Saturday, May 16, 2009

This Weekend's Project: The Magic Gauntlets

There's a reason why no one sells 1:6 scale gloves with individual fingers. The majority of the dolls you will buy will have molded gloves. Why? First, you'll need the prerequisite of individually movable fingers. Again, you may ask why that's necessary. You can't put on gloves if your fingers are non-flexible. Aelia's hands have wire understructure that allow her to have one set of hands that handle all her poses, rather than make her have multiple hand sets like other dolls.

Second, 1:6 scale gloves with individually separate fingers are a pain to make. Perhaps the most expensive part to make if you were to actually make them for a mass produced figure. It's too much sewing for a small part. Luckily, I'm the only guy willing to try making it, since I only have to do it twice.

The gloves were made by sewing four individual tubes around her fingers, then sewing them together to form a glove. It's infeasible to sew them like gloves done at 1:1 scale, since the size prohibits them from being turned inside out to hide the seams. Therefore, the seams are on the outside of the gloves for all five fingers. Aelia's gloves are armored, which gives me the benefit of hiding the seams with armor plating. A bit of Magic and a bit of hot glue allows me to stick the plating onto her gloves. Each finger has separate armor plating segments that also allow her to retain her finger flexibility.

The only problem I've had so far is that her fingers are too short inside her glove finger length. She can do some limited gestures, but lacks the finger tip dexterity to fully grasp items. Still enough to hold a polearm. They are pretty good looking despite their bulk.


Aelia is nearly complete. Just needs some refinements to her waist armor segments and she'll be ready for priming.

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