Questions on materials and advice for a newcomer

[lilwolf555]

Evening!

So, I'm somewhat new to prop-making (made an old Mando I never finished) but I'm looking to start a few projects in the coming months, hopefully, depending on moving and other fun life things depending on job.. anyway.

Guts from Berserk


2nd is Gordon's HEV suit from Half Life 2




My question is on materials.

Debating on Worbla and Sintra. I have worked a little with Sintra so know some basics to it.



Sintra..

1. How complex of curves can it take? I don't have any left to test myself so rather ask before ordering. Can it do something as complex as the area directly below the Lambda symbol on Gordon's chestplate? Or is that too complex of a curve for it and would need to use worbla to fill in that part?


Worbla..

1. Would making the entire thing of worbla and using EVA foam to thicken/back it be cheaper ultimately than using all sintra for these?
2. Would it be worth it to use worbla over Sintra due to the fact I can re-form what I need easier and scraps can be remolded to use yet again, or would average cost outweigh these benefits?
3. I DO have some parts of an HEV suit (from an old build that need a LOT of work and some parts re-made completely).. I could use worbla to copy its shape entirely, couldn't I? Then trim/mod it to fit better and thicken it with Foam? Pic of old parts below.



Just wanting to get some more experienced opinions than random results I find online basically parroting the same info over and over and it being hard to find specifics.

What would you guys recommend for this - worbla or sintra and why? And is using worbla to copy the non-broken parts of my old suit feasible ? (just placing worbla over it and heating to get the shape)

(I did not make the old suit in the pic - it was a paid commission that I regret getting - they did shapes right, but other parts are.. yeah and the fiberglass was terrible, breaking apart on some parts etc. I just want to start from scratch on my own instead of gambling on a commission again)

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Much depends on the tools one has to hand, experience with particular materials/techniques, etc. Sintra is one of my go-to materials -- but mainly because I don't have room for either vacuforming or roto-casting. It's great for simple applications, raising the "time" side of the equation to compensate for lowering the "cost" side. And, while it is a thermoform plastic, complex curves require vacu-forming to stretch/compress the material to fit the shape. By hand, it really only likes to do sinple curves. A way around this is to use sintra as the medium for a pepakura build, as that's all flats and simple curves. I prefer doing it that way over working with EVA foam or Worbla, as I like my hard parts to actually be rigid. Nothing ruins the illusion, for me, like seeing, say, Iron Man's armor flex.

I do a lot of Mando armor pieces this way, as they're smallish individual elements, so I have a discrete, visible scope to what I'm working with. More fiddly steps than I'll enter into here for assessing fitment, which edges need beveling and which don't, where to leave extra, with the actual join point drawn along the edge of the pep template, etc. I use 3mm for larger applications, high-strength-requiring elements, and such... 1mm for everything else. Good old cyanoacrylate super glue (I personally swear by Zap-A-Gap brand, after much hard experience) works better than anything else. Seriously, the sintra will fail before the glue joint does. Then I reinforce the inside where necessary with two-part plumbers' epoxy putty. The rest is rounding off edges to the appropriate degree, sanding things smooth, filing off the high points and filling the low to even out the "facet-y" look, etc. I'll have pictures later of what I'm working on currently, and I'm still getting all my older stuff moved over to Flickr from Photobucket, but here are a couple showing how I did the right gauntlet add-ons for one of my Mando costumes...

About halfway through the gauntleting process...

I've never played Berserk, but I know there are pep unfolds out there of the HEV armor and helmet from Half-Life. From the look of it, it shouldn't be too hard to do with sintra -- just time-consuming and tedious.

 

[lilwolf555]

Never done pep before, but got Pepkura and found the files and whew, yeah, lot of folding.. tedious lol, but nothings easy or fast for quality/accuracy.

Only issue I am finding with the pep files is its scaled oddly for actual human use on some parts, re-scaling it sounds.. difficult if even possible in that itself. Probabl is but course its my first time looking at it so I am unsure of the tools yet and will have to research that as well.

