Imperius: Crown of Heaven (Helmet)

Imperius: Crown of Heaven (Helmet)

This helmet in my mind is one of the most challenging pieces of the outfit, and thats saying something! Heres what I had to deal with. I started by pulling the helmet shape from the in game model to get the basic shape. After ripping it apart I made a 2 piece template that would fold together into the shape of the whole helmet all at once. There was a lot of trial and error involved in this, but having a model helped immeasurably. In the end, I transferred my base pattern to 3mm PVC and cut each half out. They might be the craziest looking patterns ive ever used! Using a heat gun, I slowly heated up and bent the plastic to the shape of the helmet, using the pattern to meet edges and generally fightin with it for awhile. After a very long time tweaking and gluing, this is what I had. Complicated helmet base in a day! Obviously the tape couldnt stay forever, I glued it all together, then to make it a solid peice I mixed fiberglass resin, PVC dust (from my orbital) and bondo together to make a thick sludge, then slushed it around on the inside of the helmet. There is about a 2mm coat of the stuff holding it all together in there. After it dried, the helmet was rock solid and I could sand and fill it to kingdom come to get rid of those peaks and fold marks. This was a lot of boring sanding, but in the end I got a much cleaner helmet base that was quite strong....
Imperius: Gauntlets of Valor

Imperius: Gauntlets of Valor

Next up, the gauntlets! Or at least the upper section. I started as usual, with the base model from the game. After unfolding it and making some templates for the pieces that worked, BS’ing the pieces that didn’t, I transferred it all to plastic and cut out the base. For some reason I didn’t start taking pictures until the lowest level shell was done and everything was cut out, so here it is. After this, I cut out some trim (pictured), mounted it all in place, and heat shaped the lower sections to the open ended shape they are in the cinematic. These are very strange gauntlets. With that section mostly complete, it was time to start on the detailed top section. Using a template made from the pep file I created, I forced together the awkward shape of the top sections using a heat gun and lots of superglue/sanding. After that, I designed the detail that would go on the outside, planning to cut it out and build it up layer by layer. This was a tedious process, but ended up with some pretty good results! The first layer went down, and a bit of apoxie scult was used to fill the gap. Then, sanding.   Then, another layer (designed from the previous template), went down ontop of the first, to add those cool looking levels. A coat of primer and some more sanding, because why not. Now it is time for the inner detailing! I couldn’t bring myself to use pre bought stuff on this, and sat down and drew out the inner detailing on one of...
Imperius: Shoulder Guards

Imperius: Shoulder Guards

Ahhh Imperius, you wide bastard. These bad boys were fun to make, and where my first foray into making an actual silicone mold. Without further ado! Using the models I ripped from D3, I made a properly sized template out of pep for the base, and after transferring it to plastic and a lot of heat shaping (of which there are no pictures), I made these! God these were ugly and unwieldy, and cleaning them up was a nightmare because of the low res of the model and the thickness of the PVC (3mm). I decided to focus all my energy on making one shoulder to mold instead of all 4 big chunks. I started by patterning out the detailing on each side, and cutting it out of 2mm PVC. This was a mostly trial and error process involving a lot of cursing and measuring.   After this, I added the outer trim detailing, and built up the top using Apoxie Sculpt. Lots of sanding here, as usual. LEARN TO LOVE THE SANDING. To finish it off, I used another piece of 3mm PVC and sanded it into the curvy beveled shape in the cross bit. For some reason I do not have pictures of this hand sanding process, but it was all done with the random orbit sander. After this, it was finish sanding and.. mold making! Sloppy first run, this whole thing ended up being garbage and I had to redo it. Valuable lessoned learned, namely take your time, and FILL ALL YOUR SEAMS. After another try, my one peice mold was complete.. and it was time...
Imperius: Breastplate (continued!)

Imperius: Breastplate (continued!)

Hey all, I’m not dead, just lazy! I haven’t been keeping this page current with my progress, shame on me! Time to start the long process of fixing that. Here is part 2 of the breastplate boogaloo. Imperius has a thing for the Sun, it seems. . I wasn’t sure how exactly to build this, so I just started from the lowest level and went to work! I roughed out the shape below after a bit of trial and error, and cut the first layer out of 2mm PVC. And two more layers, designed by bullshit and guesswork. from this point, I glued these pieces together, then filled every gap with Apoxie sculpt to create the bevels and sanded it for ages. After much pondering on how to get this thing I have created to curve so splendidly, I made my choice and cut this thing I had just completed right in half. After more filling, sanding, and cursing, the finished cleaned up master was ready for my dumb idea! I made Vacuform pulls of both halves of the chest piece, and cut out the Vac formed halves. Perfecto! Oh wait, nevermind, you cant bend a hollow object without horrifying warping. I scrapped that idea for another one, and filled both halves of the vac pull with that same cheap fiberglass resin I used for the Spears sun. I didnt get any photos of this process as I pulled the resin out of the “molds” before it had fully cured, and quickly bent the 90% cured resin to shape with a heat gun and my hands, then screwed it...
Imperius : Breastplate WiP

Imperius : Breastplate WiP

This is probably the only build I’m going to be able to do this year.. so I’m going all out on it. Cinematic version or bust. After ripping the games model (as a base) and breaking down the armor into parts, I started making the breastplate today. After what felt like way too long of a time planning and tinkering with templates, I figured out what I wanted and cut the template out. Turned out being only 4 pieces in the end. And then the test taping! Much cleanup and work will go into this tomorrow. Glad to finally be working on this again. This chest has a lot of layers, as seen here: I started by sealing up the top and reinforcing the hell out of the inside/outside of the first collar using fiberglass and rondo – That first layer is going NOWHERE. I then started tinkering with adding the 2nd layer of collars. Then the third Then the bottom first layer and back segment. I will be designing the sun on the front tonight and tomorrow.. then I have to actually make it. After that its a whole hell of a lot of trim and cleaning – but I’m happy with the direction its going so far! The screws are incredibly temporary, needed a reliable way to keep the plates in place while I templated out the next bit while still being able to remove them...
Solarion : Spear of Valor (Part 1)

Solarion : Spear of Valor (Part 1)

In preparation for my upcoming Archangel Imperius build, I am making the spear he uses throughout Diablo 3. This is what I was trying to build. This is what I actually built. Below is a rough outline of the steps I took to create this spear! Using my scaled ingame model as a reference, I made some templates and cut the basic shape of the main blades out of 3/4ths inch thick Expanded PVC (Sintra). Found a scrap of the stuff big enough to host the blades for $8, score. The next step was to take this and get sanding. After marking a line down the center of the plastic where I wanted the edge to be and blocking off the areas where the edge stopped (I used painters tape as a physical barrier ontop of the lines you see.. this is extremely helpful in stopping accidental deviations) I began my dark and prolonged work with the belt sander and orbital. These blades are a little over 2′ long. This spear will be large. A little crooked, but not bad for a first pass. Edge takes shape, this process took about 40 minutes per blade. Thankfully I only had to do this step once. This plastic was harder then I expected.. perhaps it was not sintra after all. First pass complete! Looking pretty smooth. Drew up a template for the inner blades and started working on the circular plate the sun shape sits on. I ended up making a vac pull of a small food plate I found and cutting the plastic version to the size I wanted. Using...

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