Frock Chick

I sometimes think I should try and capture the fun times of working with SKU on screen record. And with mic on so you can hear the sears. They get a creative. Though the f’bomb is usually muttered. and the s’bomb gets stretched out to sheee-er-gerrr.

I saw my PC space with other so it means trying for levity in the stress.

So lots of what the foo, whyyyyyyy? *push keyboard away*  but whhh-hy-hhy-hy-hy-hy???

Never the less she persisted! Yes I went there. It’s basically the mantra of my life. And there will be a post!

I started with the original images, Note, this is a screenshot, it really is that blurry to work with. I wanted to do a line art originally but used a photocopy in hand and on screen just scaled to hight.

I actually then started a new model with the hilts cropped to height to make it muuuuch easier. And yes, when you import images you need to scale them once in as well. Unless there is a keyboard trick… there probably is.

then I made a series of guides and then drew curves and loved it. Until I realised yes, the sides are totally rounded, I did say the images are fuzzy!

So, Viola! (that was a pun.) New guides new scaled image and new face made the same way. From here I extruded a series of tubes leaving the inside empty. It worked really well for Asajj. But I am making mie a touch simple in the joins this time.

Guides guides everywhere!!!!! This was to create the inset grip of the longer hilt. Basically pecil and extrude and some maths!

And yep the decorations are in place. But I wound up having to move them on my longer hilt. That was just a bit frustrating.

Then came the other pieces; inset switches, what i think are peg/screws to hold the end caps in place, the long end cap holder, and the large button. Finally the emitter caps!

The large button. I goofed and wound up with the circle not centred so yesterday was a day of fixing issues like this. I placed everything together (they are all separate components so they will print separately and in whatever orientation works best. I also adjusted length and made the end cap holders fit smoothly to let them pass so we can gain acccess to the insides to put electronics inside.

Here you can see I had yet to place the end caps. But the are there not. I also got the emitters to their final shapes and sizes. One emitter needs some smoothing but aside from that I think I’m happy.

So today with the emitters lined up correctly it’s time to get the pencil out and start cutting.! Had a few practices but it’s not really been perfectly even as I didn’t have then perfectly on my guides.

I’ve been using the @starwarsrebels supplied concept images of Ahsoka and found I’m only a tiny bit shorter than her, which sort of balances out if I wear orthotics in the boots, which is sensible, and can potentially just pad a little more between me and the headpiece.

(edit, this was supposed to be posted before my last post but well.. I mistake the “add tags” and “publish” buttons!)

So I decided I will scale to the appropriate height of her vs me as it won’t be so far off as to look like I’m carrying oversized versions.

But I want to eventually put a blade in. But even with a little rounding up to account for the blurring of the lines when scaled I wind up with a 20mm thickness. My Shaak Ti and Talon blades are 20mm. I find it mimics the OT and SWR style well while the 25mm (1″) blades often used really mimic the prequels and TCW.

What this means is I would want at least 24mm thickness. This is because there is an inset piece that should be at least 1mm. That gives me 1mm thickness around the blade- a bit close but my ventress hilts are that thin in places. And I could also cut a piece of the same acrylic tubing to support vertically on the belts. Or I could just accept that I can’t have both? Though I did just scale the fronts to match as if I was going for 22mm thickness and that is not so bad. So maybe I could do that.

This has a 3mm thickness and is at the to scale size. Now to see what I can do with a 2mm thickness.

I was very worried as my latex thickener took a while to arrive and my molds wound up soaking too long. But it’s all good 🙂 But the latex I had was certainly bad. Not so bad that it couldn’t be rescued but rescuing requires a lot of work 🙂

Thickener and coloidal silica 🙂 I probably should have grabbed microballoons, explained later 🙂

I used up as much of my latex as I could- two bottles of thickener will turn 2.5L of latex into a very thick consistancy, but it does still run, not immediately but over a few hours.

What have I done here you may ask. Well here is the answer 🙂

Self supporting latex

In order to have self supporting horns but an adjustable thickness tentacle latex layer I first lay up a thick layer of the thickened latex (for this also with some added silica to limit warping) then  a layer of peeled foam in 5mm or 10mm thicknesses soaked in a latex and water mix. I push the foam into the latex just enough to adhere but leave a layer of just latex to create a skin to the foam.

This is tricky! If the environment is too warm the latex well turn tacky while working with it causing deformities. This has been my fifth run and it’s the first time this hasn’t happened because it was much cooler yesterday than any other day this summer.

The peeled foam is very soft, very soft and not at all self supporting alone. In fact its use is to pad and create a soft layer.

But once soaked in latex and left to cure it becomes fairly rigid. The cells become rigid but the air pockets remain.

The foam also tends to not pull away from the walls of the mold while the latex is curing. This makes it much easier to be able to control warping of large pieces like this. It also reduces weight and can be stitched then glued/latexed to hide the join. It is also possible to pare back the foam with a knife to thin it out for the tentacles.

This is sort of a reverse industry standard method of skinning foam for creature effects. Having a mold means I control the skin texture a lot more but means working a bit blind in terms of being able to know exactly how thick that skin is.

This standard method is how I make my lekku in general. And as I work to finish this piece I’ll be able to share tips on how to do that- it still requires skill to avoid limiting stretch of the foam and adding  weight! I also want to update my Rachi Lekku and Talon lekku 🙂

I’ve taken the concept art of Ahsoka and scaled her to my height- so 168cm from heel to top of head- so I cropped the montral off and the heels of the boots.

And I have checked head height is accurate, height from waist to should is right..

Her “big” lightsaber hilt winds up 34cm long! And yeah in the concept you can see it goes from about hip crease to above the knee.

It just feels very weird!

I’m going to check the scale on the figure because I don’t think they follow that proportion. The figure is about 125mm from heel to crown.

X/168= 21/125

X= 28.224

Hmmm. I wonder if I should just say 30cm/12″? I know one person has gone for 12″ and it does seem to be the middle ground.

I grabbed these images as screencaps, her arm and saber are approximately on the same angle, mirrored, and then in line:

I used a line tool for the length of the light saber then copied to a new layer and altered the angle to follow the arm.

In both cases they line up.

And that is as close to 30cm on me as can be fairly judged.

To note, the saber is curved, quite definitely so, but I have printed out and used my ruler to compare length from top to bottom along the surface and at right angle to the top. It’s very similar.

So, now that I have a dimension I am happy with I can actually start work in Sketchup!