test your might / mortal kombat

Allotropos wrote:now i have the techno mortal kombat theme stuck in my head !!

one can argue about the quality of the movie, still there´s something to it to be remembered after 23 years. plus cary tagawa as shang tsung was awesome. really nice guy to from what i´ve seen from non movie related interviews with him.

shazzdan wrote:"FINISH HIM!"

believe me, there will be blood


that idea with the "cube blob" sounds awesome, though i´m not sure if hot glue would be the proper material for the project. you could form a metal bucket into a cube, fill it with glue sticks and fire it up, maybe it´ll work.
still would be an incredible project, very thrilled for it to come to fruition.


in the meantime and thanks to the fact that my 3d printer needs maintenance(again), i managed to get a few parts from it, enough to finish a "filler character"
hope you enjoy it





besides, any tips for a proper liu kang head sculpt ? haven´t found a long haired asian sculpt with any likeness, be it robin shou or game model

cheers

Your filler character looks great. I could be completely wrong, but wasn't there a new product announcement about a Liu Kang figure at some point (but I am not sure how far back, and I might be misremembering).

Love your new “filler” character. He looks cool.

I'm a huge Mortal Kombat fan myself, you captured the look of a battle screenshot quite well. I recently played MK11, and would love to see a figure of Noob Saibot's default character model from the game.

thanks guys. making a custom kano was an easy choice since i had almost all the parts around somewhere anyhow, plus he aint a very demanding char to put together, rather bland really.
neither played him in any mortal kombat, still he's part of the original roster so.....

funny thing i was sceptical at first how to form the metal face plate and i was a bit reluctant at first to put the greenstuff directly on the headsculpt, lest i'd mess it up. so i put some garbage-bag foil on double sided duct tape and gave it a shot. the upside is you can try as much as you want without ruining the headsculpt. the downside, well no matter how far i pushed it into the eye socket, it always bulges out.
and in the end i had to apply super glue anyhow.
still thats one of the things were 3d printing hits its limits. for downsizing the faceplate to 1/6 scale messes up the model to the point where large chunks are missing, odd.

next in line is baraka if, and thats a big if, my 3d printer gets the headsculpt right. those teeth ain't only a horror when they snap at you, all,those fine details are a pain to print without breaking.
even got a sculpt without teeth on hold, you dont know true horror if you havent seen toothless baraka

plus i got scorpions face mask as a good quality 3d model, gonna give it a shot after baraka is done. again, scaling down to 1/6 messes with the mesh density somehow. time will tell.
but hey, if i ever need a halloween costume i'll print it myself .
but then i still need to beef up some 30 pounds of muscle mass, seems like the mk chars aint holding back with the good juice =)

What about the Dragon Hit Team heads for Liu Kang? Kano with the stash and chops makes him look even more badas$, Like one of the Dreadnoks

thanks for the tip, if i can snatch them somewhere cheap i´ll give it a try. though my skill in modifying headsculpts are limited at best and as far as i´ve seen the hit team figures have headsculpts with necks instead of neckless ones. this and applying hair will be challenging for me without ruining them completely.

had a kurt dörr once and tried to remove the neck to fit him on a seamless body..... regret cutting on that rare head ever since


oh and by the way, i was out to get my 3d printer back from maintenance only to find the store closed in spite the fact that i had an appointment with the owner.
so it´s basically one week of doing nothing until i got my next day off on wednesday next week
the printer itself is of good quality but the guys building and selling them don´t seem as reliable at this point. time to learn the means of repairing the darn thing myself, just my luck i guess

Good luck with the heads (check out our tutorial if needed) and with the 3D printer repair. What happened to German efficiency?

you tell me guess as long as theres no heckler und koch logo on the item effeciency isnt guaranteed.
seriously though i think the guy operating the store wanted to much to fast and only found out after expanding and relocating his company that people aint literally rushing down his door.
still if opening times are literally written on the door from 9am to 6 pm and you stand on front of said doors closed cause the bossman called it a day due to lack of customers, despite having an appointment, than yeah i am a bit pissed to say the least

i'm all for calling it a day early if business is quiet, still we dont close shop completely and i don't leave early if i await a customer myself. so it seems "efficiency" is only expected on my part and sadly missing when i'm on the receiving end o.O

epic...but no scorpion? needs some scorpion!

