Star Wars The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Anticipation is rising on this one.. Looking extremely good, and I thought your first pair looked really good til the fail but THESE ,, WOW!!!
You do great work Koda:)
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

This is one awesome build. This level of quality both inspires and intimidates me to no ends. :D I can not wait to see the end results along with everyone else.

I do have one question and I apologize if it had been asked/answered before now but didn't see if someone asked or not. I noticed the term 'armor skew' on the arm cast and I was wondering if you'd be as so kind as to explain what that is/means to me... thanks in advance. :)
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Thanks, your Honor. Always appreciated, sir.

Hi B-Dub. A skew is a twist or oblique line. Dictionary.com has this:

adjective
6. having an oblique direction or position; slanting.
7. having a part that deviates from a straight line, right angle

If you look at the following reference, you can see that the center line of the armor split-gap at the elbow guard is twisted around a tiny bit to the rear, whereas the center line of the circle made up of the forearm plate and wrist clip is twisted a bit toward the front.

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This is likely due to the often elastic nature of CG animated characters and their armor, which can flex and twist as the CG body parts flex and twist. In real life, that flexibility (pun intended) is not an easy option. Also note that the elbow guard extends slightly above the point of the elbow. After testing the fit of a cardboard mock-up, I determined that a twist was needed to keep the edge of the elbow guard from biting into my bicep if I rotated my forearm with the elbow bent.

The amount of skew was the minimum to allow me to scratch my nose and eat a sandwich (not at the same time mind, I'm not that coordinated) or hold a saber in horizontal guard while in costume, and can be seen as the difference between the two black lines at the elbow end of the armature in this next photo. The bottom line is the center line of the arm from the back of the hand as it hangs at rest. The top line is the line that the split-gap or separation between vambrace halves follows.

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So the final castings take on a bit of a twist, or skew.

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Hope that answers the question. :)

~ BC
 
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Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

After reading my own post, I thought I should clarify a bit of the mounting design for these.

I had to figure a way to keep the whole vambrace assembly from sliding down to my hand during normal movement (you know, lightsaber dueling and stuff ;)). I also had to figure out how to keep the nice pretty circle at the wrist-clip/forearm-plate well... a nice pretty circle. You can see if I hold the assembly tight at the elbow end, any twisting past about 5/8" and the corners of the forearm plate are gonna gouge into the sides of the wrist clip. No more nice pretty circle.

The best solution was to keep the wrist clip and lower 2" of the main plates tight to the arm (over neoprene cushioning for less bleeding), and clamp the wrist clip to the palm side of the main unit just below the 3 cross straps. I will sacrifice screen accuracy here to allow for a socket screw and a hidden aluminum backing plate that will squeeze the clip to the main section, forming one rigid unit. I have a 5400 psi resin that I'll cast the wrist clips out of, so it should take the torque.

The upper 6" or so of the main section will rotate freely around the arm as the wrist twists.

At least that's the plan. :p
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

No new progress, just trying out my new Canon EOS Rebel T3i digital SLR. It gets the color right much better than the old 6.2Mpx one. :D

I will be away from the project for the next few weeks due to unforeseen circumstances. I hope now to have it completed by NYCC in October.

I'll be back to this as soon as I can.

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~ Vonnor
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Beautiful work so far, I'm loving the Metallic Spray, which one is it?
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I believe it's Krylon metallic silver. Just the standard spray paint series, nothing fancy. I'll double check and update this post when I get home if I'm wrong. It is such a light silver color it approaches white. It's what I want for the base color before the weathering. I will put one coat of Krylon Fusion Nickel Shimmer (what I used for the base color of the TFU armor) which is very slightly darker silver, and sand-weather for the slight surface variances. Then I'll add a couple separation coats of clear gloss, and a single coat of even darker pewter-gray metallic, sand-weather that off the higher regions and finally dry-brush a dark gray into the crevasses.

Still a long ways off for that though, as I'm stuck on a Twilight Princess Zelda costume for my niece at the moment.

