Here's a brief writeup of my technique for building the vacuum form blanks for the thigh armor! I'm hoping to use similar methods for most of the arm and leg pieces.
I started by making bodyforms of both of my thighs using packing tape as detailed by Foameo earlier in the blog. I recommend having a really, really good friend on hand for this one--it gets a bit personal depending on how high you need the form to go! Once the forms were done, I did a rough coat of bondo over both of them for rigidity and sanded them down to a more-or-less smooth surface using my dremel and some sanding blocks.
Once the thigh was ready, I used newsprint paper and painter's tape to rough out a pattern. I'm very visual, and I find it helpful to cut out paper patterns and try them out over myself or, in this case, over my pants to make sure they'll fit. I changed the pattern for the thigh armor a few times before I felt satisfied that the shape was right and that the seams would fall where they do on the character model. It helped that I did a lot of testing on thigh armor for my costume last year--I used my previous thigh plates to help guide where the knees should cut up in back to allow for a full range of movement.
Once the paper pattern was done, I cut the two shapes out of craft foam. Then I hot-glued the craft foam patterns onto the left and right thigh forms. My goal here is to have a form that's rigid enough to vacuum form without having to sand the bondo enough to get a perfect surface! At this point, I also cut both thigh forms in half along the seams and taped them back together.
You can see in the above photo that I started trimming the blanks as well. I used standard rubber tubing that's been cut in half. I like the sizes that are available from rubber hose, but I found out in our 40k costumes that it doesn't take glue or paint well. Fortunately, I'm planning on vacuum forming this hose!
After the trim was added to the top and bottom, I started using Apoxie Scupt to shape the surface details.
Hilde's thigh armor has a lily of the valley with a border shape plus arches on the inside and outside. I'm not sure yet how well the plastic I'm planning on using will pull details, so I'm going to leave off the finer details like braided trim and the lily itself until I know if the vacuum former will pick it up. But for now, the blanks are more or less finished! I'm hoping to build the breastplate, arm pieces, and greaves in a similar fashion.
I started by making bodyforms of both of my thighs using packing tape as detailed by Foameo earlier in the blog. I recommend having a really, really good friend on hand for this one--it gets a bit personal depending on how high you need the form to go! Once the forms were done, I did a rough coat of bondo over both of them for rigidity and sanded them down to a more-or-less smooth surface using my dremel and some sanding blocks.
Once the thigh was ready, I used newsprint paper and painter's tape to rough out a pattern. I'm very visual, and I find it helpful to cut out paper patterns and try them out over myself or, in this case, over my pants to make sure they'll fit. I changed the pattern for the thigh armor a few times before I felt satisfied that the shape was right and that the seams would fall where they do on the character model. It helped that I did a lot of testing on thigh armor for my costume last year--I used my previous thigh plates to help guide where the knees should cut up in back to allow for a full range of movement.
Once the paper pattern was done, I cut the two shapes out of craft foam. Then I hot-glued the craft foam patterns onto the left and right thigh forms. My goal here is to have a form that's rigid enough to vacuum form without having to sand the bondo enough to get a perfect surface! At this point, I also cut both thigh forms in half along the seams and taped them back together.
After the trim was added to the top and bottom, I started using Apoxie Scupt to shape the surface details.
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