For the casting, I tried something new... Smooth-On's Cast Magic Silver Bullet. It's a powder you brush on the inside of the mold, and it gives a metallic finish that's embedded into the resin. Sort of a "light" version of cold casting.
I'm really happy with it! It's not as shiny as rub n buff, but it's about as good as your average silver rattle can. A $4 container of it will probably do 6-8 helmets, so it's a trivial cost. It adds about 15 minutes to the casting process but that's not much really.
Anyway, less words, more pics! Here's a raw cast with the visor area trimmed and a T-visor.com visor fitted into it. I had to trim the visor down a bit to get it to fit, but nothing major.
Here's the first cast I made today, painted up as Pre Vizsla:
And the second cast as Jango. This one isn't quite done yet, but it's 2AM and I have to go to work in a few hours
Hey stormtrooperguy!
As you know, I'm working on armor myself, I am looking for either a kit or the bucket itself. I can do the armor, but how much would the helmet be?
you can see there that i've also made up the base for the rocket assembly. it will be cast in resin ultimately, so for now the original is just loosely fitted into place.
i also made up the bottom vent/thruster/whatever for the center tube. it's not particularly accurate since i only had a couple of fuzzy shots of that part. it's good enough for me though! it will also be cast in resin.
the rocket base will be 1.5" PVC... it should plug right into the resin socket. i hope
hopefully randy will be able to help me out with the lathe and get the rocket made. i could do it by hand, but it would be nice to have it more precisely crafted.
Let's just pour a nice, refreshing cup of Smoothcast ROTO!
Hrm... this isn't tasty at all!
But it does make a pretty awesome base for the thrusters!
I'll just have to do a bit of detailing on the underside and make the base to mount it to the pack. The final ones will be made with Featherlite rather than ROTO, since ROTO is heavy.
Progress marches on at an alarming rate! 2 weeks till C5! PLENTY of time!
Since last I updated here, I've finished the sculpts for the jetpack, molded the resin parts, cast them up, and assembled my pack:
I made the thigh armor:
And last night did the hands, cod, knees and shins:
The shins might be flared out too wide. They looked good over my jeans, but I'll need to see them over the suit with the right boots to be sure. If they are, it's easy enough to sand the mold down a bit and re-pull.