Masquerade Mask - First Time Pep! (PIC HEAVY)

Hey everyone! I've started another thread about my Sub-Zero build for this Halloween, but coming up before that (the end of this month, 9/28-30) I'm attending a convention in New Orleans where there will be a Masquerade Ball.

So, I decided that this would be a great time to do my first attempt at Pepakura!

First things first, credit where credit's due and all, I owe Kickpuncher the credit for the inspiration and basis of my 3D Model.
I found his thread here: http://www.therpf.com/f24/borgia-renaissance-mask-acii-trailer-154037/

That mask was almost exactly what I wanted, but not quite, so I talked with him a bit and found out that his files were corrupted and such, so no-go on getting the files and modifying them. I decided to take it upon myself to create this mask (almost) from scratch, start to finish.

Thus, my journey:

Step 1 - Downloaded Blender 3D

Step 2 - Studied up on the "Blender Noob-to-Pro tutorial" found here: Blender 3D: Noob to Pro - Wikibooks, open books for an open world

Step 3 - Used the pictures Kickpuncher uploaded to create my model. I heavily modified the nose section, moved and reshaped the eyes a bit and elongated the side-cheek-spike things (lol?)
First Draft:


Step 4 - Bought Pepakura Designer 3!

Step 5 - Looked up some tutorials on it...

Step 6 - Imported my awesome 3D model for unfolding...


Step 7 - Figure "Eh, close enough!" and print it out. Time to get to cutting!
I had some help from my friend Kershaw (he shows up in a later picture) for cutting this stuff out. I was too lazy to go to the store and buy an XACTO knife. Luckily, Kershaw is a pretty sharp guy.
The glue I used was KrazyGlue. It had some sticky moments but it worked very fast and very well in most cases, I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone suggest using this.

Step 8 - Fold/Glue it all together
Halfway done (+ Crazy eyes):


Done!


Step 9 - Become very dissatisfied with the horribly sloppy result...




Step 10 - Revisit the 3D Model
Now that I know how Pepakura imports my model, and I understand a little more about Blender and how the 3D model directly impacts how insanely hard or not too bad the gluing process is, I decided to fix it!

Oh yeah, much simpler, and I made the nose piece larger to fit my freakishly large nose:


Step 11 - Let's pep this guy, and with my newfound unfolding experience, unfold it a little better:

(Yay down to 1 page, and no more weird two-half nonsense!)


Step 12 - Print/Cut this guy out too
My buddy Kershaw was ready to help out with this one too:


He did an awesome job:


Step 12 - Glue it all together! Only took 2.5 hours
...And it looks MUCH cleaner now too.







Stylin'

WELP! That's my first adventure into Pepakura! I know I jumped in a little deeper than most people go on their first foray, since I modeled it, unfolded it, and put it all together myself. I've still got to seal it, resin it, sand it, paint it, and finish it, but I wanted to share this for everyone and to know what you guys think of my first step into the wonderful world of papercraft!

I'm in the same boat as you and seeing how quickly and well you adapted and pulled it off is great! Thanks for starting this project. Can't wait to see how it turns out when all finished.

KidHaru said:

I'm in the same boat as you and seeing how quickly and well you adapted and pulled it off is great! Thanks for starting this project. Can't wait to see how it turns out when all finished.

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Thanks for the encouragement! It really only took me about a week to get to where I'm at now. That Blender Noob to Pro tutorial gives you pretty much everything you need to model a Pep-able object by halfway through Unit 2.

Best way to model any object in 3D is to have three perspectives of it: directly in front, directly above, and directly to the side (right side usually). With this you can pretty much model anything by "tracing" the points with vertices in Blender. After doing this make whatever modifications you have to make until it looks right.

Oh, some further steps I've taken!

Step 13 - Bought a 25-pack of disposable brushes and ordered some Smooth-On 321.

I would've done the 321/320 combination for the outside/inside respectively, but that stuff isn't cheap! Going to try just coating with 321 on both sides, should turn out OK for just a one-time wear and then (probably) storage for memory's sake.

Now we wait until the Smooth-On comes in...

Cool, I was actually going to ask you about how far into the book did you get before you really got into it's modeling.

I've been reading it from the beginning and needless to say, the early portions about basic computer use was pretty draining. It was all stuff I already knew but I didn't want to skip out of fear of missing important details haha. I finally just got to the perspective parts but am too drained to read on tonight. Any portions of the write up that really helped you understand the program and that'd like to emphasize?

For my first build, I intend to make a custom tokusatsu (i.e power rangers/kamen rider) helmet. So my works cut out for me haha.

KidHaru said:

Cool, I was actually going to ask you about how far into the book did you get before you really got into it's modeling.

I've been reading it from the beginning and needless to say, the early portions about basic computer use was pretty draining. It was all stuff I already knew but I didn't want to skip out of fear of missing important details haha. I finally just got to the perspective parts but am too drained to read on tonight. Any portions of the write up that really helped you understand the program and that'd like to emphasize?

