I've got MOST of the painting finished on the sword (enough to give you a good idea of the finished appearance, anyway...)








I dabbed varying degrees of silver and black paint to create an antiqued look on the skull/hilt.

I also managed to get some more work done on my Alphonse armor. In this picture you can see me taping tagboard shapes together (which I then taped to the finished part of the armor:)



Tagboard is a good material to use for making armor patterns, as it behaves in much the same way as styrene (and is much cheaper of course). I used the tagboard template to cut the craft foam and styrene I used to make that section of the armor...



It's starting to look a little more like Al. (I need to do the rest of the collar, but will have to scour the local hardware stores for some foam thick and solid enough to make it. ) I'll keep you posted...

At this point in the process, the hilt is nearly finished. There was a noticable gap between the side bones and the ribs so I filled it in with foam and plastic. And then glued a new layer of ribs over all, made from thick craft foam, gesso and varnish. (I didn't glue styrene over them because I wanted the ribs to look less plasticky and more organic and bonelike.) I added some more details with the epoxy putty (although I wanted to use it sparingly at this point, as the sword was getting fairly heavy.)

Finally, I had everything finished and ready to paint:



I sprayed chrome spray onto the blade and skull areas. (I wanted to use model acrylic to paint the handle, as I felt it would be touched more often and would need a scratch-resistant surface. The ribs would also have to be painted with acrylic since they had been coated in acrylic varnish.)



I used long brushstrokes (painted across the width of the blade) to create a polished look. I then defined the skull using silver enamel paint mixed with black. I sunk black paint into the eye sockets and in the spaces between the teeth.



Here's how far I've gotten with painting the ribs and handle. I've still got a couple more coats to go (as well as the back to do), but it gives you a good idea of what it will look like when finished...



Gotta go to bed now for I have to get up at an ungodly early hour (for me: 10:00 am) to go to the dentists. (Apparently God doesn't feel as though I've given them NEARLY enough money this past year. Now they'll get the rest of it. Probably. Sigh.)

Health update: The cold has gotten less severe, but unfortunately the pain in my jaw has only gotten worse. I strongly suspect it is something which will probably end in a root canal. (I'm going to visit the dentist on Thursday to find out for sure. And I'd better leave off further discussion of the subject before I begin yet another one of my "hate dentists/hate my horrible gimpy chalk-like teeth from HELL" rant.)

Speaking of things from hell (to make a somewhat clumsy segway into my next subject, the Dante Rebellion tutorial,) I last left off with the formation of the skull hilt decoration. Below the skull, I would have to set a series of ribs. This I did using strips of thick craft foam:



Here's a back view:



I did some putzing around with the ribs, and I wound up putting epoxy over them, starting with the front. It was my intention to cover the foam ribs with epoxy to give them an organic, bony surface, matching the skull.



Before I was completely finished with the ribs, though, I decided to start work on the handle. I did this by gluing strips of thick craft foam around the PVC pipe at strategic places and glueing strips of plastic and foam over them to create an octagonal shape (the thickest areas of the handle are the ones which have the strips of craft foam glued under them):



I glued two layers of plastic over the shape for maximum strength and neatness.



To create the spiky pommel, I hotglued triangular pieces of plastic to the tip of the handle like so:



And then used strips of foam and plastic to make some finishing touches...



The next thing to do was to create the side bone decorations. I made the core for the bones using a cylinder and some craft foam...



And then glued shapes around it to create another octagonal object...



A rather rough-looking one...at first...



I glued another layer of styrene plastic over it to give it a cleaner appearance (while my grumpy cat lay down and ignored me in the distance...)



The first bone completed, I hotglued it to the side of the sword.



And that's enough for today's update. Next time: finishing the ribs and applying the paint. (Sounds like fun, right? Right....)

If anyone has any questions at this point, just leave a comment and let me know....^_^

First, thanks for the advice on reprogramming the number of entries here on my front page. Appreciate the help. (happy emoticon)

In the last update, I had finished creating the outer edge for the blade. The next step was to lay down another layer of plastic over the blade. This I did by bending a straight ridge into a loooong piece of .020 plastic styrene, laying it over the blade, and then marking off a line about 3/8" away from the edge. I then cut through the line and hotglued the plastic shape onto the blade. You can hopefully see what I'm getting at in this photo.



This is a decent picture of the sword I'm trying to make. You can see how it looks like it has a sharpened, bevelled outer edge. That's the effect I'm trying to recreate by layering the plastic.

Here's a photo of the finished blade:



Before slapping any paint onto the blade, I'm going to have to sand it down to remove any glue strands, gobs, or dirt. Neatness counts in a project like this (especially when it comes to swords with clean lines and large areas of surface space.)

You'll notice that section of PVC pipe hanging outside the blade. That's where the hilt will go. (The hilt, being that neat skull and ribcage thing you saw in the reference picture.

