Red Dragon Inn Cardgame Storage Box

I've been having a great time playing the awesome card game "Red Dragon Inn".  I dove straight in and have been collecting all the expansions too!  Unfortunately, there just wasn't a good way to keep it all together, so I took a little free time at work and drew something up!  (That my laser wife was nice enough to cut for me!)

 My wife surprised me by drawing up an awesome version of the game logo too!

 

The box holds all 4 expansion sets, and the 4 individual expansion characters that have been released so far.  The coin tray is removable, so that you don't have to keep the giant box on the table, and it covers the compartment that holds all the tokens and loose pieces.  Since it was hard to see all the decks once they were nestled in their slots, I made some "Character Select" cards to help remind people which decks were still available!

Solar Project Baby Steps

Just a quick update after some vast laziness, to break the ice.

*DISCLAIMER* This project should be considered experimental, as it contains DANGEROUS levels of electricity, and uses a lot of found/donated materials.  I have made a fully fledged attempt to make it as safe and reliable as possible, but you should still not use it as instructions for power generation in your own house/project.  This is just a temporary setup for hobby-use only. *DISCLAIMER*

Since the days are long and warm again, I got back to tinkering with my solar project.  I mounted my inverter and other "indoor" stuff to a project board, for easy mounting in the crawlspace.  It has distribution blocks, and a relay so I can turn off the inverter in the house.  From the attached electrical boxes, I should be able to securely distribute AC and DC around.  In this pic it's in a little bit of disarray.  I have my test extension cord and kill-a-watt hooked up so I could do a full power test and make sure everything stayed cool.  Because of that, I've since beefed up the wires going to the relay.  They CAME WITH the relay that's rated for 40A, but at ~25A they were getting pretty toasty!  In fact the relay itself is a little warm... it will be held under suspicion for now.

I also did some more infrastructure work outside.  Got conduit run to the patio box that will hold the batteries and charge controller.  Still nothing connected to the house, but I can safely charge my battery on partly-rainy days now!

I'm just about ready to get my full panel array installed, and then I just need to get some batteries and uses for this power!

Gunzerker Cosplay (Part 2 - Everything else!)

PART II - THE COMPLETION

 Building the harness was the biggest task for the rest of the costume.  I started by tracing the middle back piece off of another screenshot, and cutting it out of craft foam.  It's pretty awesome that BL2 has such great ways to view your stuff in game, and that steam has such easy screenshot controls!  I'm also lucky to have a wife that let me borrow her dressform to build my costume :)  It's on the form in the above pic, those aren't boobs, they're pecs, lol.  It was crucial for fitting the straps.  The harness is entirely made of craft foam, glued in some large places, hand sewn with big stiches in smaller places that needed strength... many safetypins were also used, I won't lie!

I found a really cool new material that was perfect for making all the assorted bullets that are in the harness.  Did you know they've been making technological advancements in play-doh since the 80's?  Crayola Model Magic is similar to play-doh in consistency, but has the weight and density of styrofoam!  (It's really weird!) it also dries hard (well, foam-hard) if you leave it out for a day or two.  I bought the giant tub of white Model Magic, and started forming up ammo.  To get all of them to be the same basic size and shape, I took one good bullet of each type and weighed them on a scientific digital scale.  Then I divided up lumps of the same weight to make the other bullets.  I only ended up using 1 and a half of the 4 packs of clay in the tub, if that helps you estimate your own project.  It was easily the most expensive material I used in this costume.  I sewed small strips of craft foam into "8's" to hold the bullets, and then sewed them onto the straps, so that the force of holding the bullets wouldn't pucker up the main part of the straps.  The Model Magic held up to gold spray paint well, and then I finished out the entire harness and attachments with sharpie.

Now for some of the accessories!  Using the same foam I used for the shield generator, I built the belt buckle and transfusion grenade (my favorite).  My awesome wife had the belt buckle lasercut into the foam for me, and then I just had to paint and sharpie it up, and sew on some elastic for attachment.  The grenade was quickly cut from 2 layers of thick foam, with a zip tie through one layer for a belt loop.  Then I glued on a circle of craft foam, and painted some Maliwan graphics on.  Running out of time, I just left the outer pieces raw.  Close enough!

Once I was all geared up, I need some GUNS GUNS GUNS!

I had a grand idea to build a 3D replica of the talking shotgun from the game (complete with banter!) and to paint some awesome Nerf waterguns we have, but a few things stood in my way.  #1, time  #2

The con has a goofy rule than nothing that has ever fired a projectile is allowed as a prop... WATER counts as a projectile! WTF!  And, most of all #3 TIME!  So I put my thinking cap on...

