my new dremel bit

A bit ago I found this buffing and finishing bit for a dremel and the picture with it showed someone smoothing out wood with it. I thought it might be handy for smoothing out mods I'd been working on and save the effort of sanding by hand.

Well, I tested it on resin and it actually sands the area down. I guess resin is less tough than wood so that makes some sense. What I did realize I could do with it was sand things down for modifications much more smoothly than with my normal dremel bits.

So let's backtrack a bit. After doing Deidara's mods I decided I wanted to update Sasori as well, and a bit ago I took a picture into photoshop to see what I'd have to do to make it work okay. It seemed like potentially more trouble than the head was worth so I only got as far as marking the areas I'd want to sand down and then set the head aside.

But with the new dremel bit in hand, I figured the worst case scenario was that I destroyed a head I was considering just ditching anyway, so I might as well test this on it and see if I couldn't attempt to pursue the mods I'd had in mind.

After some sanding, his cheeks are definitely significantly slimmer than before. It is now probably safe to start on additive mods like making the eyes smaller.

After that I decided to grab my Leon Kennedy Minimee who has been sitting around collecting dust. In person he just felt far too flat. And that would be fine for certain types of characters who are supposed to be more stylized (such as Sasori and Deidara here) but the features he did have just didn't mesh with that flatness.

So I grabbed him and decided to go in and define his brow and cheeks more.

I didn't even bother to wipe his face first, as you can see. I figured I could use the places I'd attempted to blush in structure as guidelines for actually carving it in. I am relatively pleased with the results so far.

BONUS! Natural lighting shot of Avelarion's face up. His head feathers came off when I tried to sit him down on the chair. This resulted in some mild face up chipping but that part won't be visible once I put it back on anyway so not the end of the world. 

Sasori's stomach coil

Originally posted: March 2, 2008, 11:40


Here you can actually see it since he's leaning back on his arm. This picture comes complete with body parts all over in the background :D (as I was restringing several people at the time)

test post: Sasori's modifications

Originally posted: December 30, 2007, 15:58

Today I brought out the hacksaw and did some work on Sasori's modifications so he doesn't just sit around with pencil marks all over him all the time. Resin is incredibly sturdy stuff. I had worried for a while that after I made a huge hole in his stomach that he might not be as stable, but after the incredible difficulty I had getting it cut out, I'm pretty sure he's not in any danger of spontaneously falling apart on me. XD

The most easily seen thing is the huge hole in his stomach! _{You can see his strings!} :D However, I also did cuts in his arms and neck. They're not functional swivel joints just yet, but I think at some point I will make them work that way. Not that I NEED them to because he already has pretty good range of motion in those areas, but still..

You can see the cuts in the upper and lower arms better here. He still has pencil marks on other areas that will need to be cut or modified in some way. I have to make a separate ball joint for the shoulders and (depending on how much my engineering skills have improved by then) some way for the right side of the chest to open and shut.

I did more sanding on the 'heart' thingy today so our next order of business is painting it. I may go ahead and do that soon rather than wait for everything to be finished..

Making the hole in his stomach was really hard. Hacksaws just don't want to go in certain directions. I realize I probably could've used a dremel, but that sends resin dust flying EVERYWHERE and I wasn't in the mood to make a huge mess, so I did things the painful and hard way. I took out spare hacksaw blades (which are flexible when not attached to a hacksaw) and just held them with my hands. Miraculously, I did NOT end up with hands that looked like they could've belonged to Kakuzu.. but it was a little unpleasant feeling at times.

I'm currently working on the mechanics of his spool of wiry stabby stuff in his stomach. I want to make it function but that might be a difficult task. XDD

Anyway so I just wanted to show pictures of my progress today! It makes me very happy.