It took a little doing, and a few darts to taper the section, but the abs are done. I elected not to do the standard 3-tube design, but rather a slotted version I have seen in some pictures.
Also, under the hood, I made a bunch of great little clips so I can quick-detach the rigging for the thighs. Plus I made a host of other revision that no-one but myself will ever see or know about. I couldn't help myself. MUST IMPROVE!
Know what else I couldn't help? Taking this selfy! BOOM.
I did some work tonight on the bracers. I tried on the upper portion with my hockey gloves and was thrilled with how its looking. A cheapy pair of hockey gloves is on the way that I will be modding specifically for the costume.
I also did some embellishment of the shoulders. I added another band on the horizontal edge and more detail on the inside edge of the vertical bands. I must say that the shoulders move and sit much better with my arms being wider around thanks to the bracers.
I will be crafting up elbows and probably a heavily modified bicep soon.
I did some video this afternoon after work. The fit and rigging still needs to be tweaked a TON. Many changes need to be made. The waist is too low, the chest will be moving up a touch, the stilts are too high and make the legs too long, yadda yadda. So don't judge the proportions too much just yet. Enjoy the show.
And here is a quick and dirty photoshop I did to explain the edits on the rigging I intend to make. It should help the arms look a bit longer. Still not perfect, but plenty acceptable in my eyes.
They do need to be longer. They aren't complete and the proportions are still off. They will always be a bit short, as I intend to keep the use of my hands. I do have plans that should help alleviate some of the problem though. A giant gun will take attention away from the arms as well
Alright! Here is the plan. The shoulders are moving up a bit. This will expose more forearm. The midsection is moving upwards even more. This will raise the waist of the costume. With the waist higher, the hands will break high in the thigh instead of the waist band.
All this means that the stilts will be shortened by about 2"-3". It's a welcome change, it means a lighter stilt and a more natural gait.
All in all I think these changes will have me looking much closer to anatomically correct and still have the use of my hands. Which is the goal.
I Threw some color on a screenshot and made an animated GIF of the tweaks I am going to make to the rigging. Give it 3 seconds and the image will change.
After some welcome constructive criticism I took the plunge and hacked into my shoulders. I had trimmed 4" off of the height during assembly, but did not remove any width. This made they out of proportion. I suspected as much, but it wasn't ready to fix it until Tango89er shared my concern over the disproportionate width.
This was a pretty hard thing to do honestly. Hard to cut into something I had spent so much time on, and hard simply because it proved to be a real pain in the butt construction wise. But I think the results were worth it.
I think that the adjustments to the shoulders have definately helped the proportions, but the suit might look a bit more balanced once you have a helmet in place.
I have been working on the arms a bit, but mostly on the fit and function of what I already have.
MY stilts got chopped down over 3". This moved the waist up to where I wanted it and helped make the arms look much longer. Also, the shoulder chop-job I did was a big success in my opinion. Thanks for the feed back on that.
I did another video of the costume in its current state as well. Enjoy. More soon.
I spent yesterday working on the arms. Mostly in the joint, adding the 6" flexible ducting and trim rings to allow it to fit nicely. I was really pleased with the result.... Then I tried on the chest and arms together. Much to my disappointment, the bicep armor infringes movement far too much and make the arms very awkward. I cannot use the bicep portion in the final costume. It's not a huge deal, considering the upper arms are not visible 95% of the time, but I was bummed for the time and material wasted.
I have had issue with the movement of my shoulder and have been pondering a solution for a while. Thinking over different joint solutions. Today it dawned on me what the problem was. The issue was not in the ball joint itself, but rather its location. The joint was simply too far above the point of rotation. This caused it to clang around like a bell and look a bit unnatural. This evening I made some simple struts that re-positioned the fulcrum of the ball joint. The shoulder still sits in the same place, rotates closer to the chest armor. It is a dramatic improvement in the way the shoulder feels/moves.
I have a helmet! Okay... most of a helmet. But is looks cool so i mocked it up with the glospex and the hockey gloves I bought for the costume. Enjoy. It fits, and I can move my head, BUT, the collar of the chest is still a bit tall and looking down is hard. I might try to lower the collar a touch.
First on todays list is some collar progress. I dropped it down roughly 1/2". It's not much but it should make thing more comfortable. I added some notched cuts to make things interesting too. Why not.
I also made myself a grill. I drew up a file in illustrator first. Then cut it out and test fit it. After that it gets imported into sketchup, relief is added and it gets 3D printed. Fits like a glove. I will probably add pop-rivet heads to the holes. Also, I can see through the grille at the moment and I think that's a good thing. I will probably keep it this way to help my field of view.