I got the rest of my lights in, so I finished up lighting the demo base and painting it up. I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. So next up is working on the final base now that I have figured out how I want this all to work.
So I spent this a day weekend casting up a whole bunch of stuff for ext years Bay Area Open Tournament. And while I was at I worked on the casting for my Menoth battle engine. The purpose of casting up a clear base is to I can light the flames up like the inside of the battle engine and I will just paint over what ever parts I don't want light showing through.
I don't have pics for the first few steps but I can at least describe them. First off it got glued down to the wood and then wrapped some plasticard around it to build it up the dam for the mould. After spraying it down with release the rubber was mixed up and brushed onto the flames to make sure all the cracks were covered. Then I poured the rest in.
Once that had set up (about a day) I poured plaster into the rest of the mold to act as a leveler when it was flipped over.
Here you can see the mold once the plaster had dried.
Once that was all dry here is it after the dam was taken off.
After that the rubber got peeled off.
Next up was pouring the clear resin in. After mixing it in a plastic cup it got degassed in a vacuum chamber then poured some into the flames. This then went into the degasser to get all the air out of the flames.
After that I filled the rest up with clear resin and put a sheet of plexie over the top and let it sit to cure. I used a light to medium amount of hardener to it will take a day or two to cure up. So hopefully by the end of the week I will have something to show.
Update on 2011-10-04 00:28 by Tyson Koch
Well I took it out of the mold and it is stuck to the plexi! So I am going to let it sit a few days and see if it will pop off. I poured another one, used more hardener than last time and put another mold on top of it so it will come off easily this time.
Finished up the flames. Hopefully I can get the mold made up this weekend and cast. Just been a busy week so far :( I was planning to pop off the fire and just cast it, but I think I am going to make a cast of the entire base instead.
Working on the base for my battle engine. Got the tiles done and have started to work on the Flames. I started sculpting them out of oil clay but it just was not working out well, so green stuff it is!
I finnally got some LEDs for my battle engine. My first experiment with cheap xmas LEDs did not work out as planned so I found something even better! Here are 2 quick videos of it. Nevermind the crap in the background, I had to take it into the bathroom for it to be dark enough to see :)