nah, i'm team sub zero but seriously though, as faithfull as mk9 was in terms of aesthetics, scorpion looked a bit over the top in my opinion. this and the fact that scorpion was sold everywhere by the time i caught fire with the mk theme makes him a top 5 on my todo list.
saw a pretty good custom scorpion, movie based no less, so in time i'll get some yellow fake leather and try my luck and limited skill on the yellow ninja.
the mask i already got as a stl file in pretty good quality, but my 3d printer literally has me screaming right now.

had it for maintenance with the guys who build them and just my luck, the issue didnt show when they test printed. still with my models on my sd card the issue is there and i'm a bit pissed to say the least that they refused to keep a lousy sd card with the explanation the wouldn't take any responsibility in case of losing. yeah right but a 1.300€ printer is fine to put on the shelf without any receipt when leaving it with them.
could literally throw sd cards at them in the dozen.
so right about now i'm at a loss and until next week neither the company nor i got a timeframe in comon for another try

the issue even only became this severe after an "upgrade" on the printhead and filament tube(?) inside, great.
so if anything i'll have an downgrade again for a chance of solution, weird huh?

on the bright side, the parts of the baraka head sculpt that did make the print look good so far, so if i get the darn thing to print the entire head i think it'll make a solid figure.
cheers

Such a great dio! Really brings me back to the 1st time stumbling on this in an arcade as a kid. The over-the-top goriness was such a glorious thing to see for the 1st time. The skeleton is incredible and the whole thing so perfect. Ready to see more fight photoshoots!!!

ouch my back been on this figure for about 10 hours straight, after letting the greenstuff dry and the printer finish its job. but right about now my back hurts like deadlifting with ronny coleman.

but in the end it was worth it for another main character for my mortal kombat "kollection" is done
never seen baraka in figure form (1/6 scale that is, for storm collectibles are making some pretty good 6" figures, though the prices are insane)
and i ain´t holding my breath hearing from world box again.

so i did it myself and it was quite a journey.
big kudos to the guys at thingyverse and other 3d model sites, without proper models this whole project wouldnt be possible.

but it aint sunshine and rainbows all the time, for more often than not the models themselves are low resolution.
here´s the first few tries with an un-altered model

even sanding the model like crazy it would still look blocky, so i gave meshmixer and to my big surprise windows 10 3d model tool a try.

and lo and behold, it turned out quite well.
in short, the programs add polygons where needed and smoothen the object without losing to much detail.





heres a picture from the recent game for reference :


i know i know, the head looks off on picture but given the limits of 3d printing i couldn´t reduce the size any further without making the walls to thin and the teeth to small to print.
still baraka isn´t that small in the game either so as of now it´s a good tradeoff for my taste.

plus i could finally salvage the kaustic plastik body i mutilated trying to do a wolfenstein figure, fitting the no-name brand headsculpt from the collectors edition on the neck.
guess if my wallet is ready again i´ll upgrade with a phicen m35(or whatever the biggest body is at that time).

oh and got a prototype shao kahn hammer on my desk waiting for the emperor..... so much to do, so little time.

until next time
cheers

He turned out great! Hope your back feels better soon.

Looks pretty good. A bigger body upgrade would probably help reduce the over-sized head issue, but it still isn’t too bad.

He turned out great! Hope your back feels better soon.

thanks, feeling ok again but this reminds me that i need to hit the gym again soon =)

Looks pretty good. A bigger body upgrade would probably help reduce the over-sized head issue, but it still isn’t too bad. 

glad you like it. here´s some action pics, depending on the positioning the head looks more or less ok
gonna try printing it smaller next time.

Very cool custom headsculpt....can't wait to see it with a tbleague body! It's already looking great, and I'm sure with the upgrade will be even more awesome!

here´s another update on my mortal kombat project. ordered a phicen m35 body after the last posting, figured i´d buy one someday anyway so why wait.
BUT the moment i had it in hand it was pretty clear it wasn´t getting the baraka treatment, not for 120€ for a naked body, no ssssir  

on the upside i tweaked my printer setting and altered the head model a bit and voila, proper scaled baraka head. plus this time i think i hit the skin tone much better.


gonna add some details to his clothing down the road though, still not happy with the figure as is.

now for the newest stuff, so new the paint still needs to dry, couldn´t risk ruining the body, putting the equipment on already.


 
the pants and harness is self made as well as the shin guards and the belt. i guess tomorrow i´ll put shao kahn together and make outworld great again

 

cheers

Love the new head and kitbash. As for the harness, if it is leather and it stains the body, just so you know, there's a good chance you can easily wash that off -- but you'll need to apply protective powder after that.

