Movie Accurate Weathering Idea

Just had an idea for a great way for creating VERY movie accurate weathering of the armor . . . at least in terms of placement of scratches and things like that.

I have access to a computer projector, but I suppose the same could be done with an overhead projector as well, but . . . take a nice detailed full shot of the piece of armor you're working on from our fabulous reference CD (Thanks BB! ), and literally project it onto YOUR piece of armor. Now all you have to do is trace where every scratch and scrape goes. Then get out your liquid mask and start going to town. You'll obviously have to trace again after every round of painting but, seems like a great way to me of getting virtually 100% accurate weathering.

You could even use this technique I suppose on the flatter parts of the helmet like the cheeks. And with some creative work and stretching in photoshop you could maybe even do the rest.

Anyways, just my thoughts as I sit here and twiddle my thumbs as I patiently await all my parts to start arriving! hehehe

Later guys,
Jer

Wow, thats a great idea! i think i'll use it!

That IS a great idea. The only problem I see with it is that up to this point the armor that most have is wildly different in shape and form than the real thing. You might just cry when you project the real armor over yours because I can just about assure you that NOTHING is going to line up correctly.

Well then, what about taking this idea a step further (or, a step backwards, depending on your perspective), and using this idea to help CREATE your armor.

There are more than enough great pictures on the Ref CD that show at least the chest armor "head on". Pick your piece, project it onto your Sintra, trace the shape, and boom, you've now got a piece of chest armor that is probably 98% accurate in shape (taking into account the curvature of the original piece of armor--which you will just bend shortly thereafter anyway).

And of course the original's curvature will also warp your weathering, just a bit, but in my opinion, a negligable amount.

The advantage to this as well is that by using the projector you are also able to scale the armor correctly to your body size--AND get accurate weathering.

For people of smaller stature, such as myself, I think this will be a great idea for the chest armor. Not so much the other pieces because in my opinion if they're slightly larger or smaller, they don't seem to "show" as much as the chest pieces do.

Well, I think it's time for me to re-evaluate my armor now! haha

Jer

The idea of projection works quite well. Back in 99 I was building an appearing car for the Audi company. It was to introduce the new Audi TT to the USA. The problem was the car,witch was actually a final prototype, was only going to be in the states for two days to film some video for the computer generated portion of the show. So how do you build a grand scale illusion for a car you don't have ?
I had to fly to New York for a day and take photos and measurements as breaks in filming occurred. I brought my information back to my workshop in Vegas and with the help of a projector I built a life size cardboard replica of the Audi TT.
I then used the cardboard replica to build and fit the illusion prop. Big pain in the but. However I could not have done it without my trusty opaque projector.
Cheers,
Steve