Assassin's Creed II- Ezio's glider

For those who aren't familiar with the thing, the glider I'm working on is Leonardo da Vinci's "flying machine" from Assassin's Creed II. Decided to make this thing because.. well, I wanted to see if I could.

I had started this in early 2010, but other pressing matters relegated it to a pair of wooden pegs in the basement til this past September, where it (again) resides til I finish off some end of year projects. At this moment, the arm and foot rests need to be made, some corded accents, and a base for it needs finishing.




The blueprints were (for obvious reasons) rather large, so i just printed the main body and one wing.. I made it 15 feet across (scaled down from the 23 or so I guesstimated ), because the components need to fit in my car.


Since I don't have an oversized printer, after drawing up the blues, I printed out i think around 60 sheets of 8 1/2x 11s, and spent the day taping the buggers together PosteRazor would have made this easier :p





The main body is mdf on one side, and masonite/insulation foam/tagboard on the other. The body was painted with some old thick paint and a cheapo brush that I intentionally let paint dry on




I've been using 1/8" thick masonite for the top, insulation foam for the core, and the sides are tagboard. Though individually flimsy, when glued together (using hot glue lol) they're actually fairly strong.

So yeah.. lots and lots and lots of this :p



left to right-



-Masonite board, cut to shape

-insulation foam, also cut to shape (i later found if i just glued the Masonite to the foam sheet, I could then just use the edge to cut it out faster.)

- cut out & glued together

-hot glued the sides on :)


I found that a quick way to cut the tagboard strips (instead of measuring out every one) was to take a straight edge, and attach some tagboard scrap to the bottom, laid out the width i needed for the edge. I then just slide the sheet under it til it butts into the tagboard glued underneath, and cut away. Think I had to do around 100 or so strips for one size alone :p




I am concerned with (amongst other things) Torsional strength. (twisting the spines), I'll need to work around that real quick, though I think (and hope) the fabric they will sandwich will help provide additional support.


Here's the state when it was ditched in July 2010 ^^; Its a lil more beige now from all the dust.

---

September 2011

Over the last 4 days, I've cut and assembled the other 28 spines that are left.



Some of them I had doubled up, to provide extra support and give the wings more dimension.



Though i had a vague idea of how i was going to connect the part together, I hadn't actually done any blues/ schematics for the connections. Wound up engaged in a lot of  snip/glue/ bull****tery here til the parts connected right. The layers alternate between those of the inner and outer wing assemblies, and a peg will be run through the entire lot when done. here's to hoping that its strong enough! *fingercross*



Once one side was assembled, I flipped it over and mirrored the other parts by assembling it right on top of the finished one (hope that makes sense!) . It may be a couple mm off from the original blues, but as long as its aligned to the layer that will be attached to the other side, it'll be fine.

The outer sides of the spines will be covered after the fabric is stretched over them :)



And here's the current state of one side. I can't easily lay it out fully though, til that side of the basement gets cleared off

---

September 25, 2011

After assembling the rest of the pairs of outer wing spines, these were all painted. Again I used the thick old enamel leftovers so I got thick streaks and the like.



After it dried, I sprayed the parts with rustoleum brown primer, and did a quick wipe with an old bedsheet.To bring out the texture more, I used some sandpaper.

Left them all out to dry, it was like having two gliders in the basement with both sides of the wings splayed out in the basement lol



Time to start stretching the fabric onto the wings! Since the spines would move around when setting them, I decided to temporarily tack the thing to a large sheet of insulation foam using the hot glue gun. This would keep the spines from moving while i did the fabric.



Did my best to stretch the fabric on there, and hot glued it all down. You can't bounce a quarter off it, but it'll do.



The other half was aligned and glued down after some of the trimming was done



I laid a bead of hot glue around the edges that would remain "raw" to keep it from fraying and stretching too much. Used a scrap piece of silicone to press the bead flat :)



Here's one of the outer wings almost done! I still need to tagboard the outer edge though

---

September 27, 2011

Did a test fitting of the first of the wings yesterday.

Then set back to work on the inner section of the wings. I still needed to add more spines, so rather rinse repeat with the glue!



Foam scraps were tacked onto the spines to stop them from moving around while stretching the fabric




Added some wood bits to one side, because the spines added would get crushed if the outer wing pushed into them. That did the trick!




another fitting check,




and strength check. I also held the thing horizontally to see if the wing will crack and crash/burn, but it held fine, and I heard no telltale squeaking/crunching sounds of a dying joint, so it looks like this will work!





