Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Operation Cockbite Part 12: Dawn of the first day

Alright, the day finally arrived. It was time for RTX. I packed the brand spankin new (and probably still drying) Gusbot into a couple shipping crates and headed on my merry way to the airport!

little tidbit: the austin airport is friggin cool!

Gusbot landed safely!

uh oh...
It appears someone opened the crates up... maybe it had something to do with the hot glue gun, dremel, duct tape, and exacto knife set that i packed witht he costume...

Hey buddy... ya doin alright?

damn covenant bastards... (wait what?)

Thankfully nothing was taken, so we're still A-OK. until...
fuh...

so our rental car was... small.
but with a bit of pushing, lots of cursing, and breaking the lid off, we managed to get one in the trunk and one in the back seat:

A quick drive, a slightly less quick check-in, and a very perplexed bellhop, and we were finally in the hotel room:

Hey, remember that quip i made about foreboding stuff last part? well...

thankfully, i happened to have brought some tools...

fixin time!
Gusbot seems to like the accommodations
swagbag HYPE!

Alright, with everything unpacked, it's time to suit up and test to make sure everything works.
Shoes are looking quite snazzy:

Oh, remember that thing i JUST FIXED?!?

Time to bust out the duct tape...
There, much better. Now, i get back to unpacking and testing all the suit pieces when i realize something...

I
forgot
THE RIGGING SYSTEM!
Yup, the better part of an hour METICULOUSLY GOING THROUGH A CHECKLIST OF EVERYTHING I WOULD POSSIBLY NEED! and i forgot the one thing that HOLDS THE ENTIRE SUIT TOGETHER!
   However, instead of crying about it, I grabbed my handy-dandy roll of duct tape and got to work:

I think it came out quite nice actually. Anyway! with that problem solved, i continued with fitting everything:

It rode up quite a bit and was nearly impossible to walk around in, so a few adjustments were made:

With the adjustments done and everything fitting comfortably, Gusbot was packed up in a box, ready for the car ride down to the convention center in the morning:

And so, the first day of the RTX trip came to a close with the event looming on the horizon. Next part will be all about running around doing crazy shenanigans during the event. Stay tuned!

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Operation Cockbite Part 11: T - 20 Hours

Alright, part 2 of the final day. As the title suggests, there are only 20 hours left until i have to be on a plane to texas. and roughly 8 of those are going to be spent sleeping (hopefully). So, after the nose was done, next came the hair. This was probably the most "scratch-build" piece of the scratch build, considering I had 1 reference picture and nothing else but my imagination.

Started with the slight widow's peak, then the sideburns. After that, it was just trying to imagine what kind of hair a robot would have:

And with that, Gusbot the Hedgehog was done. At this point, it's T - 13 hours until the flight leaves. Nose to the grinder and all that. So, with all the main pieces now completely finished, it was time to paint. Thankfully, our good friend mr. FlexSeal came in white, meaning that texturizing, painting, and priming could be done all in one. Two big fat birds with one stone there:


First layer down, looking a bit spotty, but that's to be expected:

Second layer down, even less spots, but still missing a few patches:

Next up: the head. Gusbot The Hedgehog is, unfortunately, no more.

While i left the main pieces out to dry, i got to work on the last few detail pieces. First up, the hands. since i wanted to keep it as close to the source material as possible, so i scrapped any attempt at having useable hands and went for the "stick figure" look. 

To start, i had to make end caps to cover the hole in the aluminum ducting and provide something to attach the "hands" to:

I also had to cut a little more room into the ducting for my arms, since there was still some tightness/pinching:

Alright, so with the bases done, it was time to make the hands. Some small PVC piping worked well with a couple cuts and a blast from the heat gun:

Same process for the second one:

Since i went for a sort of pitchfork design, i had to cut an indent for the crosspiece to fit into:

Next up, cutting a hole into the base for fitting the hands into:

Next up: paint!

and finally, attaching them to the arms:

The last bit of detail was the glasses, which were equal parts PVC pipe and foam, since I didn't buy enough piping. Also, at this point, exhaustion had started to set in, so I had started to slip up on the picture-taking, and the beard and mouth were literally done with sharpie:

Something wasn't right though... The eyebrows! I had almost forgotten! I felt that i had gone a bit heavy with the sharpie, so I busted out the foamies:

And with that... with 12 HOURS TO SPARE... it was finished.

Obligatory goof-off glamor shots:


I feel like this is foreboding...

Anyway!Next part will be the event itself (which was awesome!) so stay tuned!