Labor Day Spoils: Building a Moonfire Sword

I've had a fondness of exotic weaponry. Drakengard will always have a place in my "Stuff to Build" pile due to the wonderful assortment of weapons and great lore behind them. One of the long swords I liked, appearance-wise, is the Moonfire.

The Moonfire sword, according to Drakengard's weapon history, is a granite blade that burns hot except to those under the protection of the moon god. My Moonfire is a sword made of a $0.76 bendy plastic ruler I bought at a local drugstore and some X-Men TCG cards that burn if you take a lighter to it. Not quite as exciting, but when you're building on a budget, it's acceptable.
This sword had the main goal of a translucent blade. Painting a sword red is pretty easy. I could have done that and been done in a few hours. I wanted something that was a bit different than the other bladed weapons I've built. I needed a blade approximately 20cm long for the Moonfire, so that limits a lot of raw material sources.

The above image shows stages of the Moonfire's construction. The first stage involves cutting out the materials and preparing them to be structurally sound. I've made cutouts using leftover 6-ply X-Men cards from the Devilscale for the guard. A notch was added for the bamboo stick grip and the blade. The blade itself was cut from a Penway "Megaflex" ruler. I remember the days when school supplies were solid plastic objects that splintered when you tried to slash at someone in school with them. The good old days of consumer safety. As a side effect, I have a really limp blade to work with at the moment. More on that in a bit.

I've hidden the notches with two layers of card on each side, then added two more to define some details in the guard. The third image shows the primed guard with the raised details. I created those details using a sheet of 110lb cardstock and cutting out the lowered parts. The thickness of the paper was sufficient in making the details stand out. The bottom image shows the details painted. I first painted the black details first, leaving the raised parts unpainted. What I should have done was paint the entire thing black first. Gold paint isn't good if it's thinned, and in some cases, the enamel paint thins as you use it, leaving light spots that show a bit of primer. If I had painted everything black first, then gone over it in gold, the gold would have stuck better to the layer underneath. I'd also know quickly which spots were underpainted. Oh well. Lesson learned.

So far, I've barely made use of my four month investment building Aelia. For all that work that went into building her, she's been photgraphed less than the minigun. I figured what better way to make a sword interesting than an armored girl using the sword. I'm experimenting (or better yet, just now bothering) with enhancing the photos I take, since I'm not going to wait until the weekend where there's better natural sunlight to take photos. They look a lot different than my usual darkened desk photos. Anyways, some opportunity to use Aelia in some photos!

J.Norad Shortens His Lifespan and Lengthens a Spear

Shouldn't take a month to make a spear, right? Seems more like 2-3 months since I last worked on the spear. I extended the spear by about 2-3 cm and redid the spiral. I kept the head, since working on a new one would guarantee this spear never being completed.

I opted to go for carved details in the grip and ends, and drawn detail for the spiral. My first attempt carving the chevrons into the spiral ended with a flaky mess that chipped off easily. After building the shaft and the decorative round elements, the entire spear was painted with primer.

The grooves and decorative balls were first done by Dremel'ing the balls to the right shape. A coat of Loctite over the surface helped little in keeping the surface from fragmenting as I etched the grooves with an X-acto knife. If I had first glued the entire spherical section with Loctite and allowed the adhesive to permeate through the paper, it may have been better. I did patch reinforcements for the already chipping sections with regular Elmer's glue.

I sure can't manage my paints. Might be the lighting, but the paint looks a bit thicker than I would like it to be. I thinned out the mix of Gloss Black and Aluminum enamel paints, but it still looks like the thinner did more to poison me than thin the paint. The spiral chevrons were groggily done with a 5 micron art pen. Conveniently, I had a piece of red cloth that wouldn't fray too easily that I could use for the shaft.

Here's the spear separated into two sections and a coin for scale. I sadly feel I did the lower half of the spear better than the head. I can always rework it.

Well, after several months, the spear is "finished". Now off to trying to figure out how to make the guard for her sword.

Aluminum + Green Metal Flake + Thinner = Poisonous Fumes

Finally got around to painting the armor. Used a layer of primer, then a mix of Testors Enamel Aluminum and Green Metal Flake. I tried using a wash of Green Metal Flake over the Aluminum, but that didn't work as well, creating a semi-uneven color at points. Mixing the two together provides a good shade of light green metallic color. I'm not too sure whether the finish is what's considered decent for painting models, but I'm definitely not going to cover it with a layer of gloss lacquer. I've inhaled enough toxic flammable fumes this month. Anyways, here's where Aelia currently stands in terms of construction progress. Still spear-less and sword-less and in need of decent hair.





I'm not liking the gloves too much. I may need to redo them, and that's painfully long and tedious work.

Next stages: going to work on the weaponry and the armor rivets. Someday, I'll find better hair, and fix up the head a bit more.

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.

