Three New Darth Vader Figures (LAST TWEAKS TO EMPEROR'S DEATH DIO) & Dio Builds For Them 1) Bespin Gantry Scene 2) Force Lightning Killing Emperor Scene 3) Meditation Chamber Scene.

Stryker2012 wrote:Looking good, Alex. Sorry to hear that guy isn’t being very helpful.

To be fair he's gotten back to me a couple of times today but still not sure of the price or how clear he can print it, also 'yellowing's' a thing apparently.

So still working with what I have.

Yellowing is only really an issue with clear resin. If you print in a translucent blue, you, hopefully, won't have that issue. Exposure to UV is usually what causes resin to turn yellow. You can also coat clear resin with varnish, which should somewhat protect it.

I have a 3D printed part printed in clear resin some ~6 years ago that I sprayed with gloss varnish. It's still perfectly clear.

Your dedication to this is amazing. I've heard of people putting together life-size Vader helmets, but you are building one from pieces in sixth-scale. Wow!

Zes wrote:Yellowing is only really an issue with clear resin. If you print in a translucent blue, you, hopefully, won't have that issue. Exposure to UV is usually what causes resin to turn yellow. You can also coat clear resin with varnish, which should somewhat protect it.

I have a 3D printed part printed in clear resin some ~6 years ago that I sprayed with gloss varnish. It's still perfectly clear.

Yes, we've been talking about that and he says he has some tricks like letting it cure in water then varnishing it with UV resistant clear coat. Good to know your's has lasted so well for so long!

GubernatorFan wrote:Your dedication to this is amazing. I've heard of people putting together life-size Vader helmets, but you are building one from pieces in sixth-scale. Wow!

Cheers mate! Done it before lol. I remember getting the shape of the helmet dome right was the tough part and that was making a black opaque one so I could use putty and all kinds of glues etc..

Some really awesome custom work. When I saw the blue one I thought you were going to make a hologram of vader, the electrocuted version is way cooler than what I had originally thought.

Theboo-bomb wrote:Some really awesome custom work. When I saw the blue one I thought you were going to make a hologram of vader, the electrocuted version is way cooler than what I had originally thought.

Cheers TBB! That hadn't even occurred to me lol! Interesting idea but not something I'll be doing personally, not evil enough!


On with the head show...

nicked the HT tunic for a modded cheap Hasbro one as the lightning body needs all the help it can get in the clothing department and the HT will be sitting so kind of a waste for that version to wear it, plus the cut helps expose the battery and switch to be more accessible.



left is completely SSC so lousy comparison, grabbed the wrong figure lol!















NEVER THOUGHT I'D GET THIS GAP TO CLOSE AS IT'S HARD ABS, SOMEHOW I DID IT WITHOUT BREAKING EVERYTHING, PATIENCE IS THE KEY HERE, NOT HOT WATER.













STILL NEEDS FLARED PART SHORTENED AND MIDRIB ADDED. AS WELL AS EVERYTHING ELSE!!















21 PICS THERE, I REFUSED TO BELIEVE 18 OR LESS WAS THE MAX! FORUMOTION & IMGUR JUST LIKE TO F**K WITH ME!

Playing with lighting effects to get a basic idea, black light seems best.

Lamp



Very old mini Maglite pre LED that served me well on the road for 20+ years but is dying, batteries and bulb.. what I had close to hand as phone normally used as torch in work area but used as camera too! Most decent torches attached to guns!lol.















LED black light















These pics were all taken in the shade during daylight so probably better at night.

That’s pretty cool. From the way you assembled the helmet to the different lighting takes. Neat stuff.

I second Mark. Impressive Frankensteining (and patience!) and interesting to see the different ways different light affects it. The black light, in particular, seems most promising, but they are all cool.

Stryker2012 wrote:That’s pretty cool. From the way you assembled the helmet to the different lighting takes. Neat stuff.

GubernatorFan wrote:I second Mark. Impressive Frankensteining (and patience!) and interesting to see the different ways different light affects it. The black light, in particular, seems most promising, but they are all cool.

Cheers! The tricky part will be making it look good unlit too! It will be partially black gloss for that with translucent streaks in the dome plus I'm going to incorporate blue clear parts at the front of the dome so the lit up areas don't just change transparency (dome ABS not very translucent) abruptly as soon as the dome starts but flow into it more naturally; I trimmed the flare of the dome's neck guard to be more accurate and in scale.
I'm setting up a mould to cast the skull and spine in clear resin today.
Done lots of mods and filling/sculpting on the mask and dome with hot glue, my cool dinky little glue gun arrived (has an on/of switch yay!) so I could do this. Lots of dremeling, sanding, scraping with a scalpel and even a belt sander used on the crest of the dome which was a lengthy job with all the hand tool work needed as well. Added blue ink to the mask after testing how it worked under UV light, much better than the Sharpie that just blocks the light! Reshaped the rear neck guard and glued it on, the bulk of the helmet will be black at the back so should fit in fine as it is.