I came up with the crazy idea to make 2D guns!  I could print out some screenshots, stick them to some foam, and cut them out!  Should be good for characters that look like they're cut from a comic book, right?  My wife took it one step further, and actually laser cut the guns to fit the image files!  For a time saving shortcut, it turned out to be the crowd's favorite part of our costumes!

We went a little further and made our robot companion as well!

FINALLY!  SOME PICS IN ACTION!

 

My wife (the mechromancer), our robot master, and I

OMG Mr. T!

We ran into some other Borderlands folks too!

It was a mega awesome time!  We were like rockstars at the con!  We didn't get 5 minutes to ourselves without a group forming to take pictures.  I feel like I really checked something off my bucket list! It felt good to contribute to the atmosphere of the convention, instead of being just an observer :)

Now that that's finished, I can finally get to something else other than eating, working and costuming!  Finishing my solar install should be next!

Gunzerker Cosplay (Part 1 - Muscle Suit)

At first I was just going to chronical the construction of the most complicated piece of my costume, the shield generator (blogged here ... and here), but I heard at least a little interest in seeing the rest of it, so I'll put it up!

I'm going to slack off on the pants a little and just wear plain jeans, so the only big piece is the torso.  Big is an understatement.  I have a slightly bigger ribcage than some, but I'm still about a foot short in diameter to match this guy:

I looked online, and the best thing I could find in my ~$20 price range was this muscle shirt that just had some abs and arm padding... not going to cut it

I ran out and got a $5 tshirt at FiveBelow (pre patterned, woot!) and started sewing it to the inside back and sides of the suit to add some serious back and lats meats.

And flipped back, right-side out, tada!

It gives just enough to be more 'zerker-believable, while still letting me squeeze into the middle :)

Next I used some fabric markers to add the brown cuffs to the gunzerker's undershirt, and started brainstorming on how to properly weather his overshirt.  I thought about burning, ripping, sanding... but finally I tried using some old scissors that I ruined doing other crafty stuff.  They worked great!  I used the part of the blade that took about 4 chomps to actually cut the fabric, and it gave a nice ripped look without being too chaotic or curling up like I feared.  Here's it all stacked together with some linework started:

I've still got a LOT of work to do in the week and a half till the con.  I'll keep posting up new stuff (and a pic of me in it) as I get time.  Wish me luck!

Borderlands Shield Generator Part 2 (Cosplay)

Last time I got the structure and "moving parts" of my shield generator established.  This time I'll show you how I finished dressing it up.  Surprisingly this seemed like the much more challenging and time consuming part.  The structure fell together as if by magic, but the appearance required a lot of thinking and trial and error.  Here goes:

First, I taped up the plexi core to prevent it from getting dirty or scratched while working.  Then I started experimenting with craft foam as a "skin".  It cuts really easy, but behaved a little differently than I expected under the heat gun.  If you get it REALLY hot, you can stretch and deform it a little, but the best use of heat seemed to be in getting it to keep it's shape for gluing.  If I heated it just a tiny bit, it would stay exactly where I put it.  You can see how I formed a little box out of it above.  It's staying that way all on it's own.  That's comforting, because I'll know that as the glue ages, the foam won't be trying to tear itself apart!

Fitting some pieces around... you won't see it here, but I had to make a few of these a few times!  You can see the grey top piece trying to spring back into its heat formed shape while it's propped up for gluing.

Getting closer!  I trapped some thumbtacks under the black bottom foam so I'd have something to glue some little "terminals" to later.  I have some scrap EVA foam on them for safety.

Speaking of those termainals, here they are.  I squished some sculpy into a nut, and then unscrewed the nut after baking for a threaded look.  They have a pinhole in their bottoms so they can be glued onto the tacks later.

Finished foaming!

I used cheap craft acrylic paints (as suggested) to get the basic colors down.  (I have my old stencil print out for reference)

TA DA!  After the colors were on, I added the linework and details with markers and a little paint!  I hope you like how it turned out!  It blew away my own expectations!  I can't wait to wear it.  Don't leave home without your shield generator, safety is our #1 concern!

Borderlands Shield Generator (cosplay)

I finally reached a good milestone on my new project: props for my Gunzerker cosplay from Borderlands 2.  Last NekoCon I attended a panel showing what could be done with EVA foam... which I happened to have a ton leftover from my dartboard project (see a trend here?)  I've been dieing to play with it and I got my chance!  Here's an example of a shield generator in-game.  I'm shooting for something similar, but with slightly different attachments.

This is what EVA foam looks like in its wild state.  It's sold as anti-fatigue or playroom floor mats, and is usually about 1/2 inch thick.  In theory you can layer it up to make things as thick as you want.

