RinRin Kigurumi~n

完成!!

2011-11-11T16:23:00.005-06:00

Finished!
Finally got the darn thing done. After like what, three months? Yeesh!

All right, lets get this last construction post started. I went to the store and got a few more supplies, most importantly craft foam sheets.

I cut out two shapes like this from the foam sheets, then cut apart two black ponytail holders.

Not quite rocket science. The strap goes around where the pigtails attach.

Just that one small detail really pulls her together. Oh, and the tongue and teeth were finally added as well.

I cut the teeth out of white craft foam, it worked out much easier and faster than when I tried to make it from clay. The tongue is clay.

Padding.

Created the bottom of her ponytail, and then more craft foam for the ponytail holder!

Aaaaand that's it!
I went out the next day and got some pictures to show off the finished mask! Cleverly getting around my current lack of zentai with a scarf and gloves.

I really want to thank everyone for all your help and support. Wyu, Kiki, Jess, Odette, all my friends... I woulda never gotten this done without you guys. I know that sounds sorta cheesy for just a costume mask, but it's been a big learning experience for me, and a darn lotta work!

Axew, Get in my Hair!

2011-11-08T05:35:00.004-06:00

All right, here comes the fun part! Well, not all that fun. Took me a good while to do.

Basically, time to get started on the main parts of the hair!

I created a pattern which is a larger version of a similar pattern I previously tested. All the fleece is properly cut out.

Stuffing and hard styrofoam are the next ingredients.

I cut the Styrofoam into a useable shape, then inserted the bolts which are what attaches them to the head. Don't have a picture of those. Then, I stuffed the oblong shapes with the Styrofoam and polyester fiberfill.

Made simple shapes for the lumps on the pigtails, stuffed them, and hand-stitched them onto the large forms.

Completed and inserted!

Onto the main ponytail. This took a lot of pre-planning time. I think I was brainstorming it every night.

The inside of the hair is to be stuffed with a large, egg-shaped plastic balloon. It's an inflatable made of four pieces, so I traced a 1/4th section and then modified that to have an extended top. Took a lot of measurements during this process.

The result is a big old bag! There is a zipper installed at one of the seams, so I can freely remove and replace the balloon, should I need to travel.

Pinned back the parts I left unglued and attached the hair like the drawing. The fabric of her main hair is two layers of fleece thick, so what I did was glue the first layer down underneath the flaps, then cut the outer layer to match with the bottom of the flaps before gluing those down. Kinda hard to explain, but basically it's so the transition from thinner scalp hair to thicker ponytail hair is less noticeable.

Not bad! The fabric gets a bit bunched up in places near the top, but I suppose it can't be helped. I'm pleased with the overall silhouette.

Final things to do:
- Cover padding in fabric, glue padding in place
- Bulb shape at the bottom of ponytail
- Yellow hair clips and hair band
- Tongue and teeth
- Adding adjustable strap behind hair

Eyes and Hair

2011-11-02T17:03:00.005-05:00

Onward!

Finally managed to catch my mom's boyfriend with some free time recently, so we got the holes drilled in. These are where I'll be attaching her large pigtails via bolts.

They're a little uneven on both sides despite my efforts... but that can be compensated for later. I didn't take any photos, but I later got a coat of clear matte finish on her. Unfortunately it's more shiny than matte... but not too bad.

Next, I opened up photoshop, drew up some eyes, then went down to the office max to get them printed on card stock.

It's a good thing I made several sheets, I made plenty of mistakes! I proceeded to trash the basement during the construction of the eyes and lashes. Totally wore out my x-acto knives too.

目！ The eyelashes are cut from a black plastic folder. Thanks to Wyu for that idea.

The eyebrows are just printed on regular paper and backed with leftover card stock. I eventually used a small black inking pen (not ball point) to carefully fill in those white areas where the vision holes were cut out. I tried to use a black marker the first time around but it bled really badly. The pen bled a tiny bit too, but to a much smaller and more harmless degree.

And now the scary part... her hair!

A second trashing of the basement via fleece storm began. I used a pencil to section the scalp as a guide for cutting out the pieces. Fabric is very hard to work with! Even when you line it up to a paper guide, it flops all over.

Building up... my process was totally unscientific. Basically, laying bits of cloth over the guide areas, estimating where to cut, and adjusting accordingly. I managed to make very few mistakes, somehow! Took a while, though.

Everything glued down! I'm so close to completion, I can taste it!

Face Painting

2011-10-24T14:38:00.005-05:00

Got Iris all painted a few days ago. I gathered my materials and got started!
While getting paint at Menards, I found something really cool! It's a spray gun bottle that works like spray paint but you can put any paint color inside. This solved my problem of needing to buy an airbrush. The folks at Mendards matched the color I wanted perfectly too, so that was really convenient.
First, a coat of primer. I should point out that the man in that photo, my mom's boyfriend, has been SUCH a huge help, especially for this part. He helped me out a lot, getting me set up in his spray booth (along with my uncle) and sticking around for the whole process. I ran out of my own primer here, and he went to get me some more.
And then after the first coat of brown, he grabbed his hole filler putty and we filled in any newly-discovered mistakes.
But then, tragedy struck! I bumped the spray can with my elbow and the glass container broke all over. Of course, being the handyman he is, mom's bf said "Oh that's no problem, let me pull out the air compressor."
I didn't know it before, but he had a big spray gun! It had lots of valves: one to control airflow, one for paint intake, and one for spray size. He cleaned it up for me and we continued work with a much more efficient tool.
Second and third coat!
We got a whole 4 or 5 coats on this darn thing. The camera and florescent lights make her skin look a lot lighter than it is.
This photo at home shows her skin color a little more accurately, still sorta light though.
Next, mouth paint! I pulled out my old acrylics and mixed up a good color.
Also painted the inner parts of the eyes black. Not all of it, just where the eyelashes are going to sit.

