A project I am working on

Things on this blog have been very slow for a long time (little over half a year now) so I though it time to do a few more posts, mainly about this project i am working on for SwanCon 2012. The project is for a full scale wearable Space Marine costume from Warhammer 40,000. The Only true liitation is that I have until April 5th to get it done, so not exactly short on time.

A model space marine

I started out by using a papercraft program called Pepakura to print out foldable designs for the various parts of the costume, starting with the head. Cutting and folding went well, but to give the final product some strength, what would normally be done in costume making comunities would be to apply a coating of resin and make use of fiberglass. That was a bit out of my budget so I went with a paper mache instead.

The helmet before adding the pipes or paper mache

This would leave it strong enough, relatively light and easily paintable. Sadly, I made the mistake of applying the mache to the top first instead of working my way up. Because of this, the paper collapsed on itself and ruined the helmet, oh well, a learning experience.

My next attempt was of a shoulder piece. For this I used a light card instead of paper, so far, so good. I have just today added the edges around the shoulder piece and started to apply the paper mache, it is holding up so far but I will have to wait until tomorow until to say whether it worked or not.

Shoulder piece with first sections of paper mache

If alll goes well, tomorrow I will also start on the arm pieces, lower arm, upper arm and elbow plates. Fun...