Gungrave / Gungrave Overdose - Anime Expo 2006

Gungrave was one of those projects where your buddy says "dude, bro, let's make something ridiculous" So we did. This project is one of my VERY VERY early projects, pretty much before I even knew what power tools were and as such I feel that people can take away a lot from this build since the only tools we had were common painting supplies, a foam cutter from Michael's .....and that's really it. Minimal tool build!!! Here is some art, but in all honesty we owned both games so we just used the in game models whenever possible. Here is Original Grave



And here is Overdose Grave.

 

First step was the planning stage and as such we had to scale everything. It's math and not very exciting. We decided though at this stage to include a wooden spine to keep everything nice & firm.



We had to scale it out onto foam, and since the 2 coffins had different shapes we had to do that....twice. From these 2 pattern plates we were able to cut several plates to get the correct thickness. We were using a simple foam cutter that used D-Cell batteries from Michael's. The name escapes me, but it did the job alright









Then we cut a whole bunch of them to get the thickness.





Also keep in mind there is a 2"x4"x6' piece of wood in there for the bolts to screw into. I never got any pictures, but it's there I swear.
 In any case this is where the 2 builds kind of diverge, but Henry's coffin wound up taking shape via wire mesh. Over the wire mesh he covered the bugger in plaster tape. Again no power tools, just scissors.



Mine was made using mostly foam for the detailing with minimal wire mesh work







In any case both were covered in plaster tape. The more rounded detailing (hand in the middle, skull etc) was done using sculpey.





Plaster tape was applied to the rest of it and rolled plaster tape was used to make the "gore" and "sinew" detailing.









While this was going on the guns were fabricated from scrap wood, they're not really that interesting but here they are.





Both of the coffins were painted with acrylics and spray paint.

















 In a time before we knew what wigs, contacts and make up were.... wow looking back at these pictures I feel so silly, but we ALL started somewhere right? At least the props looked cool! Thanks for looking at one of the least tool intensive, yet relatively impressive builds, that I've been able to do! Hope it helps all of the budding proplings out there!

Ame Comi Jade - SDCC 2012

Girlfriend had done an Ame Comi Jade from DC Comics a good while back and she finally bugged me to make her the headphones for it. Her first pair were just some cups and some headphones and well...it was a mess. Luckily I could at least top that... First off here is the reference.




So the entire time I knew I was going to be vacforming the thing so I started out making a vac buck out of MDF and hot glue.

 

Once that was done I was able to fill in a lot of the holes with lighter and cheaper clay (waste stuff i.e model magic) then layer it over with apoxie sculpt for that nice hard finish.




I nailed the pose right?



When I was looking at the buck I realized that the ends were all really derpy, so I cut out MDF end caps for ensure that they were flat and as symmetrical as I could get them.





We had to get the pulls done in a hurry since San Diego Comic Con was 2 days away. Unfortunately the vac form machine was not up to the task to pulling from acrylic...I was really crestfallen, but we adapt.

 

So the same day we decided to get some pulls from styrene and paint it green. Not ideal, but it was manageable.

 



During the day I quickly fabricated an acrylic headband and an acrylic MP3 player that would hook up to the headphones. Here are some of the finished pictures! Enjoy!

Xiba. Soul Calibur V. Cosplay Comcom 2012

Xiba was a project that was supposed to be something very easy, but we wound up throwing a lot of technology at it. Ironic since the character is a jungle man.



First the bangles would start out as PVC pipes. I then cut out styrene circles to act as a guide for the application of bondo. The foot bangle was just a ring cut from wood using my circle cutting jig.





Applied some apoxie sculpt and sanded it like mad to get a nice finish.



Added some styrene strips to the bangles for added detail as well as little styrene "monkies"



I had the bangle stay on my arm by wrapping my wrist in black boxer tapes, was simple but effective.



The necklace was quickly made with wood circles for the coins and apoxie sculpt for the green beads (magatama ish shapes)



So I didn't have a lathe to properly cut the staff heads for Xiba's staff. Luckily a very eccentric friend JUST HAPPENS to HAVE a 3D printer lying around his house. Yeah. Weirdness right? Here is the 3D model we used.

 

So how it works is that the contraption melts plastic and spits it out in lines until it forms a 3 dimensional object. This process is fairly time intensive on the machine's part but it frees us humans up to do other things while it works.







So to print the damn thing solid would have taken upwards of a week, and I didn't have that kind of time. So it was decided to print the thing hollow and I would make it work...somehow. First order of business was sanding them down a bit.



The thing was way too fragile so what I had to do was figure out the volume via water displacement (filling the thing with water then ramming the shaft in and measuring the volume of the remaining liquid) and place that much resin into the head.



Then I had to let it cure in the hot hot sun for an hour or two to ensure that it cured. There was some resin leakage so the duct tape is to mitigate it as much as possible as the resin cured.



Painted everything GOLD and weathered with black acrylic. Sword WIP should look familiar.



Then everything finally came together! I didn't bother taking pictures but the claws on the tiger paws were also sculpted from apoxie sculpt and stitched to the faux fur.