EDIT: The base coat is Rustoleum Metallic Silver # 7271830 (The whitest color swatch on the page)

~ Vonnor
 
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Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

The most difficult armature on which to sculpt is the one within which we exist. I have ballooned to 230lbs. The General Kota pants do not snap closed.

After taking 2 months off to help my niece with her Otakon costume, I seem to have misplaced the three critical tools needed for any custom build.

Motivation, enthusiasm, and discipline.

With luck, I will rediscover two of those tools at Celebration VI. I have two weeks from today to find the third and complete the aforementioned sculpt.

~ Vonnor
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I finally got back to this after 3 months off. Today I marked and cut the strap slots in the right radius and ulna plates. It took almost 3 hours to Dremel them and hand-taper the openings. Tomorrow I will cut two sets of straps from Sintra and thermo-form them to fit the slots. Time permitting I will take rubber molds of them.

After much study, I decided to make the production straps from 4-5 layer cloth fiberglass and bond the straps to the side plates with polyester resin. That will make them solid units on the palm side and I won't have to worry about tension or alignment issues while worn.

I also fit the right plates back onto the sculpting form to check fit and contours. It looks decent. Note the extent lines on the plaster arm, I'll have to trim some off the elbow and wrist ends of the plates which I anticipated. That's why I left the edge trim off the ends for now.

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~ Vonnor
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

I cut and thermo-formed the straps for the left gauntlet. They are 3mm Sintra and I used the ductwork mandrel in the background to form the initial curvature. I then stuck one end of a strap at a time into its corresponding slot and manually heat-bent it flat against the curve of the main halves. I did this very slowly so as not to distort the overall curvature. My goal here was to make the strap masters with uniform overall curvature and the little hook bends as they go into the slots. I will take a plaster-backed rubber mold of these and cast them in 5 layer cloth fiberglass for strength with rondo coat on the facing surface. They will be bonded to the main sections with poly-resin and a pinch of Bondo thickener. Going by past experience they should have a slight flex, enough to get them on and off my arm.

More to come.

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~ Vonnor
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Me neither! :cool

Today I took those strap models and squared up the edges, smoothed the curves and finish-sanded all surfaces. I super-glued them to a 110lb card-stock backing and sprayed a clear-coat over it all. I built up some layers of Rebound-40 silicone rubber taking care to taper away the undercuts at the ends. I could have used Rebound-25 but this was what I had on hand. It's pretty stiff if you never used it before. Since it's a junk mold for the most part (unless I mess up something) it should do fine. I undercut the side edges of the rubber wrappers a bit so they would hold better in the plaster backing, hot-glued a box around it and poured in some plaster. Have to wait for warmer weather to lay in the fiberglass, but I'm liking how smooth the curves and surfaces came out.

More later.

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~ Vonnor
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

Today I cast the left gauntlet cross straps in fiberglass. No real issues, just had to use a lot more hardener in both the Bondo and the polyester resin since the temperature was about 65°F.

One thing new that I tried was some Bondo glaze putty for the "gel-cote" layer. It's a lot smoother than rondo and spreads very nicely. I painted the insides of the molds with some of that first, then 5 layers of fiberglass cloth and a thick rondo (resin/bondo 25/75) backing coat. Still some pinhole bubbles in the surface but I can fill those. They have a stiff flex to them which will be perfect for opening the gauntlet to get my hand through.

Here is the rough breakout of the castings:

kota_vambraces121.png


More to come.

~ Vonnor
 
Re: The Force Unleashed II - General Rahm Kota WIP

The weather was warm enough for fiberglassing today, so I shaped the straps and bonded them to the radius and ulna plates using polyester resin. They came out very solid with just enough flex to get my hand in. I still have a bit of cleaning up to do and gaps to fill but all-in-all I'm happy with the results. I tested the fit with a 6mm soft neoprene band between the armor and my skin. The scaling of the original sculpt turned out perfect. The armor squeezes the rubber which holds it from slipping down to my hand. Once the wrist-clip and the forearm plate get on there It'll be one solid unit. It was really great to finally be able to wear this thing. :D

Next up is the gauntlet closure and wrist-clip sculpt.

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~ Vonnor
 
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