The Sandman - Complete! (Helm Pt.12)

After a morning of furious painting, starting with a white primer layer, followed bu successive layers of airbrushing, I rushed out the paint job on both the spine and the mask itself in a few hours, and it's not exactly what I would have liked, but it's damn good for the time frame.

Post mortem fixes are at the bottom, but let's get to it first!


We attended the masquerade ball in style, and got a lot of comments and pictures on the costumes and how recognisable we were as a theme.

Enjoy the pics, and the fruit of all that labour! I already have planned improvements for the second version, when I no longer have a deadline, and can spend a lot more time researching making it functional, but I wore it for a lot of the night, and it was amazing.

As you can see, my two friends were Delirium and Death. I actually crafted the Ankh to attach to the choker for Death, and she did a fantastic job on nailing not only the rest of the outfit, but also the attitude.

As for Delirium, I gave here the Nemo balloon idea, the fishnets and corset, and she went on with the crazy attitude that had people running away in case she touched them and sent them off to crazy town.

The whole night was amazing, and seeing the pictures afterwards I can only imagine how surreal it must have been for those around us. The last two shots here are fantastic, the first shows the side detail in all its glory, and how it fits with the whole outfit as we slink through the crowd, like The Endless would, practically unseen.


The final shot was right at the very end of the night, and we clearly had some wear and tear apparent, but held up well. All in all, a vast success!

Things that fell short:

1) My Sclera contact lenses didn't arrive on time, so I had to make do with normal black costume lenses, seems like a shame in the pics, but the flashes were illuminating the interior, in the normally dull environment, I'm sure it looked authentic.
2) I started out the project with the idea that I would make a robe, form fitting, with led strips in the interior of the hem, which would make it look like flames. I had to dump that, because I know nothing about tailoring (yet!) and it would probably have taken me away from the mask
3) The eye sockets needed more work, and that's mainly because I positioned it incorrectly in my rush, you can see my eyes sat low, which made it hard to go up and down stairs! Next time, the eyes will be closer to he brow.
4) Colouring was rushed, I'd love the opportunity to do it again at a slower pace.
5) The Dreamstone, in my attempt to make it look diffuse, came out a bit less like a gem, and not 'sharp' enough for my liking, I wanted more of a 'hard cut gem' look. It also came out just a touch too big.
6) I would like the spine to be a bit more flexible next time, while maintaining its shape, not flapping all over the place. It was rigid for the night, which also didn't help going down stairs.

and finally...

7) I need a photoshoot just for the helm!

Cya for the next iteration!

The Sandman's Ruby - Complete! (Dreamstone Pt.4)

Nope, looks like last night's extended experiment resulted in nothing more than the resin hardening in the rough pattern (I'm really not sure what I was expecting, I think I might have been too tired to consider this result)

I achieved nothing more than taking the sharpness away from the edges, and still having the rough pattern. At least it was a tad more shiny now, I'll take that at least.

Well, I don't have pictures of the rest, but it was a simple matter of adding some 'fake highlights' in white around the edges to make them SEEM sharper (and old trick I learned from my miniature modelling days), and assembling the 'glass' and 'mount' around a long gold chain.

In the next iteration, here's what I'll change, having more time:

1) Start with a wooden block, and start a bit smaller.
2) Sand down the edges carefully, get as few imperfections as possible, and if I lose an edge, start again with a new block.
3) Make sure there is an indent or dam to allow more resin to set around the edges, making it stronger.
4) Either add colouring to the resin before pour, are add it to the inside after it has set, this should help the outer layer seem clean and shiny, while the colour is in there deep.
5) Scratch up the INSIDE of the final resin cast, giving the diffuse factor, while maintaining the sharp outer edges.
6) Make my own L.E.D. layout and patterns, while those ones were great, the predictable pattern sometimes put them in sync, and it didn't really look random. Nonetheless, to someone not staring at it, it seemed more than random enough.

That's it, here's a pic from the night, where I was about half way toward getting dressed.

The Sandman's Ruby (Dreamstone Pt.3)

With all the excitement focused on the helm, I decided to take a break and take another experimental stab at the Dreamstone to see if I could produce something of considerable 'gem-like' quality.

Rather than follow my own previous advice by using wood, I, for some unknown reason, decided to try again with foam core board. The difference this time was that I had recently purchased a belt sander, and I was thinking that I could maybe use the same technique, but with the sander, would be able to precision sand down to the lines I wanted.

Seriously, if you do this yourself, just use wood, I'm a glutton for punishment and trials.

Here is another round of pics.

As you can see, the upper surface is smooth, a vast improvement on the last attempt, however, thinking ahead, I thought this might not be the best-case scenario, as I wanted to put lights in there, and have the diffusely blink. A clear outer surface would probably leave the full glare exposed, so I basically just peeled off the top layer, leaving the foam exposed underneath (the rough texture would therefore translate into a diffused glass pattern, or so I hoped, seemed to make sense in my head).

I then went about molding the stone, and as usual, I like to experiment, so I used a little of a trial pack of Smooth-On's Oomoo silicone rubber, which has the excellent properties of not needing to be vacuum degassed (remove the air bubbles that might cause you problems later). I don't have a vacuum chamber, so this seemed like a good time to test this out on a rough surface.

I then went ahead, after it has set, to pouring some Alumilite Clear resin in there and slushing it around till it set. The hard part here was getting it to that the edges were thick enough to support the rest of the shell. I didn't quite get this right, and it would be the same with the helm later, I need to sculpt in a dam or indent so that the negative will be able to accommodate more resin at the very edges.

Here is the mold after a couple of resin pours.

