and love latex)

I though I'd post some progress photos for once. I have to apologize the low quality of these pictures. I happen to work in a very small and very poorly lit apartment, mostly at night in a hurry and suffering from constant sleep deprivation. Well at least with this particular project. So try not to mind the mess and blur and what not.

Here's a life span of a pair of monster hands or gloves that I made for a short movie. These gave me a lot of headache and I'm not really sure if I'm happy with them. I totally ran out of time with these mostly because I was so occupied with the monsters mask at the same time. And ofcourse the mask was the absolute priority number one on my to-do list so when I finally got to the gloves it was two days before we were going to shoot. And I had to make two pairs of gloves.

I built the model with modeling paste on top of a large leather glove. I took some reference from a monster glove I'd done earlier.

Took a mold with silicone building it up layer by layer. Silicone thickener would've been a great help here.

Yeah. Looks delicious. 

I only cast the top of each hand because I didn't have time to make two part molds. At this point I was also slowly running out of silicone so I was about to panic. I made mother molds out of plaster and poured in the pigmented fx silicone. 

 

 I took the silicone cover of the molds and mounted them on a pair of gloves. Unfortunately the silicone had not entirely cured for some reason. Now was the time to really panic. I cleaned these up with alcohol and soap but they still kept on pushing silicone oil to the surfice. I think I might have measured the stuff wrong somehow. I was really really tired.

These really felt disgusting but since they were firm enough I had no choice but to powder them and ignore sticky surfice. After all they weren't exactly making a mess or anything, they just felt diffenrent than usual.

With the second pair I had to change to stockings and latex. That worked a lot better. I hand sewed the stocking coverings to the gloves and put a few layers of latex and paint on them.

Then I used the mold to cast some texture.

I also cast some nails out of polyurethane plastic. 

I cut holes for the nails and pushed them through. Glued them to place with contact glue and finished the edge with latex. 

Here's the final product, with textures put on and blended with latex and paint. Not really realistic, but close enough for our purposes. Next time I'm doing something like this I'll start much earlier and use time on the detail.

Crouching Tiger, Twisted Dragon

Patriot

 

Identity crisis