NEED help with Xena armor!

xena10ares

Hey guys, i just recently purchased the original screen used blue leather outfit that xena wore in the season 5.

however the costume is not complete, but i would however like to make the silver breastplate to display with the screen used leather dress. does anyone have any ideas on how i can make this breastplate as close to the original? i have all the pics i need of every angle...i just dont know how to make it! i can make the leather...uh bra? that the metal parts are attatched to....

THANKS!

Riceball

My recommendation would be to sculpt in clay first then cast it in resin and paint silver, then apply a black wash over it to give it a weathered look. Considering that the metal is kind of rough and not perfectly smooth it shouldn't be too hard to sculpt. You could either lay down a few largish slabs of clay and carve out the negative space or roll up pieces of clay and then lay it down in the shapes/patterns on the "bra".

xena10ares

thats what i thought, was to carve it out of clay....just didnt know what to do after that...is it hard to cast it in resin??? i have never done that!

i can deffinatly paint it and weather it correctly and i know i could sculpt it out of clay correctly....just wondering how tough it is and how expensive it is to cast it in resin....

Riceball

While I've never cast in resin myself I don't think that it would be too expensive or difficult to do, people here and on other prop sites do it all the time. The biggest obstacles to overcome will likely be keeping the air bubbles out of both the mold(s) and the casting(s) but if you read some of the tutorials over at the Smooth On site or ask for tips here that shouldn't be too big of a problem.

One thing that I forgot to mention is that since it's going to need to be open in the back so that it can be worn/displayed on a mannequin is that if you cast it in resin you'll need to do it in one of 2 ways. You'll could make a 2 piece mold with a front and a back and pour the resin in to get it open in the back but would require more mold material and make things a little more complicated than a 1 piece open face mold. Another way, which requires a little more manual labor would be to do what's called a slush cast where you slosh the resin around so that it settles all around the sides of the mold so you don't get one solid hunk of resin. Results can vary and you can get some parts being much thinner or thicker than other parts depending on how diligent you are about the sloshing.

Giving it a little more thought you could also try casting it in fiberglass or something similar. It would still probably require a mold but it should result in a much more even casting and you won't need to slosh it around since you can apply the resin with a brush.

One last option is vacuforming but this would require you to build a vacuform machine (plans are available at various sites) and you'd probably still need to mold and cast your sculpt. On the bright side vacforming would likely require less manual labor and once you've made your buck (the casting you vacform off of) you can easily make as many copies as you want without too much effort in case you wanted to make a run and sell them.

CardBoard King

You can also use plaster gauze and plastic wrap to mold the shape of your chest. its very cheap and easy let me show you.

Things to use


I did my head

Wrap the plastic warp around the area your going to cast.



Wrap the plaster around the area covered in plastic



stay still at let it harden. for me it took 15 mins. Then cut it off



Fiberglass to harden it



Then your done.

Total came up to $20


For anyone who wants to try this. DONT do you head unless you really know what your doing

Darth Mule

Oh Riceball...
You make it sound scary

Try this tutorial http://www.smooth-on.com/gallery.php...272&cPath=1241

It shows you a step by step on pretty much exactly what you want to do. Even shows how you can get a nice metallic feel to it.

You can same yourself some dough by following CK's method to procure your chest cast. The plaster bandage method is cheaper and quicker than the silicone and you don't really need to capture the level of detail that silicone will do. You just need a basic shape.

Riceball

There's also the wrap yourself in a t-shirt with duct tape, cut it off and stuff it method too although that might be more suitable for working with cloth than with clay.

izabel

i still say rubber will be best. although i heard it's expensive there.

check what we did to my she-predator

darthgordon

Hmmm... I would have said to paint it black first and then apply the silver by hand (and gloves).

xena10ares

hahaha actually....making a cast of my chest, wouldnt really work, it would come out flat, caue im a dude...hahahahaha

but it did enjoy seeing the pictures of your face totally covered in plastic wrap...hahahaha

CardBoard King

LoL. Man boobs would of really came in handy at this point lol

xena10ares

yes they would, but i dont have them! hahahaha

does anyone know of a mold maker where you carve the armor out of clay and then brush on this stuff and when it hardens you pull it of and it is a mold???? i saw it in a craft store and dont know if it is any good?

Guri

Congrats on the acquisition!

If it's just going to go on display and you don't want to do any casting, paperclay is pretty easy to work with, and not too hard on the budget. It also paints up metallic pretty well.

For the template, I don't know why you would need to do anything more than buy a black bra the size you need and work directly on that. Many styles come pretty stiff already and you could stiffen it more with a couple coatings of decoupage or mod podge.