The wing weighs about 11 lbs so far (the outer wing is about 5 1/2 lb) .. it'll probably go up to about 13 by the time I add the last segments (I forgot a major piece of it, so I need to go back and add that )

---

September 29, 2011

And more of the same.. though i'm a lil behind, its coming to its home stretch

I forgot to add a section on the top of the wing, so I put those in.


Quick bodged the footrest, and the hand grips will be added as soon as I finish the bar that connects it to the fuselage

---

September 30,2011


The next step was getting the wings to connect to the fuselage. These segments wre made out of plywood, as they would be taking a massive amount of pressure from the wings. Holes were cut, and the wings (and fabric) were pulled through.


The fabric was hotglued in place. I snipped the fabric on the inside, so i could evenly glue it down. The


The wooden peg is epoxied in place. It actually extends into the wing for added support. This had holes drilled in, and its what connects the wing to the fuselage (along with another peg further down.



Here's the current state of the glider. It weighs around 30 pounds, which isn't bad for a 15 foot x 7 1/2 foot.. thing. Will update this blog posting when its completed!

Dragon Age 2- Hawke's belt

Hello all, apologies for the lack of updates (again :p), I really prefer to post full start to finish wips here, but lately I've have been making slow progress on about 15 different projects,  between making accessories for another costume maker! If you want to see some of these things as they progress (and occasional webstreaming), check out my facebook page (no fb membership required! )

Anywhoo, this is a bit of a panic project, as I thought that the convention that this was needed for was at the end of the month, not in 6 days. So the schedule is very messed up, and much coffee was involved!


For those unfamiliar with the character, Hawke, here's a reference. He's from the upcoming Dragon Age 2 from Bioware.



Guyverion is getting the other items from someone else, and I believe he's making the armor bits, tabbard and such

Here's what he has so far (the belt is of course, going to be replaced by mine)
http://fevereon.com/props/propbuilds...an_tabbard.jpg

Here's a foam mockup I did to get the layout right. I found foam great for patterning because it behaves similarly to the damp leather I'll be using for the belt



I showed him some really cool looking rings, and he opted for them instead of the plain ones I had snagged earlier. He also gave me artistic liberties, so time willing, i might do a couple textured accents & such. We'll see though, since there's going to be a lot of sewing involved & I'll have to do it by hand, since I don't have a machine that can get through this.

Here some of the parts have been tooled, and some dyed, and I'm pretty much swapping out things as I go along.



More dyeing done, and preparing things to start sewing! Added texture because i thought it would look nice


And the buckle!

I rough cut the shape with a dremel


forgot to post a photo inbetween here, but I continued wok with the Dremel, and got the shape generally done. Since this was plywood, I coated it with some stuff called "tuf" that Wes from The Engineer Guy gave my fiance when he picked up stuff i purchased. sands smoother & sexier than bondo. Love it


sprayed a coat of Rustoleum stainless steel industrial spraypaint on there, because it dries relatively fast, and sands nicely without clogging up sandpaper.



Here's the finished buckle, after a lil tweaking. I'm leaving it a bit rough, to retain the feel of Hawke's rough design. This of course, was sprayed again after the sanding, and I applied some silver & black acrylic washes to weather it more.



From this point on, things were so hectic that my wonderful fiance pulled a major assist!

I layed out, cut, tooled dyed the leather, and punched the sewing holes, then gave the parts to him to assist in sewing. I unfortunately don't have a sewing machine, and hand sewing takes a good while. I wound up pulling 3 allnighters, and he pulled one getting this done in time XD


Here's some of the straps, in various stages of work.


Here's some up on the stitching pony that he was using. I chose to use a basic stitch that was not only faster, but was more accurate to the references than the saddle stitch that I usually usually use on everything. Most of the stitching done on the belt here was decorative, and though I considered not doing it for times sake, the belt would look kindof plain.



the pouch was again mocked up with craft foam, then transferred to leather.


Decided to use 3 oz. leather on the side pieces, and 5 oz on the main body. I started the sewing to get the things aligned, and my fiance sewed the rest up and added the clasp


While I was sewing the fur onto the back of the belt (sewing fur onto belt= sloooowwww), my fiance made a faux clasp for the leg strap. Its made from Sintra and Mighty Putty, and painted with a subsequent acrylic wash.





Here's some photos of the finished belt! There's a strap that my client would hide underneath the tabbard and bolts to the belt to stay hidden (much like a garter belt, but much more manly)



after taking this photo, I decided that the sack of holding was a little low, so I raised it a bit!



Again, I'm really happy he let me deviate from the original design and put these rings in!



My client is  (obviously) much larger than me XD