OPEN ARMS

I got less than 2 weeks to finish and there's still tons of work to be done! I finished one of the gauntlets and need to glue the armor to the other one. And after that, paintworks. I didn't even have time to draw up the templates, just improvising from VinMan's templates. Here's what I got for now...

TEMPLATES!!

It's the busiest time of the year. Everybody decides to get married and everyone wants to complete their tender before the year ends. And I'm really behind schedule to complete this suit before 27th Dec. I've just finished prepping the chest armor for painting. But I'm way ahead of myself. I started drawing the armor templates based on Narin's Elder Blade Kit. I'll post them as I try them out. But for startes, here's the chest plate. The sizes are in milimeters and it worked fine for me. You might wanna rescale them to suit your bodies.

Here's the overall plate..

base

plate 01

plate 02

plate 03

plate 04

And here's how it really looked like on a 4mm EVA foam

and this is after I've added textures using my rotary tool and base-coated black

INKED, AT LAST

A short update...I've painted the tats and added the quills....and I LOVE it!!

Oh, and I've added teeth as well!

SKIN O' MY TEETH

Just a little photoshop to see if the idea of having tattoo on the right eye makes any sense at all...For the time being, I just adapted the albino predator tattoo design onto the mask... and photoshopped the teeth as well..

MORNING SICKNESS

Woke up a bit early today..Managed to do some progress to the mask and hands..My wife hates them..hahaha. I'm heading into the right direction.

TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN'

A few years ago, I would sit and build my models and would not leave my workbench until they are done. I would spend countless days not doing anything else except my models. If I ever stopped, I was afraid that I would lose that momentum and abandon everything altogether. I thought this would go on forever...

Now, I have my lifetime project going on. Raising my own family. The rest is just sideliners. So, when my pc crashed for the last time 2 weeks ago, I wasn't really devastated. I was too busy chillin' with my wife and kid to notice. I did, however, manage to do some progress on the predator suit. 

Monsterroom's Latex mask and hands arrived. They are fantastic! A lot of flashing but still great nonetheless. I also finished (kinda) the body suit (without the armor). Here's what I did so far...

Almost done...

Monsterroom's mask and hands, trimmed

Zippers salvaged from my old jacket. Planning to use the faux leather for the suit as well

I'm set to paint my latex mask. All I need is some latex paint. Now, where can I get those? MonsterMakers do supply a range of latex colors. The fucked up part is, the minimum order for them to send to Malaysia is US250. Ain't that a bitch? So, I googled for tutorials on how to paint latex mask. The easiest way it seems is to mix acrylic colors with liquid latex. That's easy. Malaysia is one of the biggest exporters of latex. I could get them anywhere here, right? Wrong. R-O-N-G, wrong! I've been scurrying art shops, hardwares, suppliers and even LGM (that stands for Lembaga Getah Malaysia or Malaysian Rubber Board) and all I got was fuck all. I had to source out another method to paint the mask. Another way to do it it seems was mixing oil paint+rubber cement+naphtha. Naphtha? what the fuck is that? Thank God for google, Naphtha is Zippo fluid! HAH! And for those who doesn't know what rubber cement is, it's art gum! So here it is...the Latex paint ingredients...

The ratio is 15% oil paint+35% rubber cement + 50% naphtha/zippo fluid. Mix them evenly and they will turn up all gooie and stuff. If you decide to use airbrush, then you need to thin the mixture with more naphtha until it's like really "watery" or in Kedah tongue "Cheroi".

And here's the result...

I'm not finished painting yet but I'm satisfied with the outcome so far, for a newbie...Woohoooo!!

HARGA BULU KAKI a.k.a THE PRICE OF THE HAIR OF MY LEGS

If I could shave off all the hair on my legs, how much are they worth? I'm not sure about my hair, but I sure know that the 'hair' (or quills) for a predator prop does cost at least a finger or two. So I decided to make them myself. But what's the cheapest way to do it, plus, how the fuck do you make 'em all bendy and flexy like the movies aside form the traditional silicone/latex cast? After some netsurfing time, I found out that there is a product out there that can do just that, without the hassle of a mold. Behold, Sculpey's Bake n Flex!