While that was fully curing, I finally took my own advice, and started with wood to construct the frame of the Dreamstone. I took some hobby wood, cut the size out, and then sanded down the interior bevel with a Dremel sanding bit.

I then took some progressively higher and higher grit sanding paper to it until the edges were perfectly smooth. I went and drilled two decent sized holes in the back surface, more on the reason for this next.

So completely by chance, while I was shopping for pieces of Soo's Delirium costume, I came across some very cheap and cheesy 'diamond rings', which were actually just hunks of plastic on a plastic ring mount, with blinking L.E.D.s in them. I guess some ladies like the bling bling to literally bling.

I grabbed a couple of these, took them back and cut the L.E.D. circuits from the housing, leaving me two small boards with three L.E.D.s on them. These already had three sets of blinking patterns built into them, so I was delighted I could just dump learning simple electronics for post project, and use these in the interim (weight off my shoulders knowing I might be able to achieve the Dreamstone effect I wanted without any effort!

To give the 'cloudy' effect, I already knew from years of art as a kid that if you wanted clouds, you used cotton wool, so another quick test later verified that I was right (past-me was smiling), here's how it turned out.

I decided to put the whole assembly together as a preview, two L.E.D.s, wood frame and clear Dreamstone. Here is a video of how excellent it came out.

I pulled the Dreamstone casing from its mold, and started with progressive layers of a red ink wash until I achieved the desired richness. Also, despite the foam core being ridged (take a look at the sides, you can see in the cast that the 'edges' where the individual boards were glued came out, like I say, use one piece of wood and every surface will be super smooth, don't make my mistake!).

Still, I like the sharpness of the edges, and it would definitely do.

While the ink was drying, I took some Rustoleum gold primer to the Dreamstone mount, which handily sat on the steel floor post I got with the medical spine!

Once I was happy with the red colour of the Dreamstone, I started wondering if I could make it more 'glassy' and shiny, without actually losing the diffuse element (despite the fact that the cotton wool was going to be doing most of the work). At his point, if I had used wood, I probably wouldn't have the problem, and the cotton wool and paint job would have done the work, but this is a fine example of knowing when to stop.

I didn't know when to stop, so I pressed ahead with adding another layer of Crystal Clear resin on top, thinking it would smooth things out.

Called it a night here, and went to bed, hopeful for the next day!

The Sandman's Ruby (Dreamstone Pt.2)

OK, so I've never tried to reproduce 'sturdy glass' before, and even fake gemstones are something I've considered to be too heavy in large sizes for anyone to wear all night, unless you are Mr. T of course.

I had some clear resin from Alumilite lying around, and in a moment of craziness decided to see if I could rapid prototype a Dreamstone from a basic mold and cast process of the simplest variety.

Starting with the foam board I glued together from the last post, I manually cut down the edges with an Xacto blade to the best of my steady-hand ability (beer may have been required to steady that hand), and then used some clay to fill and roughly smooth down the edges.

Once done, I then whipped up a quick box, applied some Vaseline to the surface of the prototype gem shape as a release agent (it was lying nearby from a previous life cast I had done), and poured myself a concrete mold.

Not bad, not bad at all, but I could already see some potentially hazardous and troublesome undercuts, nonetheless I pressed on. I mixed up my clear resin, put a thin red wash of 'paint' in there, and 'Slush cast' the resin around the inside.

It was only a minute or two into this process that I realised I hadn't released the mold, which meant I'd probably be having a nightmare trying to get the resin cast out of this. It's OK, it's not like the release agent was nearby or anything, like a whopping mile or something... oh wait...

Well, that's what excitement and enthusiasm gets you, hasty mistakes! Either way I wasn't too bothered I was going fast anyway, just checking viability.

I was right, getting the resin cast out of there was a nightmare, and a feat of strength, but after a bit of warping it came out and i was able to roughly put it back into the right shape. Several things were apparent:

1. A vacuum former would be awesome.
2. The Vaseline layer that released the foam from the concrete was clearly too thick/course, and this transferred all the way to the final cast, the pattern was evident on the resin.
3. In that regard, if casting in resin, I'd have to do a lot of work buffing the positive I was going to cast into almost perfect shape, or find some way of polishing the final cast down smooth.
4. The colour transferred well, will have to go bolder, and look into resin dyes.

Good test, next time, I'll probably use wood, sanded down to good angles, followed by perhaps a filler layer smoothed down very fine, and topped with resin to give it a polished surface before casting. I'll use a spray release to prevent any unusual transfer, and slush cast as I did before.

The Sandman's Ruby (Dreamstone)

"I walk across the dreaming sands under the pale moon: through the dreams of countries and cities, past dreams of places long gone and times beyond recall."

So I seem to have taken on what appears to be a quite ambitious project, and that is to re-create the visage of Dream of the Endless, otherwise known as Morpheus from Neil Gaiman's graphic novel 'The Sandman'. To ease myself into the project (and prop making in general), I decided to start with one of the three 'lost totems' he goes to find after his capture.

The three items are his helm, a pouch of dream sand, and a ruby (dreamstone) attached to a chain.

As I know a talented leatherworker, I decided to offload that little project to her, and I look forward to how it's going to turn out. I therefore started late in the evening on the ruby, which will definately be easier than the helm. Here's the art I shall be trying to follow:

I started pretty late in the evening, so to begin the prototype, I roughed out the size I wanted on a slice of foam board, then glued three layers together with PVA glue. I marked the final shape I wanted to achieve, and we are off and running!

Throughout this whole blog, comments, tips, praise and criticism (so long as it's constructive!) are always welcome! More soon!