Weekend Roundup: ACEN and Ribbons That Make UPS Proud

Last weekend was ACEN, Anime Central's convention up in Rosemont, Illinois. Apparently the midwest's anime and manga convention. I prefer to consider that event a one stop shopping center that lasts three days.

My main goal for any store that sells Japanese import toys is to find interesting and unique specimens. I'm very particular in not buying two of anything in the same product line, since that provides no new information for developing new structures. That thereby excluded purchasing a Revoltech, Kaiyodo's Trigun: the Planet Gunsmoke figures (I already have three anyways since I loved the series and build quality), a masterpiece Transformer, a BBI doll, and some random Halo figure. That said, I was left with some possible targets:

• Max Factory's Figma line
• A ball jointed doll (such as Obitsu or Volks)
• Wildcard figure I discover (my favorite option)

After a $35 admission fee, $5 parking, 3-4 hours of browsing, I came home with my single find:

A Book.

A book I have a scanned copy of. A book I can't read. A book that cost me $110. (Technically $150 after all costs.)

To be fair, it's two books, out of print, and the only artbook from the Valkyrie Profile series worth buying since Silmeria's artist Shunya Yamashita doesn't do a good job with armor. I can't find this book anywhere for any price; only the combo Lenneth-Silmeria Artbook for $87. And that book is apparently hardcover too. This one's paperback with a sleeve.

So much for buying figures. I passed on a Master Grade Sinanju ($95 of potential gundam building fail, at some random stall), every single Figma I saw (small, and very unappealing selection), and there were only 1/3 scale ball jointed dolls. As for the wildcard, some mildly exciting Full Metal Panic blindboxed figures were tempting, but not for $13 apiece. At least the artbook stores nicely on my cramped shelf.

After that midly disappointing haul, I finished off the last few annoyances on Aelia. I finally bought some brown ribbon. That means belts. Having belts made means I can prime the armor plating soon. Time to showcase what ribboned belts can do. Certainly better than masking tape.

Generic test pose. I like to use this as a comparison to the artbook so I know what's missing.


I finally have the straps holding her skirt plates together. Two paper clips had to die in order to make this. Their sacrifice will be remembered.

A back shot of the skirt plates. A bit of undesired overlap.

Having working belts for holding the greaves together is really nice. Masking tape really doesn't work.

Now, having obtained my brown ribbon, I need to find some brown cloth for the gloves.

This Weekend's Project: Gauntlets

At last, my last batch of free Magic: the Gathering packs came in the mail. I've gotten a few packs previously with their promotion, and to my dismay, I've yet to see what the contents of a green colored pack was. Seven boxes later, still no green pack.

Not a single green pack. 5 black, 4 blue, 3 red and 2 white packs total. Wizards knows what colors I play, evidently, just by my mailing location. With that out of the way, this weekend was dedicated to doing nothing. After that was done (or, rather, not done in this case), I proceeded to make gauntlets.

I have no idea how to do gloves at 1:6 scale, especially individually articulated fingers. Not to mention, ARMORED fingers. I'll figure that out soon, hopefully. Until that time, I can get the lower arm portions done. Aelia's armor is asymmetrical for the arms, which makes the joy of pattern making useless. Although, that's also a good thing, due to the added complexity of the left arm compared to the right arm...


...because the left arm looks like this. The left arm has a dragon head "protecting" the hand, which seems to limit a lot of the movement instead. The art did not show any indication of moving components to suggest a flexible assembly.


This piece involved a lot of Dremel use to shape the details. Glad I didn't attempt this when I was using crude methods of sandpaper taped around an X-Acto knife handle. There's some whiskers I need to find better materials for, but in the meantime, thin 110lb cardstock strips curled a bit will do.

So far, Aelia's near completion. What's left is skirt plating attachment, gloves, and mostly fasteners. I'm still looking for a good satin ribbon to use to make the belt fasteners, but unfortunately, I don't have the colors I would like.

On a side note, I corrected Aelia's head last week due to her head having a severe case of "made poorly by apathy". Her right eye was 0.055 inches higher than desired, giving her a really bad case of Shunya Yamashita's "beaten on the back of the head with a lead pipe" syndrome. Shunya Yamashita did part of the art for Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, the sequel to Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, which Aelia is from. Aside from even more ridiculous armor, Yamashita tends to have the problem of drawing all girls with the same face shape, age, and blank stare like they've been beaten over the head a minute beforehand. The art for VP:Silmeria was rendered useless for armormaking purposes due to the bad idea of "Hey! Let's add high heels to EVERY girl in the game regardless of functionality!"

From an engineering standpoint, I can't enjoy impractical armor anymore. Simply because I'm the one who has to figure out how to make it work if I try to replicate it, and it's going to look really bad when I try to make it.

