I figure I will post a bit of my progress and see if there's any interest. I've lurked around here for quite some time and rarely contributed much so I guess it's about time. Sorry to all the folks that aren't interested in Guardians stuff though. You must be having a terrible time on the boards lately.
I saw the movie with my girlfriend the Saturday of opening weekend around noon. We're both pretty hardcore about costuming, at least around halloween, and we thought we had our costumes decided upon. As soon as we left the theater my girlfriend suggested we skip our dinner plans and go home and start obsessing about the movie and scheming up some Quill and Gamora costumes. I don't know if I thought it was a novel idea or not but I never really thought the Star Lord costumes would take off like they have. It's awesome watching all these builds and following all the analysis. So I thought maybe I should throw in my contribution.
That afternoon I came home and started on a helmet. I was very surprised to see all the stuff already out there, and I gotta thank Davy and Helegak for the hard work making it a bit easier to get a Star Lord going. I was seeing some things a little differently than any of the existing helmets, so I thought I'd go about making one myself.
I don't have much in the way of 3D skills in the virtual realm. My process is more like keep screwing it up in the real world until I run out of ways to do it wrong. Wanting results immediately I tried to "whip up" Helegak's pep model. It would be my first pepakura experience. Weeks later I would read advice not to start with a helmet. Oops. I am not a patient man, and I wound up with a twisted piece of card stock and super glue, and got about half way through the pieces.
Here's me pulling a cool guy with what I wound up with.
Yeah.
I got about half way through and starting seeing some planes a little differently from the model, and for some reason I thought it'd be a good idea to wrap the thing in papier mache using some rags in a box and get started reshaping. Next step was to just glass the whole mess, spray in some expanding foam, slap a bunch of bondo on and start carving. That's a little more natural to my way of thinking, but it's still taken me WEEKS to get to the point where I even have anything to show. My clay and sculpting stuff is still in storage (or else lost to those little wormholes that seem to pop up when I don't look at something often enough) so bondo was my only hope.
Anyway, enough words, more pics. I'll spare us all the rest of the embarrassing photos of spiky piles of bondo and show you where I am now.
Here is the helmet sort of mocked up with the parts I'm working on.
I had to leave the sweet foam Star Lord 'do in there to keep it looking rad all the time. Even looking at these pics I'm drawing all over it with little changes to make. The chin will be less prominent and tucked underneath more, and the eyes are just placeholders I mocked up. Just built the ear cups and mounted them today.
I'm really hoping to be able to mold it up next week, so I have a bit of work ahead of me. But it's getting there and actually kind of almost sort of looks a little like the images I've been fixated on lately.
Besides the helmet I've got a few other things that have kept me from being otherwise productive. Hidden in my messy space here is a couple of them (there are more, believe me).
Of course, I had to start working on some things for my girlfriend's costume.
The detachable knife warped a bit somewhere in the glass/bondo stages, so that will be cut at the......hilt...thing and repositioned to keep the two handles snug. It'll be cast in resin, but I'm not sure if I should cast the small blade or use an MDF one. Ideas? She's not going to need the longer one as the sheath is for this version, but I'll probably make it for her next anyway, just in case.
Then there's this guy. The map projector. For some reason I've wanted this since the first time I saw the movie. Of all the props, this one stood out to me, even more than the orb. Not sure why. This has probably gone through the most iterations. I started on it after seeing it once. Restarted after seeing the movie again. Then restarted after Marvel released the prop pic. Then when that turned out ugly I restarted again. I'm pretty happy with this one though.
Looking forward to walking into the party with this guy flashing blue all over the place. Aaaargh, why am I telling you all?!? Now someone's gonna beat me to it. Oh well too late now. I'll try to cast this up hollow so I can throw some electronics in there. It'll be a bitch to slush cast though. Also included is my slow, ugly progress on the boosters. I only want to have to sculpt one of these things and cast up the rest. Probably have the redo the spoked section.
And as for the jacket. I'm not super happy with the one that's widely available, although everyone is making it look pretty good. Never thought I'd think there was TOO much leather on a leather jacket. In the meantime Im taking a thrifted jacket I've had for years and painting it red with vinyl paint. Then probably washes etc etc. It's the one above, back before I had painted much. It's a little Rocketeer-meets-Michael Jackson but it'll do and I don't mind destroying it. In the meantime it looks like maybe something Quill would have had before he became the mildly more successful space brigand we met on Morag.
