Hi, good folks on the RPF!
It has been a while since I last posted, I have been more lurking than anything ,but I decided to show off something I made over the past 8 days. Not nonstop, mind you, I have to eat, drink, spend my Holy Netflix Time, teach math to my daughter , which is WAY harder than what you are about to see.
To you who don´t know me, I am a costume maker with over 27 years of experience, since 1989 (Burton Batman was my first try), and I live in Brasília, Brasil, and being here it is kind of hard to do some things that probably would help me, such as getting ready-made muscle suits and exotic materials such as Worbla, so I make do with what I can, and picked up a few tricks along the way. The first of them was muscle suit making, and I was eager to try out a new method, since I got me a Predator Mask and I felt this was the right project to try it on for size.
This friend of mine is going to a contest in a few days, and he wanted to make something nice, and since he knew I am fast, he came to me for it. He had several ideas, one of them being Venger from Dungeons and Dragons, but I zeroed in on Skeletor, for a good reason - he is VERY skinny, and I knew I could build him up to the size I wanted to , and since I have also made a She-Ra some time ago I felt fitting. Upon researching, we found the Sideshow Statue, which was news to me, I had NO clue this even existed, and so I fell in love with it instantly. Now..... HOW to do it?
I knew I had to separate the parts in manageable sectors ,but one of them still baffled me. The skull itself. Since in Brasilia, where I live, there was NOTHING even remotely acceptable I thought I could do my own, which was what I did. I found a lower mask that sort of looked like a skull-ish jaw and a devil mask, and cut the Devil mask in half, epoxied the upper half to this other mask, cut this lower in half so I had a lower jaw and an upper one, and sculpted with plumber´s epoxy the whole face, re-enginneering the whole structure, and since LONG ago I DID have a skull mask, I managed to get what I still had of it - the back of the head and attach it to the epoxy front, so the skull is hard on the front but soft latex on the back so he can get in. And with an added bonus! Since I had to cut off the Devil´s horns, I had a place where to add snaps! So the skull, seen without the hood is perfect, but has two snaps, which hold the hood in place so I KNOW it won´t EVER come off unintentionally
Some primering, painting, weathering, deciding it wasn´t good enough, repainting with a sandy color and weathering did the trick.
As for the muscle suit itself I also couldn´t get one, so I had him get Spandex pants and long sleeved shirt and off I go to cut rubber foam. The good thing is that since it was, again, not unknown to me, I just decided to step it up by adding a layer of latex as a skin. So I opened the Anatomy books, the 1991 Muscle and Fitness magazines I still have and off I went, and I think it is very fitting.
The rest was EVA in different shapes and sizes. you name it - 10 mm, 12 mm, 6 mm, 3 mm, 1mm thick, open-celled, close-celled, hard EVA, soft EVA, and me and my trusty blowtorch went to town , specially in the Ram´s skull in the Havoc Staff. That one was made without seams, one piece, heated and molded, and then I added the horns and ball (which is still missing the lighting system, but I will update this thread, swear it)
Today I finished it, and in the LAST minute I ran out of blue paint, so his feet are not blue, but I managed to squeeze just enough for his hands, and about halfway through the photoshoot I noticed that his jaw was sort of crooked, but it gave him a sort of sneer that I like.
So, should you wish to chat, discuss, boo, hiss, berate or anything, I give you - SKELETOR!
It has been a while since I last posted, I have been more lurking than anything ,but I decided to show off something I made over the past 8 days. Not nonstop, mind you, I have to eat, drink, spend my Holy Netflix Time, teach math to my daughter , which is WAY harder than what you are about to see.
To you who don´t know me, I am a costume maker with over 27 years of experience, since 1989 (Burton Batman was my first try), and I live in Brasília, Brasil, and being here it is kind of hard to do some things that probably would help me, such as getting ready-made muscle suits and exotic materials such as Worbla, so I make do with what I can, and picked up a few tricks along the way. The first of them was muscle suit making, and I was eager to try out a new method, since I got me a Predator Mask and I felt this was the right project to try it on for size.
This friend of mine is going to a contest in a few days, and he wanted to make something nice, and since he knew I am fast, he came to me for it. He had several ideas, one of them being Venger from Dungeons and Dragons, but I zeroed in on Skeletor, for a good reason - he is VERY skinny, and I knew I could build him up to the size I wanted to , and since I have also made a She-Ra some time ago I felt fitting. Upon researching, we found the Sideshow Statue, which was news to me, I had NO clue this even existed, and so I fell in love with it instantly. Now..... HOW to do it?
I knew I had to separate the parts in manageable sectors ,but one of them still baffled me. The skull itself. Since in Brasilia, where I live, there was NOTHING even remotely acceptable I thought I could do my own, which was what I did. I found a lower mask that sort of looked like a skull-ish jaw and a devil mask, and cut the Devil mask in half, epoxied the upper half to this other mask, cut this lower in half so I had a lower jaw and an upper one, and sculpted with plumber´s epoxy the whole face, re-enginneering the whole structure, and since LONG ago I DID have a skull mask, I managed to get what I still had of it - the back of the head and attach it to the epoxy front, so the skull is hard on the front but soft latex on the back so he can get in. And with an added bonus! Since I had to cut off the Devil´s horns, I had a place where to add snaps! So the skull, seen without the hood is perfect, but has two snaps, which hold the hood in place so I KNOW it won´t EVER come off unintentionally
Some primering, painting, weathering, deciding it wasn´t good enough, repainting with a sandy color and weathering did the trick.As for the muscle suit itself I also couldn´t get one, so I had him get Spandex pants and long sleeved shirt and off I go to cut rubber foam. The good thing is that since it was, again, not unknown to me, I just decided to step it up by adding a layer of latex as a skin. So I opened the Anatomy books, the 1991 Muscle and Fitness magazines I still have and off I went, and I think it is very fitting.
The rest was EVA in different shapes and sizes. you name it - 10 mm, 12 mm, 6 mm, 3 mm, 1mm thick, open-celled, close-celled, hard EVA, soft EVA, and me and my trusty blowtorch went to town , specially in the Ram´s skull in the Havoc Staff. That one was made without seams, one piece, heated and molded, and then I added the horns and ball (which is still missing the lighting system, but I will update this thread, swear it)
Today I finished it, and in the LAST minute I ran out of blue paint, so his feet are not blue, but I managed to squeeze just enough for his hands, and about halfway through the photoshoot I noticed that his jaw was sort of crooked, but it gave him a sort of sneer that I like.
So, should you wish to chat, discuss, boo, hiss, berate or anything, I give you - SKELETOR!