This Week's Project: A Less Creepy Looking Head

Arguably, Aelia's head sculpt is one ugly one. I could have done a lot better than that. Rather than deal with an ugly face, let's finally move away from the Mizuirogakuen Ruri head template and onto better prospects. But where to start? I first need to find a suitable model to base mine off of. The plan was to create a duplicate of the head entirely by coating it with paper and flattening it out into a template. Luckily, I had some assistance in securing a volunteer.

Ze Doktor eez een!

After a few stabs later... we've secured our base to model a new head off of. Behold, the miracles of science... and malice.
The usual process of paper and tape shell making begins. I've made sure to capture as many details on the face as possible but not too many to render the template complicated. The Ruri template consists of four elements, each with a simple assembly. I ended up with three with a slightly complicated assembly.

Clockwise from top left: Original shell, templates for the new head, assembled head, and the original base.

I ended up spending a week working on the revised head sculpt, then entirely scrapping it and redoing it. The third from the left was the one I was previously using for Aelia. The fourth from the left was too fat and reminded me of Jimmy Carr. I have no idea why he came to mind. The fifth one was actually a test build to get the scaling right. Oddly, the test builds I went through were the better looking of the lot. I aimed to replicate the test build with the second try, pictured on the far right.
So far, this is the current end result. I'm still not happy with it. The nose needs rework. For those who have noticed, this build required a lot of after-work on it than simply cutting and gluing the pieces together. I added three to four layers of 110lb cardstock over underdeveloped regions and taking a Dremel to it to get the right shape. Without a Dremel, this would have ended up very bad looking or have taken a lot of manual sanding and X-acto knife tricks.

I do however like how the eyes and eyebrows came out. The mouth needs work. Unfortunately, in her armor, she looks really fat. It's not as bad now with this thinner head, but the first one was atrocious. Practically heavy weapons girl. I'll properly finish the head sometime this week, then return to constructing the armor.

This Week's Project: Greaves and Sabatons

Segmented armor is annoying to make on a small scale with unconventional materials. I opted to go for a new method of gluing armor pieces to a piece of fabric. This allows for flexibility while keeping the thickness low. I may have to redo some other pieces this way, since I really like how it turned out.

The leg assembly consists of two major components: the boot- back greave portion, and the front greave plate. The parts were glued with a hot glue gun on small sections to allow for flexibility. I only glued the upper half of the fabric to the greave so there would be slack on the bottom half to assist movement.

Until I build the straps, I'm holding the front plate together with tape. Masking tape is a wonderful tool.

These parts were created the same way as every other piece of armor. I'm quite pleased in how they turned out in appearance. There's still enough mobility in the feet, which was a big concern for making plate. The winged elements on the boots make me wonder if Aelia was intended to be like the dragoon class from Final Fantasy 3, doing high jumps and impaling enemies with a spear.

Girls always go after the snipers, it seems.

This Weekend's Project: Shoulder Armor

Sometimes, you need to make your own parts. Aelia's entire armor along with the Team Fortress 2 costumes were created by this technique. What you'll need is a lot of masking tape, scissors, paper, and an ability to sculpt. Most of you will have 3 of the 4.

First, I use simple strips of paper to help form the shape needed. The goal is to get the outer shape into one single component that can be cut off/apart to make patterns. I make cuts to flatten down the resulting piece to form a pattern that can be traced.

From the left to right:

• Replicated piece made from duplicating the masking tape formed piece
• The pattern created from the original component
• Patterns for each individual plate for the pauldrons
• Assembled pauldron plates hinged together by wire hooks
  
• Finished right pauldron

This is the finished set of pauldrons. The pauldrons are segmented to allow for articulation and somewhat less restricted movement.

The pauldrons are held onto the main chestplate by a strap looped to the belt holding the front chestplate to the back. A second belt will eventually be added to the bottom of the pauldrons to secure them to the arms.

Motto of the Month: "Plenty more where that came from"

Making armor is quite an interesting experience. It's not much different from making sewing patterns by taping swaths of paper together until you get the right shape. The end result just ends up being solid. The main issue is getting it all to work properly when you have all the plates together. I'm still working on having the armor hold together and what fasteners to use.

Unfortunately, I've had a lot of "reject" parts due to warping, improper lamination, and just out of testing. However, I've acquired a new batch of raw materials that made the process less about optimizing material cost and more about end result. First, let's see where we stand:

Right now, I have the chest plate, waist segments and hips structurally completed. I'm experimenting with the skirt plates and the arm sections. Nothing like using a lot of thermal paper and masking tape to complete my armor. Reminds me of my high school crafting days.

I've bought a sealed box of X-Men Trading Card Game cards for the sole (and silly) purpose of getting three cards from the set for my art collection. A real waste, but no one sells these cards individually since no one plays this trading card game. Luckily, Wizards of the Coast also made these cards, and the card quality is on par with Magic for raw materials. I'll be finding a use for this obscenely large volume of cardstock soon. How big of a volume?

This big.

Sadly, this represents about half my "chaff" reserve. I have in total, something that looks like five to seven times this amount of cards that I can consider "expendable".