Okay that's a whole lot of words. I'll leave it there. I have other things in various states of ugliness that I can expound on later. I hope this was worth the time reading, let alone writing. Back to the bondo dust cloud with me!
I saw the movie with my girlfriend the Saturday of opening weekend around noon. We're both pretty hardcore about costuming, at least around halloween, and we thought we had our costumes decided upon. As soon as we left the theater my girlfriend suggested we skip our dinner plans and go home and start obsessing about the movie and scheming up some Quill and Gamora costumes. I don't know if I thought it was a novel idea or not but I never really thought the Star Lord costumes would take off like they have. It's awesome watching all these builds and following all the analysis. So I thought maybe I should throw in my contribution.
That afternoon I came home and started on a helmet. I was very surprised to see all the stuff already out there, and I gotta thank Davy and Helegak for the hard work making it a bit easier to get a Star Lord going. I was seeing some things a little differently than any of the existing helmets, so I thought I'd go about making one myself.
I don't have much in the way of 3D skills in the virtual realm. My process is more like keep screwing it up in the real world until I run out of ways to do it wrong. Wanting results immediately I tried to "whip up" Helegak's pep model. It would be my first pepakura experience. Weeks later I would read advice not to start with a helmet. Oops. I am not a patient man, and I wound up with a twisted piece of card stock and super glue, and got about half way through the pieces.
Here's me pulling a cool guy with what I wound up with.
Yeah.
I got about half way through and starting seeing some planes a little differently from the model, and for some reason I thought it'd be a good idea to wrap the thing in papier mache using some rags in a box and get started reshaping. Next step was to just glass the whole mess, spray in some expanding foam, slap a bunch of bondo on and start carving. That's a little more natural to my way of thinking, but it's still taken me WEEKS to get to the point where I even have anything to show. My clay and sculpting stuff is still in storage (or else lost to those little wormholes that seem to pop up when I don't look at something often enough) so bondo was my only hope.
Anyway, enough words, more pics. I'll spare us all the rest of the embarrassing photos of spiky piles of bondo and show you where I am now.
Here is the helmet sort of mocked up with the parts I'm working on.
I had to leave the sweet foam Star Lord 'do in there to keep it looking rad all the time. Even looking at these pics I'm drawing all over it with little changes to make. The chin will be less prominent and tucked underneath more, and the eyes are just placeholders I mocked up. Just built the ear cups and mounted them today.
I'm really hoping to be able to mold it up next week, so I have a bit of work ahead of me. But it's getting there and actually kind of almost sort of looks a little like the images I've been fixated on lately.
Besides the helmet I've got a few other things that have kept me from being otherwise productive. Hidden in my messy space here is a couple of them (there are more, believe me).
Of course, I had to start working on some things for my girlfriend's costume.
The detachable knife warped a bit somewhere in the glass/bondo stages, so that will be cut at the......hilt...thing and repositioned to keep the two handles snug. It'll be cast in resin, but I'm not sure if I should cast the small blade or use an MDF one. Ideas? She's not going to need the longer one as the sheath is for this version, but I'll probably make it for her next anyway, just in case.
Then there's this guy. The map projector. For some reason I've wanted this since the first time I saw the movie. Of all the props, this one stood out to me, even more than the orb. Not sure why. This has probably gone through the most iterations. I started on it after seeing it once. Restarted after seeing the movie again. Then restarted after Marvel released the prop pic. Then when that turned out ugly I restarted again. I'm pretty happy with this one though.
Looking forward to walking into the party with this guy flashing blue all over the place. Aaaargh, why am I telling you all?!? Now someone's gonna beat me to it. Oh well too late now. I'll try to cast this up hollow so I can throw some electronics in there. It'll be a bitch to slush cast though. Also included is my slow, ugly progress on the boosters. I only want to have to sculpt one of these things and cast up the rest. Probably have the redo the spoked section.
And as for the jacket. I'm not super happy with the one that's widely available, although everyone is making it look pretty good. Never thought I'd think there was TOO much leather on a leather jacket. In the meantime Im taking a thrifted jacket I've had for years and painting it red with vinyl paint. Then probably washes etc etc. It's the one above, back before I had painted much. It's a little Rocketeer-meets-Michael Jackson but it'll do and I don't mind destroying it. In the meantime it looks like maybe something Quill would have had before he became the mildly more successful space brigand we met on Morag.
Okay that's a whole lot of words. I'll leave it there. I have other things in various states of ugliness that I can expound on later. I hope this was worth the time reading, let alone writing. Back to the bondo dust cloud with me!
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