Spiffin First Suit Build

sirspifalot · Oct 13, 2011

Hello there. Hopefully I read correctly and am posting this in the right location. I have been lurking about for some time now scoping out everyone's stuff and a must say amazing work. I am now starting my first predator build and If I can come through with even a percentage of the quality I have seen on the lair I will be ecstatic. I have done quite a bit of reading on this forum as well so hopefully I shant make any noob mistakes. At least I hope..... Anyway, this suit shall be for my sister. Who is 5'1" by the way....so yea....8 feet shorter than your standard predator. First question: How should one go about making sure the proportions are right? Should I undersize the mask? Oversize the armor? And also what are some standard dimensions to aim for in a sculpt for a mask?

Second question: I am sculpting on a head maniqun that is on a stick that is in a couple of pieces of 2x6 wwod. Now I am about to do the neck. Can the clay go all the way to the wood so the sculpt is essentially sitting on the wood? I am worried that it will some how interfere with the molding process...perhaps I think to hard about easy things....

Ok I suppose I shall post my progress pictures. I got my clay a couple of days ago and I started layering on the clay. This is the first time for me sculpting not digitally so advice from you pros is recommended.

sirspifalot · Oct 14, 2011

And here we have today's progress...

xdmray · Oct 14, 2011

i see you are using Paul Mitchel armature. you make him silky smooth?

sirspifalot · Oct 14, 2011

Oh yes. And I won't forget the product for the dreads.

Double H · Oct 15, 2011

Thats coming along great fella, great start

sirspifalot · Oct 15, 2011

Thanks. Having a tough time with the mandibles at the moment. Decided to move to another area and come back to them later.

MasterAnubis · Oct 15, 2011

While roughing, I do the madibles last. That lets me concentrate on the head and then I move into the mandilbes. In AVP they actually sculpted the head without the mandible to add them later. Granted this was for movement isues, but they did do it.

Proportioning the suit to the wearer is the best way to go. I don't have too much to say about the armor sizes other that go with what looks right. I kindof winged it on my sons suit and some full sized pieces worked fine on him.

The mask is something that is hard for most to oversize. If your sister can fit in it, perfect. You really don't realize how big the masks are 'till your sculpting one. They also need to be bigger because of shrinkage. If you haven't worked with latex before expect 5-10% shrinkage from the size of the original. Than can reack havoc on proportions.

The mold and your wood base won't like each other. What you will need to do when the time comes is cover it with something (or seal it). My choice for a base recently has been Melimine.

This is a great start.

sirspifalot · Oct 15, 2011

Thanks for the info my friend. Good to know indeed. I have worked with latex before with some zombie makeup I did for a little short film. The shinking wasn't noticeable or an issue with that project though as I just kept layering it on until it looked right. And the idea is to have a sloppy application anyway. This being a bit different I think maybe I should bulk it up maybe a bit more. The size right now looks like it would fit pretty good so to account for the shrinking I'm thinking I should beef it up a bit more.

sirspifalot · Oct 22, 2011

So I'm really starting to worry about the sizing and the future shrinking of the latex mask....Are there any guidelines for sizing the sculpt correctly? Maybe a rough ratio of wearers headsize to sculpt head size or anything?

sirspifalot · Oct 25, 2011

Did some more work redoing the mouth. The mouth/mandible is just as tough as I was expecting. Seems to be going ok so far. I haven't use much foul language yet...yet anyway. And I haven't gotten pissed and punched it or thrown it at the wall. And being that there is 20 lbs of clay now that would be a nice sized hole in the wall. Anyway this is where I'm at now. Still not sure about the sizing if anyone has any idea/recommendations/tips and what not.
k bye.

sirspifalot · Oct 27, 2011

Been working on some sketches for Bio ideas. Gonna paint a few digitally and see how it goes. Figured I would upload them here and get some feed back. Sorry if they are rotated incorrectly. Photobucket was being stoooooopid. K bye.

xdmray · Oct 28, 2011

VOLTRON!

i like the one on the first page second row, second from right. looks like protoss.

sirspifalot · Oct 28, 2011

I should do a zerg bio as well then I think

jayart05 · Oct 29, 2011

Sweet setup....If this works out the way its looking so far...., i'm gonna have to start one just like it. Thanks for the thread. Cant wait to see the progress.

sirspifalot · Oct 30, 2011

Okey dokey. Here is this weeks progress. Did some work to the brain holder area. Also did some work to the back of the head and put in the top most row of dread holes. Didn't get a picture of it though. Not entirely sure if I like where they are at but I'm gonna leave them for now and see how it goes.

sirspifalot · Nov 14, 2011

Haven't updated in a while. Been working on the eyes. Then not liking them. Then doing them again. And not liking them. And so on. Eyes are a pain in the wiener. I'll come back to them. Anyway what I did get done is start on the texturing. Which I like so far. I suppose now is a good time to ask if I am going to be able to get a bio on over this fellas face since I have the mouth in some sort of open pose? Or should I rework it so it is closed before I go putting detail into in?

sirspifalot · Nov 20, 2011

What I have so far. Still playing with options for texture on the dome part of the head and such. Still need to redo the eyes. Also about to start putting some wrinkles and texture onto the mandibles. Sooo if anybody has any advice on whether or not a bio will fit on this half open mouth deal please let me know. K bye.

sirspifalot · Dec 18, 2011

Ok haven't posted updates in a while. Too lazy to upload to photobucket i guess. Also I reworked a lot of stuff so it took a while to get to a point of progress.

sirspifalot · Jan 2, 2012

Some texture progress to report. Still have some work to do to it. Not happy with where it is at currently but I do like the way it is going. So I am convinced that I just need to add another layer or so. And maybe in a few areas it needs to be smoothed down a bit. And the dome needs to be consistent on both sides. I dd them slightly different before to see which i like better...now I need to make them match.