PRE HOT GLUE DREMELING ETC..

















TESTING BLUE INK'S REACTION TO UV LIGHT VERSUS SHARPIE





BLUE INK WASH



SHARPIE INK





HOT GLUE FILLING AND SCULPTING

Well that was 20 something pics posted together and it worked, must have something to do with adding text in between pics?

SHAPING THE CREST





INK WASH APPLIED TO MASK AND TESTED WITH UV LIGHT













BELT SANDER SAVED A LOT OF WORK! LOL



STILL NEEDS A LOT OF TIDYING UP UP BY HAND WITH A SCALPEL, FILES AND SANDPAPER THOUGH..



HAS TO BE ROUGHED UP FOR BLACK PAINT ANYWAY.





AGES LATER...











TRANSPLANT AWAITS...







COMPARISON WITH SSC DOME







INNER RIBS ETC ON THE CLEAR PIECE HAD TO BE REMOVED WITH DREMEL, SCALPEL, SANDPAPER ETC..

Nice work, looks just right when lit.

GubernatorFan wrote:Nice work, looks just right when lit.

Cheers! Hopefully will have improved upon that now too. Swapped out some of the 'translucent' material for some transparent blue, not easy as the curves barely line up anywhere due to the different scales and moulds etc.. but used super and hot glue to mesh them together then painted it all with blue ink. I've just painted the basics of electricity/Force Lightning patterns with black liquid latex as a mask to preserve the translucent blue from the coat of black to come later, basically it looks arse-backwards now colour wise. I'll improve on the lightning effects later by carefully scraping away black paint using a scribe, the latex was very runny, the brush was not the best (tend to get destroyed by latex so chose an expendable one just in case) plus my hand's a bit shaky.
Also made a two part mould of the skull with spine using reusable Vinamold (cut it up and microwave it 15 seconds at a time between stirring, never overcook!! Morphs into a giant foaming monster that stinks the house out and needs a hose outside to control, I did it once..) the postman literally just delivered the 2 part crystal clear resin which I'll mix up later, takes 24hrs to cure which is pretty long compared to easyFlo 60. Hopefully the mould making pics will be of some use to our younger members who might not have learned this craft due to 3D printing.























YEAH NEEDED A LOT OF HOT GLUE TO SEAL ALL THE GAPS BEFORE TRIMMING IT DOWN/OFF WITH A SCALPEL.













BLUE INK

REALLY HARD TO BALANCE EVERYTHING TOGETHER ON A TORCH HEAD!











STILL A BLOODY GAP! FIXED IT THOUGH WITH SUPER GLUE.



OH YEAH, TINNED OUT THE SHRUNKEN VINYL ARMOUR PIECE THAT I MIGHT USE BITS OF WITH DOUBLE SIDED TAPE OR MAYBE SOME E-PANEL ON THE ARMOUR TO LIGHT IT UP. TOUGH STUFF! THOUGH IT WOULD TAKE A FEW SECONDS ON THE SANDER, NOPE ABOUT 20 MINUTES ON THE SANDER AND GRINDER!









FORCING IT TO COOL INTO THE CORRECT SHAPE TO FIT ON THE SSC ARMOUR. IT'S THE ONLY VINYL PART THAT SHRANK TO THE CORRECT SCALE!!













LATEX MASKING











SHOULD END UP SOMETHING LIKE THIS WHEN ALL IS FINISHED..







MAKING A MOULD WITH VINAMOLD AND PLASTICINE

Oh, very nice! I'm excited to see what the skull+spine recast looks like.

This is so ambitious and complex. I'm glad you have the ingenuity and the patience to see it through.

Admirable and (awe) inspiring as always.

That’s pretty damn cool.interested to see how you integrate the skull and helmet with the lights. Neat stuff.

Zes wrote:Oh, very nice! I'm excited to see what the skull+spine recast looks like.

Cheers! We'll find out in about 4 hours!

GubernatorFan wrote:This is so ambitious and complex. I'm glad you have the ingenuity and the patience to see it through.

Thanks! Well it's definitely got the 'fiddly point' of the build with electronics next..

Diana wrote:Admirable and (awe) inspiring as always.

Cheers Diana!

Stryker2012 wrote:That’s pretty damn cool.interested to see how you integrate the skull and helmet with the lights. Neat stuff.

I'm just hoping we can actually see it after all this lol!

Mixed the new crystal resin and got it in the mould hopefully without any air gaps!! Took forever, even warmed up the resin is like treacle so it takes ages to go in and ages for the air blocks to come to the top to be popped! Not sure if it will be UV reactive or not but I just remembered I still have some clear coat that is glow in the dark blue and reacts to UV really well with a bright blue (I used this on my Mordor Realm Witchking scratch build to get that ethereal glow/look). I've been experimenting using loads of stuff to try and get the lightning of the helmet to look right, I knew it would be tricky but it's quite a challenge with all the variables involved: different materials, layered materials, joints/seams, lights on, lights off etc..

