Re: "It's About Time!" Starcraft II Terran Marine CMC Armor WIP *PIC HEAVY*
HEYO! Sorry for the long time between updates! Life's been busy and stressful but what else is new?! Well, I'll tell you. I've done more work on the "hood" back behind the head on the torso, adding the pocket for tubes etc. and the (I think) emergency ejector handle? Not sure exactly but anyway got it sanded down and reattached. I finally mounted the exhaust vents PERMANENTLY (scary thing) and did some more work on the front chest piece. The pic below is just a mock-up placement to see where I need to trim to get it to fit.
At long last, my acrylic domes finally arrived! These are seriously WAY higher quality than I could have expected! They took a little more than a month to arrive but I'd say the timing was pretty good considering all the other things I've had to work on. I got the middle dome cut to shape and stuck in onto the hinges for clearance and operation check. SUCCESS! Could not be happier with the result! Smooth rotation, great mounting contact, folds completely out of the way, YAY! Ok calming down now.. This one is the one the marines use as a blast shield no protect the guy from things like nukes and whatnot. No big deal.
And yes, I know it looks like a huge space between the clear visor and the outer helmet, but I assure you I will address this later on with trimmings and whatnot. Yes, that was planned. Next, I worked on cutting out the inner visor and trying my best to dye it the correct color. Only problem is, this crazy plastic is SO perfect, it has no pores for dye to fill in, no surface imperfections to penetrate, and it's acrylic so already doesn't want to take any color. I tried the RIT dye method of 8 packs of dye in boiling water for close to 8 hours and all I got was the slightest yellow hue around the edges where I trimmed the ring off the bottom. Useless.
So in addition to needing tips on before-mentioned issues, now I have another conumndrum of not knowing how in the blazes I'm going to color this thing. Feel free to jump in with ANY suggestions on coloring this thing. Yes, I've seen the tutorial on the 415th where he paints the outside of the HALO visor, but I'd really like to color the thing for real because I've never had good luck with paint on plastic surfaces. (I'm looking at you, clear windows on every model car I've ever tried to tint. Grr) If I can't figure it out, I guess painting will have to do. I have a couple scrap pieces of the stuff so I'll try some more tests this week.
Ok enough ranting and pleading, back to the progress. I free-handed the trim for the front of the torso around the power core tubes. These took a TON of trial and error, with very much more error than success. Sencond one slightly easier 'cuz at least I had something to go off of. Get your little boy giggles out of the way now, I know what It's beginning to look like. Trust me, by the time the light pieces go in it'll look much better. I spent some time trimming the inside edges to make room for the chest piece which I finally got mounted in the right place. Next, I decided to try my hand at wrapping the blast shield with carbon fiber vinyl. This is the higher-quality 3M stuff with the full texture on it so in the light it looks fairly close to the real thing! FYI, when working with vinyl and trying to wrap a crazy shape like a sphere, it either takes a lot of hands or a lot of tools. Two people, not enough. I cut some lengths of PVC and stuck those on to each edge of the square I cut, heated the entire thing with my heat gun and pushed the dome up thru the middle, trying to stretch the thing as evenly as possible. I won't mention how easily you can melt a hole thru the stuff if you're not careful. Not going to do it. I swear I didn't. Ok I did, but only once and you'll never know where! Anyway, I thought it turned out pretty good and it catches the light really well! But with the blast shield down I can't see a thing, so how am I supposed to fight?? HA! ok moving on....
I'm still taking votes for the end color of this whole thing, so far voting scores as follows:
Black: 0
Blue: 0
Red: 0
Camo: 0
Something else: 0
Looks like we're neck and neck! Let the race continue and cast your votes! More to come, thanks for watching and the great tips!
Cheerio!