Alright cool, I was anxious to say this in my OP! I would of ranted on and on about it, I should taken that bit out of the post to be honest in place of this post. Anyways..
I'll be as blunt as I can with the overview, and get specific on the details on the current phase I'm in:
The costume that I will be making will be a
Male-Oriented Ahsoka Tano. I was cooking this up before the Rebels series came out on Disney, I haven't used anything from that show to help me make this build I'm about to do. Instead I based all of my designs off of her outfit that she wore in the Clone Wars - Season 3-5, with the Burgundy Suede tunic with Hardened Leather Boots/Gauntlets. It's been modified to appeal to a male physique, in my opinion, I think it looks pretty seamless for a bro! For those unfamiliar with the show, here is a good reference that shows off her dimensions. Oh how do I love video game renders:
This is a
work-in-progress Google Doc that I'll be using to map my progress. It'll practically be my journal that'll document my successes and failures in design. Right now, it's just detailing my current progress on the outfit as a whole. At the time of this posting, obviously I have very little to show for all of this research. It's more on paper than in a digital format, that'll be displayed shortly. Alot of life has happened to me in this amount of time. My undivided attention can now be placed on this project, I'm ready to go! These are the images that detail the overview of the project. They come from my Veldspar2112 deviant art account, hope these things show..
Aw bugga! Gonna need to click on them to see them full screen.
Before we move on to the specifics, here is a full-scaled version of the images in my Google Docs page. Their currently being colored, but with the time crunch I'm under to get my sculptures done, the time simply doesn't exist!
Front:
(Images are quite large, gotta click on these bad boys)
Back:
Side:
Now, onto the juicy subject at hand: The Head-piece.
The Head-piece has been done before, but not like this. Someone tells me "Don't reinvent the wheel and keep everything simple!" I decided that I will be making this headpiece into 3 or 5 different sculpture pieces, attached by a very strong adhesive. My reference that I used for my plan originated from
Michaela De Bruce. She's made a Shaak Ti outfit before. Her headpiece looks beautiful, but I want something a bit more sharp and crisp (
This is Michaela's Central Headpiece, I'm going to make something like this). Many other tutorials based on producing Lekkus were looked at as well, but they have a much simpler design in that the head-tails fall down from behind their head. Togruta have two horns that are symmetrical to their front Lekkus. Not only that, those horns raise over the persons head by a length of their face (stacking that person's face on top of their face, if you were to look at them in the front). My current progress on this phase right now:
I have a good deal of PVC pipe that I'll be using as the armature for this sculpture (3/4" and 1" PVC, what I don't use, I return). I have been attempting a lifecasting of my face, the only people who can help me are not very trustworthy so I'm left with going the cheaper route: Use packaging tape on a Male Mannequin Foam Head to match your head's dimensions! Being terribly uncertain that this will not fit my head, I have no choice but to use this to create the central headpiece that the 2 front and 1 back lekku will be attached to. I'll need to build this thing through
trial by fire (if their's a better way, save me! Haha). I need to go to my local library and print out these images to help me out with the profiles of the fact:
I'll be printing out some of the Mortis Episode versions as well, where they show her as an Adult. This was a good profile study that'll be the base my armature build. (source:
http://raikoh-illust.deviantart.com/art/Togruta-Montrals-and-Lekku-studies-457121723)
I wish I had Ahsoka's Adult version in a render like the one above, I rely on people who have drawn Togruta (namely Ahsoka, as she is the most well known so it would seem). Here is my eyeballed union's map I think I'll need to do with the PVC.
I understand that I will fail on my first attempt, and maybe even on my second attempt, I have no problem with that fact that each sculpt might take between 15-25 hrs to do. This armature though, if this is messed up, every sculpture I make of this will screw up! I want to get this right. Than the next stage is to put bubble wrap around it as filler, than cooking wrap to make seamless bends around the bubble wrap, spray adhesive on the wrap to give extra support for the clay to stick, and start putting clay down to make the form that you see in my concept art I made on paper. It'll include the horns so I wonder how I'll make those real sharp... I can be realistic and accept a small rounded edge. Afterwords, I'll make a mold of the piece. Some ladies have suggested I do a 3-piece brush-on mold. I've never attempted molding before, I've read up on it multiple times, but never practiced it. I sure hope it comes out ok.
