RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Metasequoia, Pepakura, and the like
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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by Red Eye » Tue Mar 03, 2015 9:56 am

Wow! Nice work you've done so far... :loveit:


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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by Cylon-Knight » Tue Mar 03, 2015 10:13 pm

YIKES :censored: - Another KC Cylon draws blood!
I cut my finger good trimming my armor.

You have done a LOT of work in a short time. Bravo! Going to look great.
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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 7:24 pm

Cylon-Knight wrote:YIKES :censored: - Another KC Cylon draws blood!
I cut my finger good trimming my armor.

You have done a LOT of work in a short time. Bravo! Going to look great.
Put my head down and plowed for the remaining days and got done just in time!

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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 7:36 pm

After many more days of sanding and filling, I did one final fitting of all of the pieces.

You can see that my custom attempt at boot toppers ended up being a little too small. I ended up cutting them at the seams, and then hot gluing velcro to the insides to give me some flexibility.
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Charlie the cat is not impressed. Don't worry, Charlie, I'll trim up the excess velcro before I start painting!
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Rough fitting showed that everything fit pretty well. Had to do the velcro adjustment o the boot toppers I mentioned above, along with adding some foam to the inside of the arm bands to make them fit a little tighter.

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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 8:04 pm

Eye alignment was a real concern, so I mounted the LED, diffuser (made from the plastic of a milk jug), arduino board and battery using hot glue to an insert made of foam core. Using a little velcro, I was able to get the LED strip to align pretty consistently, while still being able to remove the entire eye insert so I could work on the eye or helmet without worrying about damaging the other.

Here's the post where I go into further detail about the eye - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2790
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The eye insert. Battery is on the left, gemma arduino board is on the right, and the black strip is the back of the LEDs. The white below the LED strip is the bottom of the LED diffuser. And that tiny black slit below is what you look through... *yikes!*
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Lower view of the eye insert
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The insert in place, before blacking out the diffuser. Gives a good idea of how small of a window you have to look out of.
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Used white glue to stick black fabric to the diffuser, which helped knock down the brightness of the LED, and diffuse it a little more.
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I had a little problem keeping the distance between the diffuser and LED consistent all the way across the LED strip, so the LEDs were a little less "defined" at the far left and far right of the eye, but I was pleased overall with the outcome.

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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 8:14 pm

Finally time to paint.

I chose to paint the mouth grille, eye slot, and back panels first, and then finish with the chrome.

The mouth and eye paint was flat black, and the back panels were flat dark gray. I took a *long* time to mask the sections, trying to be sure I got a good, smooth curve, and they the edges of the tape were nice and flat.

The paint stands for each piece turned out to be a great decision. I was super thankful to have them. I'm pretty sure each piece had at least 5 trips to the "paint booth" in the garage.
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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 8:33 pm

It took 2 tries to get the paint right.

First try, I put *way* too much chrome paint over the gloss black, and the finish was shiny but not reflective at all. Thankfully, I had enough paint to respray everything with gloss black and start over.

To get the reflective chrome (or as reflective as you can get with spray paint), the gloss black needs to show through the chrome top coat. On my second try, I put a VERY light chrome coat on everything, and was much happier with the finish.
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Left is the chrome finish, and right is the gloss black backer.
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First attempt was a bust - I was pretty bummed.
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Note the difference between the 2 pieces. The top shoulder bell is darker, since more of the black is showing through. It it also doesn't diffuse the reflecting light nearly as much. The bottom piece (the left gauntlet) shows what happens when you put down too much chrome paint.
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You can see how just one extra pass of the silver knocks down the reflective properties of the gloss black backer. The bell on the right has one extra pass of chrome, which was really one too many.

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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 8:42 pm

Here's the helmet getting the gloss black backer and chrome finish. I did the helmet last, so I had the process down pretty well.

Again, masking the back panels, mouth grille and eye slot took a long time, but I was really happy with the outcome. Just put on some good music and take your time :grin:

The chrome will *not* be a mirror finish - you just can't get that from a spray can. But you can get a really nice reflective surface that has a metal feel to it. Keep your expectations realistic, and you'll be happy with the results!
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Black backer is shiny!
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One word of caution - I was so excited to try on the finished helmet, that I put a giant thumb print on the mouth grille because the paint hadn't fully cured. *whoops!*

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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 8:52 pm

Following some of the builds on this site, I chopped up some 2x4s to mount the belt pieces to. Just a couple 33 degree cuts on the chop saw...really it was pretty unscientific.

I hot glued the velcro to the wood blocks, which turned out to be a mistake. The velcro strips kept pulling off the wood. I'll be tacking the velcro down with staples before the next con, that's for sure.
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I screwed the blocks to a cheap padded tool belt I bought off of amazon. The padding was thick enough that the screw heads were buried in the padding and didn't bother me at all.
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Hot gluing the velcro was a bad idea. Going to tack it down with staples next time.
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Wood was easy to work with, but the belt isn't exactly light...
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The belt pieces fit perfectly over a standard US 2x4.

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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 8:59 pm

Finished up the backpack by applying the sticker, painting the greeble, and installing the hoses.

The sticker was printed from the BazookaJo plans. I painted the greeble with Tester flat black model paint. The hoses are split conduit from the home improvement store.

To install the hoses, I just cut holes with an Xacto knife that were just a bit smaller than the conduit, pinched the conduit together and pushed it into each hole. There's nothing holding them in but compression - they are in there pretty good and I didn't want to risk getting hot glue everywhere trying to secure them further.
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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 9:07 pm

Lastly, I applied the stickers to the gauntlets and installed the nozzle.

The stickers were printed from the BazookaJo plans, and the best nozzle I could find was a thimble from the craft store. I installed the thimble by hot gluing it to a short piece of dowel rod, and then gluing the rod to the hole in the gauntlet.

One last thing - as noted in my earlier pepakura build notes...my gauntlets are a MIRROR IMAGE of the actual gauntlets because I built them inside out :frack:

No one but your most eagle-eyed Cylon enthusiasts will notice - haha.
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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by RAM_Doubler » Thu Mar 19, 2015 9:13 pm

FINISHED!

Here's the completed pepakura Cylon build, based on the BazookaJo plans.

Hats off again to BazookaJo - well done, mate!

I finished just in time to terrorize the lowly humans at Planet Comicon 2015! :evillaugh:
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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by Red Eye » Fri Mar 20, 2015 8:19 am

Well worth all the effort!

You really build it in record time.

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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by Jenne » Sat Mar 21, 2015 9:49 am

Very cool, great work Centurion :cylon: :!:

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Re: RAM_Doubler's Cylon Centurian - resin coating and painting pepakura

Post by Hand-Schaub » Fri Jun 19, 2015 5:20 pm

Nice work!

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