Tarfful Foot

Just a quick clay model ready for molding.

Pardon the iPhone photo quality.

Tarfful Boots

Just a sketch of what I am thinking about doing.

 Even though I cut the feet cutout is following the lines of the shoe, the foam foot will be symmetrical so I will only need to make one foot. Then I will cast 2 with 1 mold.

My Chewie boot (the brown one!) as a comparison:

Both heels are 7", but my Chewie boot is a high heel, and the Tarfful shoe is a regular high top sneaker. This is the reason the toe looks higher.

The Start of a New (wookiee) Era

Stay tuned!

Repairs already...

Broken Bowcaster

My daughter stood on top of the Bowcaster while we were packing things in the van after Trunk or Treat. It revealed a flaw. The screws were too short. I fixed it and it just needs some touch-up paint.

I took a close up of my mask and realized that the eye holes were too far apart. I am going to trim the inner eye of the silicone mask, and it should make the eyes better. I can't believe I didn't notice that till now.

All my X-ACTO blades are DULL. I have to get more. I'll post a pic after I get more blades tonight.

Other repairs made:

-Shortened hair on the back of the mask, and added a little more.

-Split the wig down the back to conform to my head better. I hope it doesn't get noticed. I may have to revisit that fix later.

-Foam padding added on top of the head to give more realistic profile.

-Jaw mechanism trimmed because it was hitting me in the throat when I looked down.

-Punched single strands of hair around the eyes and mouth.

-Used a new hair spray Got2B. It is now a hair helmet. I am worried it has a wet plastic look now, but my wife says its fine. We'll see. :) The good news is that the hair DOES NOT move (hair doesn't fall in my eyes when I look down). That stuff is strong.

Finished...for now

My cat is photobombing! Click for larger images.

I know I got lazy with the last few blogs. /shrug I'm tired :)

Painting and Punching

Following the advice of professionals in this video, I painted the mask with pigmented silicone.

After the lips were painted brown and the whole thing had time to cure, I started punching (rooting) the hair. This video is a quick example..

Lip Mechanism

The concept for this part is that the wires will move the lips on the silicone mask when the jaw opens. This will create a more lifelike appearance when the mouth is opened. It sorta makes it snarl. I started by drilling holes above the canine teeth on the top and bottom jaw. Then I used RC aircraft cables with nylon tubing to create the mechanism.

I had trouble hot gluing the tubes in place, then ended up being ripped off too much.

Next I make a few homemade cable ties and riveted them in place. It worked ok, but they started cracking (I will find professional grade plastic pieces in the future) so I added hot glue for damage control.

The cable ended up being too stiff to move the jaw easily, and kept dislodging the nylon tubes, so I replaced it with a nylon coated steel fishing line. Woot for Gander Mountain being so close to my house!

The finished lip wires. After this, two springs were mounted on either side of the teeth to help keep the jaw closed.

 Below you can see the spring. 

I glued some flexible cloth onto the lip wire so that the silicone sealant would have more surface area to attach to.

The Teeth

I used a sharpie and marked where I thought the teeth would fit, then cut the fiberglass underskull accordingly. The clay I am using is Super Sculpey.

After I had a basic set of teeth that I was ok with (and I mean ok.. because I will likely replace these teeth with a more anatomically correct version later) I hardened the sculpey with a hot air gun and prepared it for molding. 

The mold below is Smooth-On OoMoo.

Resin curing in the mold, with the sculpey master on top.

My airbrush was having major issues. I think the paint was just too old to use, so I used a brush instead. I drilled holes and mounted the teeth with small hex bolts with self locking nuts.

Next: Lip Mechanism!

Casting the Face

This is the finished fiberglass mold. I trimmed and sanded the edges.

Below you can see the inside negative. 

With a little sunlight:

A little damage. The mold cracked a bit when I was prying it apart with my wedges, but then while walking down the stairs, I tripped over the cat and dropped the mold to the ground. After a little bondo, it was as good as new.

Basically what I am trying to do is make a two part fiberglass mold that will be injected with silicone. In order to get a proper thickness that I wanted the mask to have, I needed to lay in a 1/4" bed of clay. I used Klean Klay. Below is the negative image. It's hard to tell if its negative or positive, but the shadows help.

I didn't take any photos of the fiberglass process, but once the clay was ready, I layered some glass on top of it. I drilled a few holes before taking it apart.

Even though I used a good mold release and Partall #10 the Klean Klay was heated by the curing and became diffucult to remove. The PVA also seemed to bond to the fiberglass shell and soaking it in water wasn't working to get it to remove.

I ended up having to scrape the entire surface with a metal tool, then scrub it clean. It took forever. Really annoying.

After the clay was removed, I drilled ventilation holes, then bolted the halves together. My injection syringe was originally an oil suction gun that I found at Harbour Freight. It worked perfectly.

As the silicone (tinted black) was injected, the air holes started leaking, and were plugged with clay. This method helps eliminate trapped air inside the mold. The silicone pushes it all out the holes.

The syringe was hot glued to a hole where the mouth will be, then I propped it up with some clay so it wouldn't fall and rip the hot glue off.

After curing, it came out like this:

Then I used a Dremel with a multi-purpose bit and cut the underskull out. I realize this means I no longer have a complete mold, but this saved time and money. I hope I don't have to remake the mold anytime soon.

Next: The Teeth!