Looks good. Nice correction. Looking forward to seeing the new character.

That Shao Kahn is going to look sick once it comes together, I can already tell. I would say with the inner areas of Baraka's shirt, you could line it with a mixture of fabric glue and dark red paint. That could simulate the actual shirt lining and also prevent it from unthreading more.

Love the new head and kitbash. As for the harness, if it is leather and it stains the body, just so you know, there's a good chance you can easily wash that off

thanks for the tip, matter of fact years ago a almost ruined a coo model seamless body with this very mistake, using colored fake leather for clothing. this time i took the material form an old belt of mine and sliced it in half. in between is kind of a woven material, like a fine mesh. so the fake leather stuff remains on the outside all the time.


as for the armor pieces i glued foam underneath to prevent the painted stuff from touching the skin, well almost as you can never fully keep it "off" the body.
as for the fat belt around his waist, i made him some "underwear" of an old boxer short i had around. been washed many many times so i guess it won´t stain the figure anytime soon.

but in the end i´m quite happy with the result and must say IF it ever gets stained from the armor it´s well worth it and i´d rather buy another m35 before using it for another figure.

Looks good. Nice correction. Looking forward to seeing the new character.

again, my thanks and without further ado here´s shao kahn




sadly its the best my camera is able to do, gonna add some daylight shots tomorrow.

here´s a 1/4 statue based on the original mk2 look for reference


oh, by the way i know there´s a second skull emblem on the chest though i haven´t found a way to add it to his harness without making it either bulge to the front or simply "pop" off. geez this guy really is on the good juice all year

That Shao Kahn is going to look sick once it comes together, I can already tell. I would say with the inner areas of Baraka's shirt, you could line it with a mixture of fabric glue and dark red paint. That could simulate the actual shirt lining and also prevent it from unthreading more.

well i hope it does had a lot of fun putting it together, still a bit of tweaking left, especially re-glueing(if thats a word ) the inner foam on the shin guards. double sided duct tape wasn´t as up for the job as i hoped it would be.


as for barakas shirt thats a very good advice,gonna take a trip to my local hardware store to check for fabric glue tomorrow.



hope you like it so far, more characters to come in the future

cheers

He turned out great. I find Fabri-Tac works really well if they have that in Germany.

Yes, I was going to recommend fabri-tac or the Allene products -- technically you could use any glue that won't ruin the look. Shao Kahn did turn out very well. I'm sure you'll eventually stumble across little silverish round pieces to use as bosses for the harness.

hi folks, sadly non of the brands of fabric glue were available at the hardware store but there was to good old german "uhu" well see this weekend whether it works or not.

here´s some action shots in daylight i took today. what i didn´t take into consideration was how massive the figure is with all the armor added to it, pretty finicky to pose him.

as for the body itself i´m pleasantly surprised as how well far you can pose the limbs and torso given the muscle mass on the guy. so far i can really recommend the m35.
on the downside, mine had some very minor "bubbles" under the skin in some places. looks like a cut underneath with the upper layer intact though not unlike a blister.

but you need to look very hard to find these blemishes so they don´t bother me at all.

more pics to come once baraka gets a gear makeover.
cheers

They look good. I doubt a hardware store would sell fabric glue -- try a craft store or a fabric store. Uhu reminds me of my childhood. I don't remember the details -- if it dries clear (colorless), you might be able to use it on the edges of the fabric (if that is what you needed).

Finally took the time to read and look at everything. Great work on the customs, I admire your endurance to make the not-so-perfect parts like the head over and over again until you are pleased.

The pose and the hammer of that Kahn guy make him look really heavy in a realistic way. And interesting information on that tbleague-staining, did not know that. I don't own a Tbleague body yet, but does anybody have a link on that topic?

And I never played Mortal Combat to be honest, but has anybody watched the Black Mirror Episode 'Striking Vipers'?

So good!!! People who can make scenario by himself always be my god....

You did such a great job replicating his look, and he fits in perfectly with the dio — well done!