Recent Work

Remember how I liked the idea of having a gun transform into something else? Well I thought to myself at that point. Let me make a whole suit of armor that can transform. Now THAT is a challenge. In the film Iron Man 2 a man named Tony Stark created a suit of armor he liked to call the Mark V which was contained within a suitcase. I knew this was all fiction, but I couldn't stop thinking about making a suit like that. It seemed impossible to make something as large as a piece of armor being able to shrink to a size of a suitcase, but I wanted to give it a go regardless whether it was possible or not.

I went ahead and started with the easy part which was the chest. The structure of the armor made it easier to find ways to make the armor fold as it was layered on top of another. 

I've never had as much fun as I did when making this costume as it pushed my ability to think and I was able to overcome several problems at once. E.g. While making the spine, I had to find a way to make it fold 3 times without it snapping so what I used was a door hinge and screwed it into the spine to make sure it holds all the pieces together. 

In the end, I couldn't find a way to make the helmet fold and without finding a way to make it fold completely. I wasn't able to put it with the rest of the armor, but the finished product looked phenomenal and I was very proud of myself as I had many doubts when creating this suit and I was able to turn fiction into reality.  

There is a new game coming out made by the same developers who made Halo called Destiny. Set in future and on our planet. I'm looking forward to it more than anything. I started working on yet another suit of armor. With years of experience I developed many new techniques and overcome several obstacles and wanted to put all those skills into another test. 

I looked into several concepts of the game and found a robot-like armor which I instantly fell in love with and said to myself "I'm making this right now" and so I started this 100+ hours project and put myself to a test of how detailed and accurate this suit can get to the originals. I started using proper buckles to clip the pieces of armor to myself as well as flexible materials underneath to allow more movement around the joints. I also went ahead and added extra details to each of the pieces. I used some silver paint and a brush and applied it on the edges making a scrapped metal effect that can usually be seen on worn out metal items. 

I can easily say that all the hard work was worth the sweat as I created my favorite suit of armor thus far. I also made another costume from the same franchise as well as several props to go with the suits.

One of my most successful props is the pistol below. It's hard to believe that this was a couple of pieces of card before I started making it.   

I documented the progress of how I made this from scratch and how I installed the lights inside the weapon. 

The documentation can be seen here - Conduit F3

Yet another resent prop I made is this red revolver below. I used an empty capsule container to create the cylinder. Using a scalpel, I carefully cut out the stencils which I drew out by eye. I rarely use rulers while drawing out the blue prints as I'm now confident in my ability to draw and measure by eye. For this weapon, I used a strip of cloth and wrapped it around the handle to give this weapon a more realistic look. Before I put each piece together, I decided on which parts will be red and which will remain black and sprayed them separately so when I assembled the weapon, I no longer had to worry about any more coloring. Once again, I used some silver paint and gently applied it on the sides of the revolver making it look worn out as if was already in use.

For another one of my costumes, I created a weapon to go with it. I decided with a sniper rifle due to the costume being more of a recon class which means it's purpose is to be stealthy.

Since this costume was more of a scouting suit there is no protection on the legs to allow free movement. I also went ahead and made a cape and it's the first time I ever made one and somehow had no trouble creating it with the hood.