Robotic spirit of Air - Almea - WIP

[Jehudah Design]

Here we go again... Fast version - I made a Tusken Raider costume, thought the female Tusken Raiders looked cool too. None of my girlfriends liked costumes. I bought an old female mannequin for it, assembled it to find its pose wouldn't fit the costume. Decided to turn the thing into a robot woman statue since I had to cut it apart to modify it anyway. Liked the look of it so much and the sci-fi artwork I made with it, decided to make another one, then another one, then another one, and now this last one.

I figured that the only way to stop building these things is to make them all, plus I had lots and lots of leftover gold parts, fabrics, wires, and whatnot that I didn't need anyway for the other ones, so I found a really cheap mannequin as the base for the final one in gold.

But what I didn't expect was that all the mystical magical power stuff they keep on doing in the artwork I make and the unique color schemes of them all actually reflect upon a bunch of similar characters I used to love as a kid, such as Lego's Slizers and Bionicle, etc.

There was always this group of living robotic heroes with unique colors that match whatever elemental powers they had, such as fire, water, ice, and all that stuff. I stopped giving a damn about that Lego toy crap long ago though, but it seems I've actually created my own character extension of the sort of mystical living robot stuff I used to love as a child, only they are hot robot chicks instead of anything else. :lol So I'm currently also trying to make up a story for these "Gynoids" and a way to actually show that story, thinking about using a video game mod of Half-Life 2 called Garry's Mod where you can basically build and control anything you want, so it might just become a computer animated movie about these robotic chicks in the future.

There's one other under construction that will be white, purple, and silver with lights all over and an actual plasma disc for its "power core" named Zenia, and then there's this last one named Almea that will be mainly gold with orange details. There used to be 6 or more characters in those toy lines, but the only things left to make would be either brown, wood, transparent, and pink, and I'm sure as hell not making any of those, so 5 of them it is.

I always thought the later game model of Lara Croft had a most interesting face and was actually concidering making something like that for the red one up there called Roxena, but as you see she ended up looking much more alien-like instead, so I thought this would be my last chance to use that face for anything at all.

And sure as hell when I went to look at the really cheap mannequins a clothes store was selling away, one of them looked almost just like that game model. Here's a photo showing Lara Croft next to the unmodified mannequin in the middle, followed by a quick photo edit of somewhat what I had in mind for the head details and hair and all.

Still not sure what type of hair to use. I really do hate tinsel wigs, they are fragile as hell, but sure cheap. Then there's the other type of wig under that again that's made of hand sewn strands of beads, only it's really expensive at 160 bucks plus shipping at 30 bucks to this place.

I don't really have much to show now, but since the white one is almost finished but put on a hold until the weekend when I can buy the needed parts, I'm planning to start working on this one in the meanwhile so I can finish the last two even sooner, so I need to know if anyone knows of any better, cheaper options for a bead style wig than that one for 160 bucks. I really don't want to use that cheap tinsel crap for this one either.


Thanks for any help.

 

[JMChladek]

Re: Female robot statue - Almea

I must say, this hobby of yours has made for some excellent eye candy. The creativity expressed has been off the charts. The face of the Zenia one (the white face) I think looks the best of the bunch, almost like the leader of the group.

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: Female robot statue - Almea

Haha, thanks. Well when one likes robot and chicks, then why not? I like them all even more now that they are pretty much like those other characters I used to love as a child. Yeah Zenia sure turned out cute looking, and I have in fact been thinking about making her the leader since she is friggin huge at 6'5" too. This new one named Almea will be mostly gold, but gold doesn't nessecarily mean she's the leader either.

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: Female robot statue - Almea

Some updates on this - I bought the cheap tinsel wig for this project anyway since the bead wig is just too flat and expensive. Later I bought a slightly different gold colored, shorter wig and placed it over the one I already had, and that looked pretty awesome too. I even got some cool color changing diamond patterned gold tinsels that I will put in as highlights. Also I bought two of those cheap vials of so called "24 Karat pure gold". Another man tested these vials for gold and found the contents of being only about 5 Karats of low-grade gold that they sell in these cheap vials because they can't use that gold for anything else. Still it is real gold and will be used for something or the other on this project, possibly to be crushed into dust and sprinkled onto the paint above the eyes to make actual gold eyeshadow.

Anyway, enough about those things that no one really cares about. I've also finished for the most part the head of this robot statue and have made two reference sheets showing the actual head and Lara Croft's head from Tomb Raider VIII - Underworld.

Now, I think it is mostly done, except I'm not sure about the chin which seems sharper in some photos than the others, but that might just be the famous fish-eyed effect screwing around with it. Anyone experienced with sculpting faces who can see any differences from the actual game model face that I should change? As a note I would like to say that this face was altered using nothing but lots of bondo and cutting tools, so it was adding bondo, changing that after sanding it, adding more bondo, changing that again, so on and so forth until it looks right, so there was no clay sculpt used for this at all which would be a lot easier, I think.

Thanks for any pointers.

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: Female robot statue - Almea - WIP

Just thought I might as well show the last progress of this since I had to lay down this project to finish my Darth Vader costume instead for a festival that will take place in a couple of months from now. Check that out here if you want to - http://www.therpf.com/f24/star-wars-episode-iii-darth-vader-wip-141872/

So anyway, the last changes made to the face was to move the cheekbones up higher, then it should be close enough. This was all made by adding and carving away lots and lots of bondo.

The head was painted gold and eyebrows made of glittery gold tape were added. They were somewhat based on Angelina Jolie's eyebrows since they look just about the same as the ones on the game model that I could not get a texture photo of, and of course Angelina Jolie also acted as Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider movies, so that's a cool little thing. The most cool thing however is the area between the eyes and the eyebrows, this was made using actual gold, crushing it into dust and sprinkling it onto clearcoat. So at least now I can say there's at least some actual gold on this thing.

I made only one quick little concept drawing of the markings on her face, and they are pretty much the same now as in the drawing. The orange paint was also sprayed with a gold glitter spray.

Some black makeup around the eyes and the original lashes that came with the mannequin when I bought it.

First layer of golden hair applied to the head using double sided tape.

Another smaller golden wig with a slightly darker color was attached in the front and pulled backwards to cover and give access to the head mounting screws.

And finally some highlights of a golden golor refracting tinsel material.

Some sort of golden head detail thing, whatever you'd call it.

Most of it assembled, but it seemed like something was missing, so the orange paint was later extended from the face to the surface of this part of unknown name and purpose.

That's all for now of this golden, robotic air spirit who suspiciously looks like Lara Croft...

 

[Alan Castillo]

Re: Female robot statue - Almea - WIP

Coming along beautifully

The eyes turned out really, really well :thumbsup

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: Female robot statue - Almea - WIP

Thanks I was wondering what kind of excuse I could get to sculpt Lara Croft's face, so this was perfect for that.

Thanks for liking the eyes too, I'm glad I didn't throw away those original lashes, 'cause they really did work for her look.

Not sure if I should continue this project or not, learned that the event I was stressing to get my Darth Vader costume done for is cancelled anyway, so I might as well finish this or work on both at the same time if my monotasking brain can handle that...