Assemble The Giant Robot!

Previous Creations

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:53:59 GMT

Axe with hand-guard. I don't know why I put the hand-guard on it, and furthermore I don't care.

One of a pair of short-swords inspired by the Chaos Blades from the God of War games.

I made a 42" cleaver in the same style and sold the three as a set for about £100. Wish I'd got a picture of them all...

A reptilian/demonic eyeball. Intended to be safe as a thrown weapon, but due to the foam I used for the strands of optic nerve was failed. Still sold it, mind. It was built on a foam football, with 3mm plastazote for the optic nerve and the bulge at the iris

Great-sword with brass detailing and Royal Blue suede grips. Very nice, and I regret having to sell it but needed the money. Also remarkably light due to being built on hollow core.

Another great-sword, more basic design.

A nice little sledgehammer. The head was made from low density upholstery foam.

A set of dagger, short-sword, long-sword and shield. Getting the same shape on the pommels was difficult, but not as bad as getting an even finish with the latex on the shield. I am never using water-based paint again!

At a mighty length of 7 feet and 3/4 inch, I call this one "Sparda" after the sword on which it was based (Devil May Cry, by the way). Build on hollow core, it's a fair bit lighter than it looks, but still gets a fair bit of momentum behind it on a good swing.

Shuriken

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:52:07 GMT

I have seen LRP-safe shuriken for sale on some website or other (I forget which one), but I've had this idea for a while. Never managed to finish one yet, though.

Admittedly my design looks more than a bit daft, not at all authentic (not that you can really expect much of that in LRP weaponry) but will never jab someone nastily* in the eye.

Template for the shuriken shape:

Central layer template: the square in both this and the shuriken shape template is a hole cut right the way through. The circles in this one are the hollow sections to be filled with latex, as indicated in the cross-section

Cross-section view:

I made a prototype a while back, all made with 2mm foam and without the solid latex sections (the above designs are the revised ones drawn up after the prototype)
It flies okay, but tends to spiral during flight. With practice, a fair degree of accuracy is possible. Haven't applied any finishing latex to it. Once I find the damned thing again, I may add a picture.

At some point I will be making some of these for ginger_rikku , once I have the time and space to work in

* Disclaimer: slight jabbing may occur

Wings

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:16:39 GMT

The wings:

The "skeleton" is made from plastic piping, available in hardware stores. The "curve" at the black lines was made by holding the pipe over a candle to melt the plastic, rotating it to melt it all the way round, then moving it away and holding it in place until the plastic cooled, and voila, it holds the shape.

The "knuckles" are where I joined one piece of pipe to another: at the smaller join, a thinner pipe was inserted between the two pieces and covered liberally with impact adhesive. I covered the join in cloth strips, also covered in adhesive. The larger join involved splitting one of the pieces (the one pointed toward the bottom of the picture above) about 3 inches down, then melting both sides of the split in the same way I made the curve; making sure I had gloves on (which was a trial-and-error learning process :-/) I held the two sides around the other pipe until they solidified in a loose grip, which was the best I could manage, then used about 2-3 times as many cloth strips to keep it in place. Once the glue dries on the cloth, the join becomes fairly sturdy.

Mounted on the jacket:

The darker strips at the end of the pipes are plastazote, carved into "finger"-like extensions, held in with impact adhesive.

The green "webbing" is actually plastazote offcuts, used by suppliers as packing material. Turns out it's the perfect thickness for the purposes of wing-making.

The two wings were joined with cloth strips, as before, then mounted on a piece of 24mm plastazote, which was slanted to aim it away from the shoulders; this was intended to keep the restriction of the mobility of my arms to a minimum. The yellow pieces here are 3mm plastazote, holding the wings to the 24mm piece. The brown strips are leather offcuts, securing the wings to the shoulders of the jacket. Initially I tried it without these strips, but the wings just fell backwards and stuck out almost at a right-angle. Uncomfortable, unsafe, and stupid-looking.

Unfortunately, the padding made the jacket a little too snug, so I removed it and neglected to try it on immediately afterwards. I have since lost the padding, and find that without it, the jacket is a little too loose. I might add a couple of belts - one at chest-height, one at waist-height - to secure it better.

1st Project for 2010

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:56:16 GMT

I have a choice here -

Either

a full-body demon/dragon suit complete with full-head mask and digitigrade stilts (see here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgyx8mG17f8 and here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAmD92nEyAU)

or

a LRP-safe chainsaw complete with engine sound effects (using the inner workings of a toy chainsaw - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Theo-Klein-Toy-Bosch-Chain/dp/B0000AC9C4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=toys&qid=1259927471&sr=8-1) (but no moving parts) and glowing power source (using the LED unit from a colour-changing snowman, like this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Changing-Snowman-Christmas-Decoration-Nightlight/dp/B002E77XRU)

I could try and make both, but then it would be a case of which one I want to finish first. The suit would be simpler (and I already have a boiler suit to work with, and a half-finished set of rigid wings mounted on what used to be a padded jacket for horseriding), but would take longer, while the chainsaw would take less time but be much more complicated.