So.. logical way so far is to start from scratch and..

Step 1. Pep print n fold
2 Fitting adjustments
3. Duplicate design onto sintra boards then cut out/glue etc


I wish there was an easy way to copy the shape of this current chest :/ alas I have no vac form table and cannot think of any way how besides that.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

I find doing pep with cardstock (trial runs to learn a shape, or for the larger builds, to be fiberglassed after completion) quite meditative. Doing that also helps sort out scaling issues. Like with Halo armor -- I take a large set of dividers and note the width of my neck, shoulders, rib cage... Everywhere relevant. Then the same with the pep build. If the pep model is the wrong size, yay math. Reducing is easy enough on a home printer/copier/scanner. To ensure acurate scaling, I tend not to adjust thing in the print settings, but take the printed sheets and scale them down with the copier function. Enlargements I do at my local reprographer. One of the copiers in their foyer does 11"x17" and can do cardstock on request. So far I haven't had to enlarge any pep files so drastically that's too small. I have had to engage them in more professional capacity to blow up some Fallout weapons' profile images to use as 1:1 blueprints. The New Vegas gauss rifle is a good 51" long. *heh*

Sometimes scaling doesn't fix things. The proportions of one's body might not match what the dev studio came up with for their characters. Short of pushing up one's sleeves and getting into the 3D modeling of things, the best quick-and-dirty way I've seen is to find the measurements that best fit you and then cut where needed and add or remove material to tweak the proportions.

I haven't messed with the HEV armor, but sometimes I find that the pep is unnecessarily "granular" and you can do simpler construction for portions. Like, those big, flat panels, I'd do as a single piece each. Not sure if the pep files does such. If it breaks them down, I'd glue the paper pieces together to use as a template for cutting pieces out of 3mm sintra... Dammit. I have no interest in doing this costume, but I'm more than a little tempted now to download the files, print things out, and run through, myself, to figure out the best approach. *lol*

With the current armor, what's lacking?

 

[lilwolf555]

I actually found pep files that look to be around the same measurements as me actually, done by someone else to scale them to actual 'human' use.. so will have to get the card stock to try printing them and seeing how it goes. I can provide the link to the files if you really want to try it lol, but please don't feel the need to to just help me (may be moving soon with job so this project may go on hold during that time)

It's.. well, it was a commission and while as a whole it isn't terrible, I don't feel like it was done with care. I'll post what pics I have (most in storage in the attic).


Unsure how good you can see in this but the fiberglass was done very badly. Not as evident on this back plate due to their rigging of a speaker system that adds a lot of un-needed weight to an already heavy build. Their strapping system (laughable velcro) works for maybe a few minutes than collapses from the weight. I have remedied this with VERY strong magnets but its damn heavy and extremely uncomfortable to wear. (I think they just kept slapping resin/bondo and fiberglass layers on over and over for 'strength'.) They maybe didn't sand, not well at least, either.


They also did bad on details in the paint. They used literal pencil lines in place of black paint or grey or whatever for areas needing it.. They also clearcoated and varnished the thing so I can't remedy this without sanding the entire thing down.




Front chest has extremely bad fiberglassing on the inside and already has a crack on the inside due to this (mind you, I wore this for only 1 hour before the strapping for all parts couldn't hold anymore.) but I do not have a pic of it saved on my desktop to show at the moment.


Shape wise they are very good. They replicate the look of Gordon's suit nearly to a T minus some nuances here and there. That is why I was thinking of copying via a thermoplastic over it to get the rough shape and work from there.

So to make this work, I'd need to make some sort of strapping system for legs and arms to hold their immense weight (chest is 11-12lbs when together for reference), keep heavy leg parts in place.. sand off the paint and repaint.. >.>


Its starting to sound like starting from scratch, myself, with possible Pep files may be better (which I should've done myself.. lesson learned I guess)