[ENG] Making-of : Alphonse (Fullmetal Alchemist) Part.2

We are continuing with the making-of of Alphonse’s armor, with part 2. If you didn’t already read part 1, you can find it here, if you want to know more about the craft of the helmet, bust, and collar. 

With the « Making-of » posts, I go over the whole conception of a character, including the mistakes sometimes made, and when possible the sewing part (for which I don’t always have pictures…). 

3. Crafting

If not otherwise specified, the whole armor is made with 5mm EVA foam.

We keep going on the upper armor with the conception of all the arm’s pieces:

• The upper arms :

The upper arm pieces are quite simple, with a band in an O shape and a decorative plate on the front. The plate has two ridges formed by cutting a V groove on the back side of the piece, the groove is then glued shut.

However, Alphonse's stature is quite massive, and mine… not so much. So based on the same idea as the bust, with a layer 0 at my size, the arm pieces have an exterior diameter for Alphonse's arm, and an inside one, shorter, corresponding to my arm size.

Basically, before gluing, here are all the pieces composing the arm :

Upper left is the base of Alphonse’s arm, and right is the decorative plate with the ridges already glued, the tiny ring in the middle is my arm size, the two plates one from 5mm EVA foam and the other 3 mm are used to thicken some part to hold the decorative plate.

After gluing, the inside looked like that :

And the outside :

Without the shoulder pieces, Alphonse's arms look like some swimming armbands you used when learning how to swim...

[ENG] Making-of : Barry The Chopper (Fullmetal Alchemist) Part.2

We're continuing in the making-of of Barry's armor with part 2, I invite you to read part 1 HERE if you haven't already, and if you want to know more about the choice of the costume, and the realization of the helmet, the bust, and the collar.

In part 2 of Alphonse, I talked about making the arm parts, but for Barry, the design of those parts was a bit different. As Barry's arms and shoulder pads are made up of strips superimposed on each other to be able to remain articulated, they had to be painted before assembling them.

As usual, unless specified, the parts are all 5mm EVA foam. 

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With the "Making-of" articles I come back to the overall design of a character, including the mistakes made along the way, and even when possible the sewing part (for which I don’t always have pictures…). 

 3. Conception

• Arms :

Barry's arms are in one piece, with no demarcation between arm and elbow, only the forearm is different from the rest.

While analyzing the items to be made, Neevillia noticed that Barry's arms looked wickedly like fume hood ducts. And that's exactly what we used.

So I cut two lengths of flexible pvc conduit, which I hung up so that they would relax a little since the conduit is logically sold folded up.

And since obviously the apocalypse of my desk is THE place to sleep, I had the help of two assistants:

To be able to assemble the arm to the forearm, I attached a foam ring to one end corresponding to the inside diameter of the forearm.

As this diameter was smaller than that of the duct, the latter had to be reduced. Contrary to appearances, the conduit is not made up of rings but of a long spiral of iron wire in a PVC loop, itself attached to a long flexible PVC tube.

To reduce the diameter, I closed the spiral by tightening the ring until I got the right diameter. The plastic is gathered all around the ring:

In the photo, you can clearly see the difference between the diameter of the duct and the reduced diameter, lined with folds.

The original plan was to cover the duct with a 2mm long strip of foam, following the wire spiral, to represent the ring slats on Barry's arms. But the bulk of the foam greatly restricted Neevillia's movements, already limited by the mass. So, I ended up covering three-quarters of the surface with foam, leaving the inside of the conduit bare, which made it easier to bend.

Small assembly test, always using my friend the tape!