Time to cut!  Luckily, I got some baddass shop shears for xmas that hungrily chomped through the foam!  (Shop Boss, basically for all the things you CAN cut with sicissors, but aren't supposed to) Here you can see the mockup of the particular generator I'm trying to re-create, and the unfortunate diamond tread on my foam.

Fortunately, an orbital sander handily erases diamond tread.  Ready to GLUE!

Then it was time for more precision cutting with x-actos and dremels:

Never one to miss the obvious, I couldn't overlook the facts that the in-game generator cores glow AND I had a lot of unused space in mine.

A trip to the toolbox and the attic, followed by more dremel time yielded some plexiglass with inlaid LEDs for edge lighting.  The core of the generators have a peculiar texture, and I searched high and low for interesting metal hardware to cut up.  Eventually I stumbled on chrome duct tape!  Much easier to work, and has a pretty acceptable texture!

At that point, I got kinda psyched, and jumped a few steps without pictures.  Whoops!  The EVA foam is really easy to shape with some heavy grit sandpaper and a power sander.  I also realized that I better add some structure for the belt-loop sooner than later, so I stuck some heavy zip-ties through with washers to stop them from pulling out.  I was going to just let the battery control the LEDs, but I ran across a switch and couldn't resist.

IT IS ALIVE!

Now for the interesting part... trying to make it look pretty!  The plan is to cover it in heat-formed craft foam, and then paint it with acrylic.  In the end the LED's will be covered with a trim ring, so all you will see is the cool glow from the center of the generator.  STAY TUNED!

Portal Bookshelf Speakers

I needed some new computer speakers, and I had an unused set of rather nice 6" automotive components laying around from my past attempts at car audio competition.  It was time to use them or toss them.  I decided to ignore the advice of the internet and tried my hand at making some enclosures for them.  Since I even had a pile of MDF around, I had nothing to lose.

The woofers were designed to be in a car door, or in an "infinite baffle" as a sound engineer would say.  I figured an over-large sealed box would be a close approximation.  It would also leave me the most options for trying a port later, if necessary.  I measured the maximum room I could sacrifice on my bookshelf and started sawing.

Unfortunately the sound was rather lame.  In my past experience with subwoofers, reducing the box size would increase the amplification of the bass sounds.  Making several boxes of various sizes would involve too much ass pain, so I tried adjusting the volume of the box instead of the size.  Filling it with crap, in other words.  I grabbed a 24 pack of the most cost effective individually packaged non-compressible fluid I could find, and started experimenting.

While personally fulfilling, it only improved the sound marginally.  My memories of how much I quested for these particular speakers for my car would not let me rest, so I moved to the next phase... porting!

I consulted several port design calculators, and decided that 1 1/4" pvc conduit would give me the most tuning options for my box size.  I started with a port length of about 10", bought a hole saw, and crossed my fingers!

I attached the port with an airtight, but temporary seal to allow for adjustments.  Much to my surprise, they sounded incredibly freaking awesome just as they were!  No adjustment required!  The sound was very even, and the bass was incredible!  I took full advantage of my ridiculous luck and immediately sealed everything up permanently with liquid nails.

Now on to the aesthetics.  I've been a real Portal nerd lately, and I've seen a lot of cool Portal-themed projects around the webs, so I decided to join the party.  I wanted to emulate the look of the gun itself, and many of the other objects in the game (turrets, robots, cameras, etc.).  It had to be white.  It would have a seam so it looked like it was made from 2 parts.  It would involve something that looked like a moving part.

I puttied, sanded, and grabbed my rattle cans...

Cutting down or building up an actual seam would take waaaay too much work, so I masked and painted a crisp line in flat black, then added some shading for depth with my airbrush.  I also added rings of craft foam under the speaker grills to add some color, and hint at the portals themselves.

Satisfied with the cabinets, I moved on to the tweeter mounts.  I wanted to do something that was reminiscent of the co-op robot characters from Portal 2, so it needed a rounded, layered shape and some structure of black rods.  Checking the parts pile I found some thin wood and 1/2" copper water pipe.  I bought end caps for the pipe, and drilled holes to mount the tweeter and route the wires.  I thought it might look cool if the exposed tweeter wires were part of the design (convenient since the crossovers are external)

I went to borrow a staple gun from my dad, and ended up getting an awesome idea to top everything off!  He suggested running the wires through some clear tubing (that he happened to have) to bulk it up, and protect it from the staples.  I think THAT is what really pulled it all together into my original idea of how I wanted it to look.

Here's the finished product, freshly stapled.  I've been using them for a while, and I'm super pleased!  They make great explosive BOOMs in games, and make music sound beautiful. I started using them as a sort of studio monitor to play Rocksmith (which I fully recommend) and they continue to impress.

Next, I start on the props for my Borderlands Gunzerker costume.  Stay tuned!