I finally started my studio scale escape pod last weekend. I've never built a studio scale before so I'm pretty excited and call on all of you for pointers. Here's the progress so far:
I started out with the paper paint buckets a'la ILM and cut them down based off of measurements from Lasse Henning's drawings. The plan is to make a paper substructure and then try to work out all the measurements/kinks there and then laminate the outside with styrene. Again, since I've never done this before I figured it would be like tracing in 3D. I knew this thing would get totally manhandled during construction so once I got everything trimmed I reinforced it from the inside with foamcore. This will keep everything from imploding in on it too once I start gluing all the crap on the outside.
Next came the tricky part; the angles/cones. Let me preface this by saying I AM AN IDIOT AT MATH so rather than bore you with tales of trial and error using compasses, triangles and rulers I'll just say if you need to figure out the measurements of a cone to cut out go here: ConeCalc. I discovered this afterwards of course. Ain't life great? :rolleyes
The cones were made from psterboard, reinforced with foamcore and glued on the tops of the two sections. I plan on working on the top and bottom sections separately for as long as possible because I figured it would just be easier plus it seems no one can confirm what scale of tank tread was used or measurements around the middle. The short cylinder "hatch" part of the small section will just be made out of styrene.
This weekend I'm beginning the laminating process. I bought an OBSCENE amount of styrene this week. By obscene I mean a 4' x 8' sheet of .050 for $14.95. A lot better than blowing my budget on those Evergreen packages wouldn't you say? This will give me enough to screw up a couple of times and still have some left over to build all the panels and screw up again. I did a test gluing the other night with a small piece and a spare bucket and slow CA works great if you just glue an end, hold it, lay a bead, hold it and just repeat this across the curve
The tough part about taking pictures of the pod is that it tends to look distorted and different in every shot because of its angles. More soon.
I started out with the paper paint buckets a'la ILM and cut them down based off of measurements from Lasse Henning's drawings. The plan is to make a paper substructure and then try to work out all the measurements/kinks there and then laminate the outside with styrene. Again, since I've never done this before I figured it would be like tracing in 3D. I knew this thing would get totally manhandled during construction so once I got everything trimmed I reinforced it from the inside with foamcore. This will keep everything from imploding in on it too once I start gluing all the crap on the outside.
Next came the tricky part; the angles/cones. Let me preface this by saying I AM AN IDIOT AT MATH so rather than bore you with tales of trial and error using compasses, triangles and rulers I'll just say if you need to figure out the measurements of a cone to cut out go here: ConeCalc. I discovered this afterwards of course. Ain't life great? :rolleyes
The cones were made from psterboard, reinforced with foamcore and glued on the tops of the two sections. I plan on working on the top and bottom sections separately for as long as possible because I figured it would just be easier plus it seems no one can confirm what scale of tank tread was used or measurements around the middle. The short cylinder "hatch" part of the small section will just be made out of styrene.
This weekend I'm beginning the laminating process. I bought an OBSCENE amount of styrene this week. By obscene I mean a 4' x 8' sheet of .050 for $14.95. A lot better than blowing my budget on those Evergreen packages wouldn't you say? This will give me enough to screw up a couple of times and still have some left over to build all the panels and screw up again. I did a test gluing the other night with a small piece and a spare bucket and slow CA works great if you just glue an end, hold it, lay a bead, hold it and just repeat this across the curve
The tough part about taking pictures of the pod is that it tends to look distorted and different in every shot because of its angles. More soon.
