Friday, September 24, 2010

Starting to Put Together the Easy Stuff of Dante

OK so this might be more boring for most but it's part of the Halloween costume thing.

So making a game characters outfit is a bit of a challenge just because the stuff that he's wearing doesn't actually exist in real life or if it does I'm not sure where to find it.  so i had to get anything that fit close and then modify it to fit my needs.  so an easy one was the boots, i knew the boots where something like motorcycle boots from looking at the trailer.  shorter leather boots, but his are a little more worn in of course and come more to a point but the ones i got fit the bill pretty good.


pretty pricey from boot barn. I've never worn anything with a heel before though so it was interesting to walk in them.  although i have to say i feel like i can kick down the Eiffel tower with these bad boys!  although kicking stuff down feels like all i can do in them. certainly don't move right with them yet.

another easy one were the gloves.  i got a pair from Harley Davidson, close enough to work. there are better out there I'm sure but this was a part of the costume i wasn't too worried about getting exact.  i never can find just the right gloves so i already was prepared to get something as close as possible.  too much of a pain and they'll just be covered by a coat and seen from far anyways.



time for the fun part, the bleaching tests!  first of all i know nothing of working with bleach.  i know more now but you'll see how little i knew before.

first i knew i wanted a black pair of pants that i would fade the legs of with a gradient from the base to the knee.  first thing i tried to do was leave some Clorox bleach splash less with water mix in the sink and let the pants soak.  i hoped to see a change happen kind of fast but it actually wasn't till overnight that i saw a slight fade and that was not exactly the speed i wanted to work at.  i had to use all the bleach i had too so this time i decided to get regular bleach and try again. this time soaking them as well as trying a new trick that a coworker showed me of just dipping the leg in bleach and then letting them hang dry for a better gradient.  i wish i knew about that one first cause it worked a lot better.

 my new ruined dickies.  they wouldn't bleach hardly at all with the splash less but with regular bleach it worked a little better than anticipated.  i learned that i should stick with the original bleach and leave the fancy stuff for house wives.

the jean test went a lot better. the leg on the right was dipped in bleach and then draped over a chair to dry over night.  i did this with a 50/50 mix of bleach to water. i think i'll do 25/75 next so it's not as strong but overall it was a much better much more controlled look.  now i'll try it on the actual jeans i have for the costume now and if this goes well i'll sew a zipper to the bottom of the pant line on both sides and then wash them in red dye.  i hope it's red and doesn't come out pink.


the last bit of clothing i have to show was a simple fix.  buy wife beaters, and lower the neck line on one of them.  i don't really know how to sew, but i do own a sewing machine. so although i'm sure there was a better way to do this, here's what i did. i took the collar line of one wife beater and cut it off and sewed it to the lower cut wife beater so it still looked like it was supposed to be that way.  looks ghetto up close but it did the job.

that's basically a before and after.  I'm never going to wear these again anyways so cutting them up isn't much of a loss. well that sums up some of the easy parts of the clothes, and contacts just for icing on the cake.


Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Ebony and Ivory Part 1

So someone had this idea that i looked like the new dante from DMC, not a fan of him at all really, but hey i need a halloween costume so lets start with ebony and ivory.  dante's custom handguns.

I first needed a base and these guns needed to be big cause dante doesn't use normal hand guns.  so i went to a sport chalet and got a pair of desert eagle airsoft guns that my friend told me might work.  they weren't the right shape but he said epoxy putty plastic would be good to help fill in stuff and get the right shape down and all i would need to do is sand them down a bit!

so here's the first pass at them

this is them hanging to dry in my kitchen, you can see the epoxy is actually sticking pretty well to the plastic.  i was pleasantly surprised with it. although that's like $20 worth of putty. oh well though, they'll be awesome.  however when i was told it would take a bit of sanding i wasn't prepared for how much sanding it would be.  epoxy putty is strong! which is both really awesome and really time consuming to sand down.  note to self, be more accurate with how much putty you place down.



next to it is a block of wood i got from micheals with some sand paper hot glued to it to get a better flatter smooth on the gun.  doing that by hand would just mess it up.  I'm really happy with how this turned out but i still need to finish sanding the other one and then continue adding epoxy and taking away from it to get the rest of the shapes in there.  i borrowed a dremel from a coworker so i think I'll get started on that ASAP. but first.... more sanding.

First Official Post

Well I'm starting this to sort of log my projects and keep people up to date as to what i do after hours instead of them just thinking i go home and rage about video games.  that's only like half my night.  so just to sum up what i have started now off the top of my head it would be...

1. sculpture of a character from the game i work on
2. a second sculpture of a character from the game i work on
3. gundam model of tallgeese started and sanded (i have a total of 7 to make i think)
4. handmade ebony and ivory handgun props for halloween and cosplay
5. really just the whole DMC suit is going down this month
6. playing through every hack and slash title i find cause i want to be a game director of one someday (yes that counts as extra work cause some of those games are awful *cough*X Blades*cough*)
7. darker than black costume.
8. Ipad game (top secret! actually i'm still waiting on the programmer to get the engine running :/ soon though)
9. any extra 3d work on my computer left undone. this is last cause it's not as fun anymore since i do it all day at work

that's all i can think of for now but in the night i made this blog i was also helping my friend by showing him how to possibly texture his Jehuty ZOE model (he modeled and unwrapped, i just had fun in photoshop).  He had to have it done by 8 a.m. so i had to paint fast, not exactly the greatest texture for him but i still had fun texturing something that was unique like that instead of rocks or trees.  i really dig POI pieces in games but then again who doesn't?

thanks to all my friends who came by my livestream and hung out for a bit.  i think i'll try to do that more often. not sure if i'll ever finish Jehuty but i'm sure i'll have something else going on.