My Early Disasters pt 2 - A Biker Scout Helmet - How hard can it be?

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This isn't part of the helmet build, but it's so on-brand for me that I had to share it. I worked really hard over lunchtime today to model a size-accurate rank badge for Krennic. I made it, then when I got home I ran it through the slicer and loaded it into the 3d printer. Here's what I got:

Doesn't look too bad, right?
Here's a pencil for scale.

Anyone know a plastic gnome who needs a plastic chocolate bar?

 

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The second attempt took waaaay lonmger to print, but, aside from one edge lifting a little during the process, it's come out much better:

Here's the pencil again, just to prove it:

 

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Back to the helmet! With the new dome attached, and a little bit o' bondo to cover the gap, it looks pretty good. Ref pic for comparison:

I was worried about the front view, since it seemed tall and thin, but then I stretched it sideways a little, and it improved. I've wedged a plank in to hold it, and then I'll bondo the whole thing. Hopefully by the time the bondo goes off, the foam will have permanently set. I may heat gun the inside a bit too.

Stupid work (which is very socially helpful and responsible, yeah, yeah) is taking up lots of time, and then people want feeding and stuff. Maybe this mythical "weekend" thing will come along with some time for me to bondo again?

 

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More bondo. I've been scouring the internet for anyone building the armour to go along with this, since it's pretty much standard RC armour with a different paint job. So far I've only found a video of a guy assembling the vac-formed stuff he'd bought. I've started a breastplate, but without the reference pictures I carefully assembled. Old habits...

 

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Oh yeah...

 

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I'm still grinding on, at the tedious sand, sand, sand, repodge, sand stage. While I'm noodling about the armour build, I keep thinking I need to adjust that front end one more time. It looks fine on the workbench, but when I put it on, it's all wrong again. But how hard is it to make changes once I've got the bondo on?

 

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No pics for this bit.
So far I've made a pauldron (really an epalette), a bicep piece (really, I need to learn more about armour terms) and the base for a chestplate. Last night I wanted to start on the shin piece (I'm figuring to make one of each thing, then if they work, I copy them for the other side). But I couldn't make head or tail of the ref pics, so I wandered off to my computer to think about 3d printing one. After all, I bought the damn printer, why not use it? Turns out, because I don't know enough to slice the model to fit on the 14x14x14 print area I have. No shortcuts today.

 

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Fell asleep last night going over and over how I might fix the front of the helmet. Since i had today off work, I determined that I would trim off the tubes and a little of the box work, then move the tubes back, shortening the look of the thing. But then I got down to the work shop and realised the angle of that lower slope (the bit below the teeth) was too shallow, and that's why the whole thing looks too far forward. So, a little off the front, sir?

This is the part where I really worried I had ruined something that was pretty adequate ("adequate" being a high bar for my builds....). Still, game on, so saw off the extra tubage, trim the edges of the lower piece so I can glue it back on at a better angle. Ignore the actinic blue flash and popping noise that means I have to buy a new glue gun (and reset the breakers!). Tell you what, I'll hold this in place with some painter's tape while I go and gibber in the corner for a bit.

The more I look at it, the more I think that profile is closer to the right one. Look:

Eh, who can tell? Before I go nuts with the bondo again, I'm going to use papier mache (with tissue paper) to help solidify those tubes back to the main body of the helmet. They'll help hold the lower faceplate in, and the bondo over the top will provide more solidity and smoothness. Eventually.
But helmet destruction wasn't my only achievement today, oh no. (OH NO!)
I also put together and began macheing a shin guard, as well as putting mache and details on the epaulette and the bicep piece.

The shin guard looks ludicrously boxy, but maybe it'll shape up later. Right now I'm panicking about how much more flooring foam I need to get - I have the back plate of the torso, the lower half of the front of the torso, two thigh pieces, another shin, another bicep, another epaulette, two kneecaps and two gauntlets. Oh, and the codpiece. The waist section I think I'm going to do in camping mat flexible foam. I have great plans, just... not enough materials or time. Or flat surfaces to put things down on. And, as of this afternoon, no glue gun.

 

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It's Monday, it's my last day off for a while, and I have to get the stairs finished today. Naturally, I headed tot he workshop and did a leeeetle bit more on the helmet. Then I stuck in some temporary visor material and took a selfie. I really think it's coming together!

Less so the armour. The shin piece was too stupid, so it'll be broken down for parts. I'm trying again, this time making the front section out of foam-core board and the sides out of camping mat foam (thinner and more flexible.) The rear section will be stiffer, but also removable, so I can get my leg into the damn thing.

 

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This shin armour issue is driving me crazy. The second attempt hasn't worked out much better than the first. Admittedly, the velcro-closing at the back and the soft-foam (but heat-stiffened) sides make for a more snug fit. But it looks ugly, and the glued-on points where the sides meet the front plate are weak. Now (since I'm at work and can't do anything) starting to imagine making the front and sides out of one piece of card, reinforced with mache and then bondo, and a final separate piece for the back that velcros into place. But it's Father's Day this weekend, which means the annual clearing of the workshop, so my family can tell me how it OUGHT to be arranged. They mean well, bless 'em, but it's actually just going to be time I can't be building, while making me defend having three totes of greeblies "just in case".

 

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The clearout began, and five minutes after it started, I took this panorama.

We cleared the whole room, and my wife painted the floor - first time it's been touched in ten years! Then we spent a happy afternoon going through the piles of tools, scrap wood, good wood, toys, geegaws and greeblies. I had a shiny new stack of plastic totes (transparent, for ease of identification!) and they got loaded up one by one - electrical, plumbing, hardware, craft supplies, adhesives, bondo and casting.... We even sat with a tub of "assorted screws" and sorted them into smaller tubs that the Missus labelled - Tiny, 1", 2", 3" and so on.