I decided to make the skull using clay epoxy. (A type of putty epoxy that you mix together and can mold into various shapes, like sculpey, only it doesn't need to be baked in order for it to dry, and it's a LOT harder once it does.)

The clay is also mighty heavy, so instead of slapping an 8-pound ball of the stuff onto the pole and trying to shape it into a skull, I decided to create an undershape using pink rigid insulation foam (available at most big-name hardware stores.)



You can see how I created the undershape out of two pieces, a front and a back piece, which I made so they could be glued together around the handle.



Here's the box containing the putty epoxy. (Which I bought from this ebay store. Of course, this being epoxy resin, (like bondo or fiberglass,) it's dangerous to work with unless you take the proper precautions (wearing a pair of latex gloves and working in a well-ventilated area. Do not breathe in the fumes if you can avoid it and store the item you're making either outside or in a garage until it cures.) Cure time is 12-24 hours. The epoxy itself will be workable for a couple of hours, which should be more than enough time to make what you want to make with it. (If not, you can always mix up another batch the next day and slap it on over previous layers of epoxy. You can sand and saw the epoxy too once it dries (although you should wear a respirator and try not to breathe in any dust.)



Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of me actually WORKING with the epoxy, as my hands were gloved and covered with dangerous, sticky chemicals at the time, but here's apic of what I managed to do the first day:



You can see I was able to create a rough skull shape. The next step is to cover the back of the undershape with epoxy and then refine the details...

Next update: Making the Ribcage...

Before I start, does anyone reading this know how I can arrange it so that I have LESS than 20 entries showing? (I fear my entries are quite graphics-intensive and thus, this page may take forever to load if they're all displayed at once. I'm sure there's some simple solution to it, but seeing as how my brain can't handle simplicity, it's no wonder why I might have overlooked it.)

Anyway, in my last update I had just finished making the blade shapes for the Rebellion. The next step is to take the shapes and glue them to the PVC pipe, (craft foam layer inside, plastic layer outside.)



Then glue the blades together at the sides edge to edge:



The finished blade has a grounded outside edge. To create this, I cut a strip of 6mm craft foam (creating a long, triangular tube shape) and hotglued it to the outer edge of the blade, as shown:



I then bent a long strip of plastic and hotglued it over the outer edge down the straight section of the blade. (For the curved sections, I had to cut curved pieces of plastic and glue them to each curved section of the blade on both sides.) This picture will hopefully illustrate what I mean by this:



To create the tip of the sword, I had to cut out a small wedge out of the end like this:



Then I glued the edges back together at the center. I did the same on the other side and then glued both sides together. (This makes it so the sword tapers and comes to a point at the very tip.)



I then put craft foam around the edge and covered it with plastic, creating the outer edge of the blade on both sides. (Neatness is very important at this step - you can't have gobs of glue or plastic overlapping on either side of the blade. You must make a neat, clean edge before you can move onto the next step.)



Well, I've run out of pictures. So I'll have to take some more and get back to you with the next part of the tutorial. Stay tuned and if you have any questions about anything, just leave a comment....

Rebellion being the name of the default sword the main character wields in Devil May Cry 3. Here's the start of a quick and dirty tutorial I've decided to make for it (one which should be good for the making of ANY large bladed sword.)

The first step is to get ahold of a length of PVC pipe. (You can find it in the plumbing section of most major hardware stores and the people who work there will be happy to cut it to size for you.) In this case, I started with a length of PVC that I had cut to about 5 feet long.



Next, I lay down a sheet of 3mm thick craft foam behind the pipe and traced out the shape of the sword.



Obviously, the sheet wasn't long enough to cover the length of the sword so I cut it into strips and hotglued them edge to edge. After tracing out the full shape of the sword and cutting it out, I had this:



(Yeah, I know. I really need to clean my floor.) The next step in the process was to define the flat area near the hilt. This was accomplished by drawing a simple triangle and then cutting it out (saving the cut-out triangular piece as it would need to be glued back on later.)



Obviously, you need to cut TWO foam shapes so you can cover both sides of the blade. Once the foam shapes were cut, I laid them down over a long sheet of .030 or .040 styrene plastic and traced around the foam. I then lifted the foam and cut the traced shape free of the plastic.



(this plastic is slightly thicker than the .020 gauge I normally use - it will split in half if you try to bend it, which is why it has to be cut in half lengthwise down the center of the blade, like so:



I reglued the two pieces together edge to edge (bending them slightly to create a ridge in the middle. This, of course, makes the sword 3-D and will allow the two halves of it to be glued around the PVC pipe.)



This done, I hotglued the craft foam sword shape to the concave interior of the plastic piece.



I then repeated the process to create the opposite half of the sword blade...

Well, I'm just about out of writing space and energy for today. I'll have to continue this tomorrow. (I can't say I'm feeling any better today, but at least I didn't have to do as MUCH running around in the lung-piercingly cold air as I did yesterday.) *sigh*