SPRAYED BLACK FIRST OF COURSE.







COMPARISON TO SSC HELMET





LATEX RUBBED OFF











LIT UP WITH UV











BALANCED ON BODY

TRYING TO GET A DECENT ELECTRICAL PATTERN AND GOING DOWN A RABBIT HOLE!





MORE LIKE CUBISM!

















MAKING IT A BIT MORE 'NATURAL' LOOKING OR MARBLEISED.
























READY TO TRY THIS



I ALSO RECENTLY BOUGHT A DREMEL ENGRAVING MACHINE BUT IT'S NOISY AS HELL! THE CATS AND NEIGHBOURS WILL GO MENTAL AND i HAVE AN EAR INFECTION! YAY! BUT I DO HAVE NOISE CANCELLING HEADPHONES...I WONDER IF EITHER WILL WORK?

THE MOULD WAITING TO BE OPENED IN 3 HOURS NOW...







EXCESS RESIN POURED IN THIS MOULD, SUPER CLEAR!!

I don't know how you are going to get it just right for what you have in mind, but they are all very artistic!

GubernatorFan wrote:I don't know how you are going to get it just right for what you have in mind, but they are all very artistic!

Is that a polite way of saying messy?
How did you read and post this so fast? did you see the second batch of pics above? Just curious, took me an hour to just post this stuff!

shovelchop81 wrote:

GubernatorFan wrote:I don't know how you are going to get it just right for what you have in mind, but they are all very artistic!

Is that a polite way of saying messy?
How did you read and post this so fast? did you see the second batch of pics above? Just curious, took me an hour to just post this stuff!

No, artistic. I don't know exactly how you want it to turn out, but each of these looks great from that perspective.
I had read and was about to respond to the first post, when you posted the second, which still inspired the same response...

GubernatorFan wrote:

shovelchop81 wrote:

GubernatorFan wrote:I don't know how you are going to get it just right for what you have in mind, but they are all very artistic!

Is that a polite way of saying messy?
How did you read and post this so fast? did you see the second batch of pics above? Just curious, took me an hour to just post this stuff!

No, artistic. I don't know exactly how you want it to turn out, but each of these looks great from that perspective.
I had read and was about to respond to the first post, when you posted the second, which still inspired the same response...

LO! Cheers! I want some white in there but white paint will be black shadow when lit, scratching is too regular and linear, also not very controllable as you can see above so hopefully the engraver will solve those problems..

I thoroughly enjoy your exploration and experiments. I would probably have gone for fewer more precisely placed lighting lines, but it'll probably all make more sense when it all comes together and it's a matter of taste, too, after all. Your techniques are genius as usual.

Diana wrote:I thoroughly enjoy your exploration and experiments. I would probably have gone for fewer more precisely placed lighting lines, but it'll probably all make more sense when it all comes together and it's a matter of taste, too, after all. Your techniques are genius as usual.

Since you're German I'd expect no less than perfect functional lightning lines! (I'm not referring to certain infamous insignia) but that your's would make more sense and be more practical, less chaotic and messy than mine; I love German leatherwork! It's always been the highlight and centerpieces on their chopper motorcycles!
So I used the engraver in the end (very new to this) it's like a tattoo machine and I was designing those 30 years ago (went to the Berlin Tattoo festival back then to promote my design too), I think I've got the result I want now, we'll see how the clear UV reactive paint works on a sample area before I commit to that.











I'LL TIDY UP THE FRAYED ENDS AND BORDERS

















I'LL BE REMOVING SOME EXTRA PLASTIC TO ALLOW THE CREST TO GLOW TOO.

That force lighting sure did a job on poor Vader. With the added detail, looks more organic. Glorious effect, especially when lit up from within.
You are going for a more authentic effect than the film, where I'm pretty sure the split second reveal was superimposed by special effects.

GubernatorFan wrote:That force lighting sure did a job on poor Vader. With the added detail, looks more organic. Glorious effect, especially when lit up from within.
You are going for a more authentic effect than the film, where I'm pretty sure the split second reveal was superimposed by special effects.

Cheers! Yeah in the movie it's kind of rough almost 'marker pen on cellophane' type effects even though it was created with CGI in the 'updated trilogy' but you only see it for a split second whereas I'll be looking at this version on a daily basis! LOL. Just about to open the mould, fingers crossed.









I'm doing a mix of the two styles



Love this pic, very Derek Riggs Iron Maiden single/album cover art like:



Grew up on his artwork, love it! There are my renditions of it all over school furniture etc... lol

This is coming along pretty cool. Like the electrical pattern on the helmet.