Heavy Construction Documentation, Part 3

This week's installment of Making Fat People, I make clothes! I find clothes for large people annoying. They're only good for that one guy who wears that size while the rest can only use them as tents. Anyways, time to delve into the process of making a vest. For the confused, I already made the shirt and pants by modifying and enlarging existing clothes stripped off of the soldiers. The following process can be applied to other strange and unique forms of clothing. At least in theory.

First, I take some thermal printing paper (that was all that was handy at the time) and start taping strips over the body until I get the shape and form of the clothes I want to make. You'll (as if you'll actually try this) need to get the shape pretty accurate at least on one side of the outfit/clothing if it's symmetrical, and both sides if not. Use scissors and masking tape liberally.

Next, I turn the paper clothing into a pattern. We do this by cutting the clothing off the model along planned seam lines. How do you determine these lines? Shoulders and below the armpit make good places to cut, as they have seams going along those regions in your own clothes. You'll then have (hopefully) some pieces of paper that when put together will have the shape of your desired clothing item. Cutting them to get them to lay flat may be an issue, but nothing sewing can't take care of. The next step is making any symmetrical pieces symmetrical (by folding over the line of symmetry and trimming) and getting any other details taken care of now.

Then it's tracing time! Trace each part onto another sheet of paper. Add about 5-8mm of border to your parts for seam allowance. Cut the now widened parts and trace them onto fabric. You may use a fabric marker, or you can do it the bootleg way with a BIC pen or white Crayola colored pencil! I presume you don't care for sewing, so pass it off to someone who can and you'll get this:

The last items to handle are the little details. First, I'll "document" the ammo belt links the Heavy wears. I used 1/8" dia bamboo skewers wrapped in a 4cm long length of 110lb cardstock, trimmed down to 2.5cm long rods. Confused yet? I made 36-38 of these small rods, then sanded one end down to a round tip. Why 38? Guesstimation. Should have made 40, actually.

Taking a 1cm wide length of 110lb cardstock, I glued each bullet to the strip, curving the paper around each bullet and leaving 3mm of separation between rounds. This was kept uniform by the thickness of my tweezers I used to hold the links together.

After a lot of unhappy gluing action, you get the following belt of ammo!

This is the current state of the Heavy. I'm still debating molding or sewing gloves, and I'm probably going to need better paint for his arms. It's easily chipping off. I'm hoping Testors makes enamel paints that have flesh tone. That stuff doesn't chip as easily and dries on a bit more uniformly. The belt and ammo pouch are made of black construction paper. Probably should have documented making those, but those were too quick and relatively simple in my eyes to warrant documentation.

Now, to get gloves, paint, and the minigun!