It's like your normal super sculpey clay, but it doesn't harden like a motherfucker after you bake them. Fuckin' A!!! Here's what I have right now..

Perfect! The only thing is, I got super busy right after that. I couldn't even catch a breath during the weekend. And I only managed to do some minor amendments to the biceps this morning..The arms looked a bit funny, and I know it has to be the biceps... So here's what I changed...plus I started to sculpt the forearm muscles as well...

COLOR SPLASH!

I feel like changing the skin color..Tried to do some photoshopping over the image..here's the end result..

WEEKEND WARRIOR

It's that time of the week again, kind people, last weekend I managed to do quite an amount of progress  to the muscle suit. I finished adding scales to the EVA foam skin..Bloody tedious work, but worth all the effort..after the scales are completed, I laid PVA glue all over it for the base coat of the paint later on..

Oh, by the way, did I mention that it's a fuckin' messy work as well?

After the PVA coating has dried off completely, I painted a coat of sand-ish yellow color (I used a cheap spray can, thin layers at a time) over the muscles.

..and because I'm such an impatient prick, I overdid the shadow accents. Bah! I'm gonna hafta redo the paintwork again after this.. But for now, I think I can safely try this on..

It fits!! But putting it on and taking it off again is a bitch! I think I need to add zippers to the back. The bio looks ok though..That's all for now...I need sleep....zzzzzzzzzzz....

CURVES

Hey fellas...Like I mentioned earlier, I felt that the bio helm was a bit too big, so I started with the muscle suit. Started off with a binding tape-dummy of myself and a cheap 20 bucks body hugging t-shirt.

I used 1/2 inch thick foam (I don't know the exact name of the foam, but it looked like the ones used in cheap matresses) to form the pectorals. I looked down right ugly and I almost gave up on this...

But thanks to the missus, I managed to pull myself together and continued on...

It looked better, although I have to say, cutting and carving the foam to shape is a bitch to do..

Now here's the tricky part, I'm going to cover the foam muscle with 1mm thk. EVA sheet. I learned this trick from my good friend Jeff of Wizart Studio...

Not too bad for a first timer, eh? 

Now I can see for sure whether the bio helm is too big of not...

Yup, it does looked tad too big compared to this:

Well, I guess I'mma hafta do a new bio helmet...

AN OLD FLAME

Greetings humans. It's time for another episode of "DO THE THINGS YOU LOVE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE BEFORE YOU DIE". 

I had the pleasure of meeting a coupla Malaysian cosplayers who are into predators the other day, and they invited me to join their fb group, Malaysia Predator Clan. Wow! These guys are great! The amount of passion they put into their predator suits really amaze me. The group is small, but each of them has or in the process of making their own predator suit! HAH!! Cool, innit??!! It's like meeting up your long lost brother. 

So, being me, I ditched the TIE interceptor project (only for a while) and ...wait for it.......started my own Predator suit project...heheheh..

Here's a list of what I need to do to become an "ugly motherfucker", as arnold would say it:

• make a bio helmet (no, I'm not gonna use the ones I've already have..where's the fun in that, right?)
• make an undermask with dreads and teeth and all
• make a muscle suit
• make a set of armor and backpack and weapons to go with the muscle suit
• wear the suit with pride
• go kick some ass!

So that's the plan. First off, I wanted to become the Wolf Predator from AVP:R. He's just sooo damn badass! I already have a sideshow Wolf Predator Bio Helmet and a smaller Snyder Helmet, but still I decided to make another one just for the fun of it. 

I started off with a pep file that I found in the hunter's lair forum, a damn accurate pep file. Here's some progress pics :

And here's some comparison pics between the pep mask and the sideshow and snyder mask:

Not too bad, eh? Now that the easy part's done, we go to the dirty part; resin & fibreglass application..(the part I hate most)

...and more dirty work, bondo and sanding....dread..

....and filling the gaps....

....and lastly, texturing...cough cough..

After this stage, I began to feel restless due to the fact that the helmet seemed tad too big. And although this is not totally finished yet, I decided to start with the muscle suit. I will revisit the bio helm once I finish the suit so that I get the Idea of how big the helm should really be...