For my first build, I intend to make a custom tokusatsu (i.e power rangers/kamen rider) helmet. So my works cut out for me haha.

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Wow yeah, good luck on your first build man!

I'd say that from the beginning of Unit 2 (where it talks about making your first model) to about halfway through (when it starts talking about materials and shaders and all of that stuff) is the most useful part for making a Pep 3D Model, but I wouldn't skip past Unit 1, it teaches you a lot of time-saving hotkeys and tricks as well as how to navigate the interface effectively, things that otherwise would've probably been overlooked.

EDIT: I didn't do anything past where you make a beach ball. I'd say that once you finish making the "more detailed" house, you've probably got all the skills and information you need to create a 3D Mesh for Pepping.

Well guys I finished it and had a blast at the Masquerade Ball last weekend, but since I didn't update this thread along the way I'll go ahead and mass-dump updates to finish

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So, the next part of this mask build was to seal it with the Smooth-Cast.

I'm prepared!

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Easy enough, though all I had to mix it up in was a Styrofoam cup - not the best idea as apparently this stuff slowly dissolves Styrofoam (luckily though, it dissolves it slowly enough for the Smooth-Cast to set, so.. it actually just kinda "replaces" the foam with plastic, lol)

Mixed it up with the back end of that orange-handled sponge brush, used WAY too much, and ended up with a cool plastic puck in the bottom of my cup. It worked out alright, because then I could reuse that cup (as, like I said before, the Styrofoam had been replaced by plastic!)

I applied the mix with a coarse-bristle brush from the $5 Wal-Mart pack of brushes.

I put 3 coats on the back...

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And 3 on the front...

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It never really got very rigid, but enough so that it was held together pretty well. Not sure if I needed more coats or if I just didn't mix my Smooth-Cast properly, either way it worked I suppose.

Next up was bondo... Ohhh bondo..

NAILED it!

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Yeah... my first attempt with the bondo was... meh, lol. It didn't go on very smoothly and came out pretty bad because I put way too much hardener in it. My second attempt with the bondo turned out better, but was still pretty lackluster:

Starting to get the hang of it???

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Realized that bondo work was a lot harder than it seemed, so I looked up some more tutorials and learned pretty much nothing, and just figured I'd keep at it until I got it right.

Frustrated with using playing cards to spread the bondo, I tried many other tools and finally discovered the tool that dominated all tools for spreading bondo over a somewhat complex and small surface...

Phalanges! They come in sets of 10, and most people have them readily.. ahem.. "on hand" (hah). I may be proposing something horribly unsafe and unrecommended here, but spreading the bondo on those difficult spots and low areas of the mask with my fingers worked better than any tool I had used by FAR. Wasn't too hard to get the stuff off of my hands later either, since it peels off pretty easily once it semi-hardens into the rubbery stage.

Anyway, I covered the whole thing with bondo and then sanded it with an 80-grit sanding sponge which I do not recommend at all. The sanding sponge worked wonders for the first 30 minutes of use or so, then it royally sucked forever afterward. Sand PAPER is the way to go, even 100-grit sandpaper worked far better than the sponge.

Here's a couple shots of it after I sanded it down and hit it with some primer to reveal the problem areas better:

Still needs a lot of work here...

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So, more bondo, this time applied with simple ole fingers to those low spots and smoothed out a bit. After I filled it all in I sanded it down again:

Looking significantly better!

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It still had some low spots after that, but I was tired of working on it and time was getting short! So, I decided to go ahead and paint it.

You can see the low spots with the silver paint a lot better than with the primer. I had already started taping off the areas I wanted to keep silver in these shots.

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Next up is to paint the rest of the mask royal blue to match my wife's dress and my suit:

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And once I removed the paint the silver was revealed! (There were a couple spots where the blue got through, but it wasn't enough to ruin it)

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The finishing touches were put on the night of the Masquerade Ball actually - some silver dots that we bought from Hobby Lobby in town. Those little silver dots completely transformed that somewhat plain mask into a real finished product.

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The final piece was to attach a way to wear it, so I just super-glued an elastic strap to both sides of it. It worked pretty well all night, eventually it pulled off, but it was just because I made the elastic a little bit too tight, so it was easy to fix quickly.

I was super impressed with myself, even though it wasn't very much I was happy with my first attempt at pepakura/bondo work, especially since I made it from conceptualization all the way to finish

And of course, gotta have some shots of me wearing it!

That's my wife there with me, lookin' good!

Stylin'!

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Thanks everyone who bothered to follow/read this post, it means a lot! I got a lot of people asking about my mask at the Ball, and a lot of compliments so it was all worth it to me

Finished product looks great! You're right, the silver balls really make the mask. Your dive into the deep end of modeling/pep/bondo is inspiring, and certainly paid off!

cool story man, nice to see a different pep project