Tomorrow we start putting stuff back, but we begin with the construction of a new work bench running the length of one wall. There'll also be careful consideration of where and how power tools are stored for ease of access and return. I stress about this each year, but this is a great gift from my family.

 

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I think great things may yet be accomplished here.

 

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Ironically, since the workshop got cleaned up, I haven't been able to grab any time in there. The helmet is waiting on another round of bondo, the main armour pieces are still to be constructed, and though I got another roll of camping mat foam, I need more flooring foam too. Still, I got the 3d printer working on some stuff for me (I printed a bird feeder for Mrs Dim to show how "practical" it was as a household appliance!)
Hunter carries a DC17, so I grabbed a file from Thingiverse and began printing it off. Here's the good side of the first two pieces:

Not bad! But then you flip them over....

Yeah, part of that is the raft I included on the forward section, but even so there's something screwy happening with the first few layers that go down. I have formulated a plan to address this problem, which goes like this: Ignore it, and hope it goes away.
So, to recap: For this entire cosplay I have; A semi-completed helmet. Half a shin guard. A third of a chest plate. One bicep piece. One thigh piece. One Pauldron. Half a gun.
On the other hand, Mrs Dim and I have time off together from tomorrow - a whole week! We'll go hiking and stuff, because she wants to, and she'll help me with my armour because I want her to.
I like my 3d printer, but unless I get a lot better with Blender and whip up my own designs, it feels like cheating, and probably involves so much "make good" work, I may as well be scratch building.

 

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Because life isn't complicated enough, I dug out the electronics from the old Boba Fett blaster that I last used in my Beckett blaster muck up.... I mean, mock up. Fitting the speaker and the battery pack are tough prospects, but the real struggle is going to be getting the trigger to hit the activator.

 

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I was right that this was going to be a pig of a job. I ended up drilling out parts, cutting other bits in half, and even cutting down the edges of the speaker. I glued the battery pack itself to the bottom of the grip, which meant I had to solder new wires onto the circuit board, because the original ones weren't long enough. Soldering is just one of the many skills i don't have, but I do have a soldering iron and some solder. And because I was born in the UK, I pronounce the "l" in "solder".

Here it is, still in bits. Next, gluing it together and hoping the damn thing still worked. A link to the video:

New video by Damian Trasler

photos.app.goo.gl

Hope that works!

 

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Of all the negative qualities I have that make this a difficult hobby for me, the worst is my impatience. From the very first helmet, I've known that I could achieve better results if I simply took more time - over planning, over construction, and especially over finishing. I think, if I was just building the helmet (which was my original plan) I would probably have given up on the surfacing by now, and started in on the paint. However, with the armour to build too, I get the chance to jump around to other bits while I take my time with the helmet.
Today I built a holster for my new DC17.

And I added a layer of bondo to the bicep piece and one of the gauntlets.

I filled some holes and thin parts on the helmet:

Next up is building the chest plates from the duct-tape pattern.

 

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If you've been following this thread, you'll know I've never really tackled armour properly. I fudged some Mando armour years back, but it was hardboard and really sucked. I made a chestplate for my Shakespearean Vader, but didn't measure, or use a pattern and it's ugly as all heck on the inside.
This time I did the duct-tape pattern thing, but was still a bit vague about turning the duct tape thing into the actual armour. Here's what I got:

I cut up the sides and added buckles (which are too high on my own torso for me to clip in myself...), then trimmed out the neck and shoulders. Then I added the front piece I had shaped and cut out weeks ago:

Looks a bit like a Golden Age superhero, I think. Soon fix that.

Oh yeah. That's worse.
Still the next bit is actually fun. I have to build the backpack, and that's all straight lines! Yay, no shaping or bending or anything. Lots of approximate math, but since the thing is going to be empty except for the battery pack powering the three lights on it, it won't matter if it's a bit big.

Good job I bought all that flooring foam. Hope I remember to save some for the codpiece. Off we go!

 

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Ok, got the back pack built and it's only SLIGHTLY wrong (too tall for the width...)

Have a gap to fit some lights, and even have the lights to fit, just have to figure out how to set them up properly. Gonna need a lot of primer and other paints to get this and all the armour painted up.

 

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I'm back to regular work today, but I have plans to trim out the midsection of the back pack, bringing it down to roughly the right proportions. That should save on primer, and give me back some useful bits of foam which I can use for Kneecap pieces, and the other pauldron (if I decide not to try my casting idea).

 

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Arrrgh, urgh, yuck. This would have gone so much better if I had taken the time to sort out the measuring... The cut down was ugly, and is going to be a messy seam. That's gonna mean surfacing, probably with a sheet of card cut to fit the whole side.

As soon as I was done cutting, I thought of a way to get roughly proportional measurements for the whole back pack based on the pdfs from COsplay Command. I might still go ahead and produce that. Yesterday I also received the top half of my chosen bodysuit, and the EL wire I'll be using to make the vibroblade (except, says the pedantic part of my brain, it ain't a vibroblade, is it? Why would a vibroblade glow orange? Doesn't it, y'know, VIBRATE?) I took another look at the 1st Bad Batch episode, but there are few clear shots of the knife static. I'll have to go with what I can get from this one:
This one clearly shows the knife and the gun. The knife has a sheath on the left forearm, but the gun has no visible holster. It just appears from time to time. I've built a holster, and I'm considering fixing it to the thigh plate, where other clones commandos are sometimes shown having them. Worried it'll pull on the plate and drag it down, though....