Create a new post
Sign In
sharxbyte's avatar

sharxbyte [he|him]

@sharxbyte

Staff Pick

I made my own Wearable Vanduul Mask

This is the culmination of almost a month's worth of work

8 months ago

Upvoted by

I'm REALLY hoping that these don't get uploaded sideways... EDIT: many of these ARE sideways, I'll edit the rest when I get home. will also make a report to whoever is in charge of mobile uploads.
Kind of grinning rather than snarling, but let's just say they enjoy their work.
The armor was actually almost an afterthought, I scrapped it together from cardboard, and lit the top half with a UV flashlight and fluorescent paint, and the bottom half with a stick-on battery powered LED and orange paint.
just had a crown done, they let me keep the "jaws" that they used to test the crown fit. I used a UV cure dental composite (amazon won't sell you the stuff without a license but Ebay will) to make a crown for each tooth and cured it.
thermoplastic beads can be had for quite cheap. they sell them to make temporary teeth, crowns, etc. and you can work then in hot water. I made a mouth guard set (upper and lower) and then made pointy teeth and stuck them on (these are pre-crown)
Was curing the final two teeth (I ran out of composite and had to order more) when my shielding solution (Cure under steel bowl so no one would need eye protection) pushed the teeth into the hot face of the UV lamp- and melted the thermoplastic.
Following the repair, re-fitting and re-pointy-making process. Most of the crowns survived with no issues so I stuck them back on.
plaster casting my head
sealing the two halves of the plaster
I mashed them together best I could match them, and then taped them inside and out with this absolutely magical stuff called Stucco Tape that sticks to just about everything.
plaster casting of head
Not the best, I ended up having to carve and resculpt a good bit of it
much closer
nylon stocking mesh stretched for painting. ended up not liking the very blurry picture I got.
used a pair of safety glasses as a base for eye slit placement
I still find "optimized Vanduul" to be hilarious
modeling clay (plasticine) used to hold some of the shape of the polymer clay. I used a heat gun to set the exterior before baking the whole thing (I did NOT bake the plasticine)
polymer clay facial "bones" (Sculpey Ultralight)
polymer clay formed around an old s-video cable. cut niches out of the sides and freed the links to let it flex
these turned out so cool
quick coat of metalic silver spray paint makes them nearly complete
glued some nylon stocking to the end to give it some "skin" to hang from and spread the load out
horns
Do Not use silicone+latex caulk, it won't cure and it WILL mess up your spendy platinum cure silicone. (Cure inhibition is already common, and a MESS
all of these uploaded out of order. Mostly fixed. I had to spend hours washing all the uncredited latex silicone caulk and the uncured gummy platinum silicone out of the pieces I salvaged. then had to fully reconstruct the face, neck, cheeks, etc.
the scalp and tassels after hours of cleaning- hanging to dry. This was a low point in the process- hours wasted painting and sculpting and it fell apart as soon as I removed it from the plaster form.
this time I made sure that the lower jaw and face "bones" would be spaced properly so that the mask would fit. Hexane based aerosol accelerator is both magical & likely carcinogenic. it was also instrumental in a lot of this build. Use ventilation!
nylon stocking reinforcement
plastic surgery
mostly repaired. it was at this point that I tried to shortcut the final stage by using a clear-coat which was not at all flexible and ended up undoing a lot of my careful re-painting.
Unfortunately I'm nowhere near 8 feet, maybe I'll make a good pair of leg extensions with the right inverse joint

Thank you all for taking the time to look through this "the-making-of", and Please give a look and a vote to my Vanduul Interpreter entry:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community-hub/post/vanduul-interpreter-j2N8tVB1rdeoE

Last modified by author 8 months ago

Be the first to write what you think about this post

Sign into your RSI account to add your comments concerning this post

Sign in

or

Enlist Now