Slooooow Progress

Progress which mostly consists of gathering pieces so far, honestly. I still have costume ideas floating around that are incomplete. If I could settle on something and just go with it, that would be so much easier and more direct than my current/usual process, where I get an idea, gather some parts for it, decide to change/evolve the idea, which requires something else... and so on. It's a learning process. Or many of them.

I went to tint some lenses on a mask and found a video online about doing it with dye. That seems way easier in this situation than applying some film or something, and I'd used Rit dye before on my Mandalorian belt. It did not work, after hours of trying. Then I gave one more attempt with iDye, which was specifically called out in the video, and after fifteen minutes - perfect. Go figure.

It also doesn't help that car costs have been accumulating recently. $250 to fix a broken door handle. Around $700 for new tires and alignment. Now looking at $1000 this month for parts and labor to fix some front end issues that are only audible in warm weather, but I promised myself I'd deal with. That adds up real fast and carves into discretionary costuming spending. Ugh.

So I don't have much "assembled" at all currently. Still going ultimately for a sort of arcane/steampunk aesthetic...
I've got some sintra folded around the left leather gauntlet that I'll be building upon. The idea in my head thus far involves a palm plate with a sort of infinity mirror built in. I've got some mirrored acrylic pieces for it and intend to use EL tape rather then LEDs, with power routed through a tube to a larger vambrace/wrist portion with some additional decoration and possibly lighting there. I'm waffling over the shape of the mirror, though. Circular came to mind, but is a little Iron Man-y. It may be hard to cut the acrylic into a circle, and there's also not much room to work with there. Still considering.

The mask was selected after hunting for a basic mask with decent ventilation and that I could wear over glasses. I finally got the lenses tinted, which is a small bit of awesome in itself. I intend to wire in two or four LED sequins to act as glowing eyes, and to fabricate/mold material over the exterior to give a different look. My current though is to try to make it look a bit wolf-like, though I'm not sure exactly how much so. Also, it has removable "air filters" that attach to the cheeks. I'm undecided whether to include one or both of those. On one hand, I'm not sure I want to lean into the "gas mask" look so much. On the other hand, they came with small built-in fans that would actually make it more comfortable to wear for extended periods. Hmm.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adventures in Rokugan (ongoing)

 So, yeah, I'm terrible at keeping up with between-session conversations and all the piles of possible channels/servers in Discord - especially when work gives me some time to think, but not Discord access. I believe a question was posed about thoughts on the state and future of the Adventures in Rokugan game, though, so here goes... In general, I'm enjoying the time and look forward to it more than feel burdened by it. The start time is a little earlier than ideal, but I don't mind making it work on Saturdays. So, net positive overall. I'm a touch "meh" on the mechanics of AiR. I like the familiarity of D&D, but the Rokugan-specific stuff doesn't feel very rewarding. Granted, this may just be my pick of a shadow acolyte, but I feel like I'm getting more functional mileage out of the sharpshooter feat than all of the special class abilities and level-ups haven't been particularly exciting. I've been tempted to multi-class into something els
Read more

Harbinger of Chaos (Godbound)

 Last night seemed to be the climactic finale of the ongoing Godbound game. I have some thoughts. The previous session ended with a couple PCs and a shadowy person in the special chamber with access to divine realms and their vacated thrones (in the campaign, the gods were sorta kicked out of their positions, making things up for grabs). Once PC had already claimed a throne. All the others were waiting outside. At the moment the session ended, no one seemed aware that the shadowy figure was Beryn, big-bad threat of the campaign. This is where I feel weird about things, because that little detail came up OOC and it changed everything. If the PCs had been aware at the time, they probably would have started a fight outside the chamber when they saw him. That didn't happen. But suddenly because the players were aware, they wanted to be able to plan before the conflict (with downtime glossed over previous) so they could go into the next session guns-blazing and as prepared as possible.
Read more

RPG Desires?

 So I was asked last night what I actually want in an RPG game/campaign. I came up with a few points, but that's a question I find hard to answer on the spot. It's easy to point at things in an ongoing game that I don't like, and a little harder to point at things I do (darn negative-focused psychology), but making generalizations is more difficult still. It does, however, give me something to focus a little on and ramble about for a time... Story I like a narrative through line - not usually to the point of "railroading," but I want more connective tissue than just returning to a job board after each mission. Sometimes that develops as things go, with character goals shaping things. Setting an end goal at the outset ("defeat the demon lord!") can have ups and downs. However it comes about, I really like to feel there is some forward momentum toward something, though. Consistency This one gets sub-points!  As far as setting, I sort of stopped using the t
Read more