EhlJay
New Member
After attending a small hometown film fest/convention last year in November, my interest in actually getting out and filming something has grown.
But if you're going to film something, you need a genre. Seeing as I'm a normal guy, and I love action movies, that one was a bit of a no-brainer.
But finding an original looking costume for a protagonist is somewhat challenging. So throwing the original idea out the window, I went with an Army of Two mask to start out my journey.
With so many excellent costumes flooding the forums these days, sharing my own work is a bit humbling, but we all have to start somewhere!
So without further ado, I give you the start of the protagonist, simply known as The Locksmith.
___
After completely forgetting to take pictures of the pepakura stage (though we've all done it, so there's no point really), the resin stage made it's appearance.
Taking Eric from Impact Prop's suggestion, I ordered a tester kit of Smoothcast 300 to try on this project, figuring that it wasn't a big deal if it came out wonky.
Unfortunately, the humidity of the tropics really screws with Smoothcast 300, and I got a mask that was covered with what appeared to be marshmellow cream.
Since just painting over the Smoothcast wasn't going to work, I decided to just coat the whole thing with Bondo and try that route.
Much sanding and filling and sanding and filling and sanding later, I had a decently smooth mask to prime.
Which in turn showed a bunch more spots I needed to work on, so the sanding and spot filling started over, much to my distress.
Sanding bites. Big time.
Three or four days later, I was happy with how the smoothness was looking, so I got to work on what the paint coat would look like.
With my lack of funds for this project already spent on the Smoothcast test kit, I had to run with the colors I used for my Halo Helmet.
In a completely spacey moment, I forgot to add the silver coat and toothpaste for weathering, so I struck out on flaky paint weathering.
Once the overly shiny red coat had dried, I gave it a strip of Masking tape, and then hit it with a coat of black.
Seeing as it was once again, way too shiny, I weathered it using a rag and silver paint to make the spots I wanted damaged pop.
I was pretty happy with the result, but it still lacked something.
So of course, I added glowing eyes. I used Stealth's great Iron Man eye tutorial to achieve the look I wanted. After installing the LED's, I noticed that the interior of the mask (which was white) really showed when I was wearing it and somebody looked from behind me. So back to the paint, and I gave it a hasty coat on the interior of the mask. I didn't want to paint over the already installed LED's, hence the blaring white patch in the middle of the mask.
Once that coat dried, I added a couple pieces of rudimentary padding, so I wouldn't get raw when wearing the mask, and then I took some pictures!
Visibility is somewhat poor, but not so much that I'll be bumping into things.
Lit eyes.
____________
Hopefully I wasn't too vague in my write-up, and that it wasn't too dull!
Next up on the list is getting proper straps for this thing, then we move onto the vest.
Thanks for reading!
But if you're going to film something, you need a genre. Seeing as I'm a normal guy, and I love action movies, that one was a bit of a no-brainer.
But finding an original looking costume for a protagonist is somewhat challenging. So throwing the original idea out the window, I went with an Army of Two mask to start out my journey.
With so many excellent costumes flooding the forums these days, sharing my own work is a bit humbling, but we all have to start somewhere!
So without further ado, I give you the start of the protagonist, simply known as The Locksmith.
___
After completely forgetting to take pictures of the pepakura stage (though we've all done it, so there's no point really), the resin stage made it's appearance.
Taking Eric from Impact Prop's suggestion, I ordered a tester kit of Smoothcast 300 to try on this project, figuring that it wasn't a big deal if it came out wonky.
Unfortunately, the humidity of the tropics really screws with Smoothcast 300, and I got a mask that was covered with what appeared to be marshmellow cream.
Since just painting over the Smoothcast wasn't going to work, I decided to just coat the whole thing with Bondo and try that route.
Much sanding and filling and sanding and filling and sanding later, I had a decently smooth mask to prime.
Which in turn showed a bunch more spots I needed to work on, so the sanding and spot filling started over, much to my distress.
Sanding bites. Big time.
Three or four days later, I was happy with how the smoothness was looking, so I got to work on what the paint coat would look like.
With my lack of funds for this project already spent on the Smoothcast test kit, I had to run with the colors I used for my Halo Helmet.
In a completely spacey moment, I forgot to add the silver coat and toothpaste for weathering, so I struck out on flaky paint weathering.
Once the overly shiny red coat had dried, I gave it a strip of Masking tape, and then hit it with a coat of black.
Seeing as it was once again, way too shiny, I weathered it using a rag and silver paint to make the spots I wanted damaged pop.
I was pretty happy with the result, but it still lacked something.
So of course, I added glowing eyes. I used Stealth's great Iron Man eye tutorial to achieve the look I wanted. After installing the LED's, I noticed that the interior of the mask (which was white) really showed when I was wearing it and somebody looked from behind me. So back to the paint, and I gave it a hasty coat on the interior of the mask. I didn't want to paint over the already installed LED's, hence the blaring white patch in the middle of the mask.
Once that coat dried, I added a couple pieces of rudimentary padding, so I wouldn't get raw when wearing the mask, and then I took some pictures!
Visibility is somewhat poor, but not so much that I'll be bumping into things.
Lit eyes.
____________
Hopefully I wasn't too vague in my write-up, and that it wasn't too dull!
Next up on the list is getting proper straps for this thing, then we move onto the vest.
Thanks for reading!