Now all that's left is to apply a coat of finish, and to make her eyes, tongue, and teeth. Then, the task of her hair.

My Drill Will Pierce the Fiberglass!

2011-10-14T21:52:00.003-05:00

Drilled out the eyes and the back

I can fit my head in now! I put some paper eyes on to test it out, heh. Visibility is rough! Learning to adjust my "line of sight" accordingly will take some practice.

Marked out where I will need to add putty.

Now just to sand it down and she'll be all ready for paint! I've got to wait until I get my zentai though, to match the colors.

For now I'm going to concentrate on working out patterns for the hair and such.

Now We're Getting Somwhere!

2011-10-12T12:45:00.004-05:00

Tadaa~ all pulled from the mold.

I actually added a few more sheets of fiberglass and resin to some of the weaker-looking spots and around the edges after de-molding it, it was much easier to do that now.

Now I've just got to grind off the excess material and patch any holes or rough spots.

Fiberglass

2011-10-09T14:44:00.003-05:00

Small update today. Resin!

Freed the head from the silicone and plaster.

I poured resin into the ear molds, this is when I popped them out a few hours later.

Aaaand the FRP in the head! It was really hard to apply it through such a small hole. Those pins you see are holding the silicone in place since I didn't have enough registration keys.
Now all that's left is to wait for it to be ready to de-mold.

Progress!

2011-10-09T00:00:00.011-05:00

Big post time! Might as well show what I've gotten done so far.

Started out first by spraying the whole sculpt with primer. This let me see any mistakes easier, fills in any tiny holes, and smooths everything out overall.

Sorry about the yard, mom.

Sand the heck outta it....

Do that a few more times and it's looking pretty swell! It's not perfect perfect but I got tired of sanding at this point.

Next is silicone time! I slathered a bunch of Rebound 25 on this baby.
Had to turn the thing upside down sometimes to keep if from dripping off under the chin and such.
While I was at it, poured some into some makeshift molds over the ears.
Fully covered! This is about four layers, I coulda gone thicker maybe but I wanted to get everything done and I was running low on silicone.
And lastly, plaster bandages!

When those are all dry tomorrow, I'm going to do the FRP. Then it's just waiting until that cures.

Oh, and one more thing...
Obligatory.

Went Shopping

2011-10-06T22:22:00.002-05:00

More updates soon

Something Exciting!

2011-08-31T21:33:00.004-05:00

Not much to report on mask progress, I continued sanding and patching today, then added some clay to the mouth to even the shape out a bit, it looks much cuter now. Just needs a bit of sanding then I should be good for the next step!

It's kinda hard to tell what's going on under all that splotchiness!

Anyhow, the exciting thing is, I won Kanakig's free mask drawing! I couldn't believe it! All I've gotta do is pay shipping and I'll have my first ever mask! Big thanks to Kana for offering up something like this. I'll be sure to show her off right away.

Small progess

2011-08-30T21:37:00.004-05:00

Things are moving along again. I made repairs to the head form the best I could. The cracks were pretty bad! An entire chunk of the chin fell off, even! I was originally only going to use bondo, but I needed to do a lot of reconstruction with clay first.

You can see the slightly darker gray parts where I fixed stuff. The whole nose had to be sawed off and reshaped too, since the crack created asymmetry. I like how round it is now, though. The mouth still needs to be adjusted to be more centered, but I'll get to that later. Sometimes it just takes looking at things through a camera screen to notice symmetry flaws!

Next, I spent the next day giving her a Bondo Facial.

I did several layers for the remaining cracks, and then coated nearly the whole face in bondo, and sanded it down to help smooth out the nooks and crannies. I'll be finishing that up tomorrow. I don't know how smooth I'll try to get it at this stage, but anything will probably be better than sanding away at the finished fiberglass piece! Luckily since the back of the head will be covered in "hair", I only need to make that "good enough", heh.

Just a quick update

2011-08-24T18:22:00.002-05:00

Back home from my trip, gonna continue work again. Hit a bit of a snag unfortunately, so will have to backtrack a bit. She's got a huge crack going from her chin to her forehead, and it got pretty wide. I'm gonna have to rebuild the nose, chin, and some of the mouth. Not a huge deal, shouldn't be more than another day of work. Bought some Bondo on the way back as well.

Sculpt basically complete

2011-08-07T04:01:00.006-05:00

After working nonstop for two or three days (can't be sure, I stayed up all night at some point), I've got the sculpt done! There's a few minor things I'll probably tweak, but for now I'm really happy with it. Endless sanding now awaits me.

Here's a video of it still in progress, with some eyes and stuff stuck on.

Starting again soon.

2011-08-03T02:28:00.005-05:00

New project. I've decided on a character and drew up a template. Iris from Pokemon, clearly. I tried to create something in-between the game style and the anime style. The pupils are probably too fancy but that's subject to change. I printed out a gridded version at actual size and will begin sculpting soon. Expect photos!

2011-07-14T20:03:00.000-05:00

Clearing this blog out and starting anew. I'll be updating this in a while.

2010-07-09T23:37:00.001-05:00

NOTHING TO UPDATE WITH

HERE'S AN MS PAINT COMIC