We debuted my Silence masks at A-kon last weekend and even got a good photoshoot. All the pics are on our DA page: shinkastudioscosplay.deviantart.com
I made them from scratch by sculpting oil clay on to a styrofoam head and then making a plaster mold and casting them with rd-407 plaster from Monstermakers. My next project is an Ood.

Thought I'd post up how I went about working on it. Winners were announced monday. And the servers went down soon after.  The winning piece was one that I had known would win from the beginning. It was too good. lol

That's right. I'm addressing those few who find their way here. If it's not any trouble, I'd love to learn more about those who visit once or like to check in every once in a while. I'd like to know what their interests are and what they'd like to see. What I can do to make my site better. Anything really.

On to updates: Awaiting  results on the Eowyn vs Nazgul challenge. I loved working on it! ArtOrder is looking to possibly make a book or calender from some of the entires, as well as several other exciting options. Some of the entries are jaw-dropping and make you want to go cry in the corner. lolj
Continuing work on my silence sculpt. It has required another 4lbs of clay and several more reference pictures. I swear that there are more than one version of the Silence mask. Some of the pictures show it being skinnier or the color of the skin is off.....  And we've started on our hands by using our silent-hill method. It would take too much clay for me to sculpt both a left and a right and then cast them.

Edit: Oh! And I forgot to mention. I got my first rejection letter! Tor sent it just yesterday. No biggie. Rejection is to be expected in the publishing game. I'm going to focus on agents now. Writing query letters is an art all it's own. And each agent asks for different things: plot, summery.... 

Here's my latest WIP. Done a lot of detail work. My brother got to be both Eowyn and the Nazgul for the photoshoots. Next step will be cleaning it up some more and the addition of color. I plan on keeping it fairly muted. 

And I've gone through at least 12lbs of clay on my Silence sculpt. The head is about 70% done. Just need to cap it and start in on the details. The slush latex has been ordered too. After the head has been cast, I'll reuse the clay to scupt out the hands. I can't wait to wear this at A-kon in June.

With the help of a very nice person on the ArtOrder boards, I have finally found a composition that I'm proud of. Still have a lot of work to do. Reference to shoot. But, I have till the 15 to do so. I'm actually very proud of this piece so far. The hardest part is going to be keeping the fell beast's head from disappearing. lol

This was just supposed to be a fun little contest. I decided to enter, just because. And then the professional illustrators from the Muddy Colors blog came in and the stress level went up. At this moment, they are looking over all of the thumbs on the WIP thread for the contest and will post comments and possibly do paintovers... More stress. And they might be giving away some of their art to whomever they like.... ( and this is where I flatline and lose all artistic inspritation)
Even in school, I never had this much trouble trying to produce a thumb that I was happy with. After a good week and the need for a new sketchbook, I might have it. But I'm not committing until I read the comments tomorrow. They could change everything.
But this is the WIP I've got right now.

Also, here's my entry for a quick contest on CGHub concerning Epic Swords. Didn't win, but I learned a lot about conte jour and painting metal.

My brother. Only 7 more to go.

Since I just started work on my Jun helmet, I'll be documenting the process at more of a depth than I have with any of the others. Pictures with explainations will be posted here, with the final tutorial being posted in the Prop Work section. At the moment, I have modeled a low res helmet in 3ds Max. It's not the most beautiful thing of course. I don't want to spend a lot of time on something I can do later with bondo.

I exported the file as an .obj and opened it in Pepakura viewer. I unfolded the model and arranged the parts on the proper paper size, making sure that nothing overlaps. The mess in the picture is what it looks like at the beginning of the unfolding. It looked nothing like that at the end. Everything had been cut and placed in an organzied fashion.

The next step was to build it using hot glue and xacto knives.

To help the paper craft keep it's shape, I like to add a layer of resin. Can't really tell from the picture. It usually soaks into the paper and makes it a bit darker.

And now the fun part! Smooth Cast 320 mixed and poured in smal amounts to coat the interior. It usually leaks out of cracks if you aren't careful. This can be a problem if it leaks and hardens on to a detailed exterior. But this helmet lacks any super detail on the outside. Yay!
Cause it did leak. lol. I coated it enough that it doesn't  bend, but doesn't get too heavy. I made that mistake with my Tali helmet. I had to sand out part of the interior or risk falling over backwards.

And that's all I have so far. I hope to start with the bondo and sanding, weather permiting.
Oh, a bit of art news too I guess. I'm starting on yet another portrait. And I've found myself a  new art community over at cghub. I'm liking it so far, as well as all the art challenges. Got one due on the 13th. Will post some of the WIP when I feel like it.

I want to do a few more before I send my stuff in to the charity.

Sorry for being gone so long. So much to report.
Cosplay: Carl and I finished our Mass Effect 2 Cosplays and attended Anime Matsuri in Houston last weekend. We walked away from the contest empty handed but got an amazing photoshoot with Mike Boike. This had to be one of the toughest builds I've ever done. A mixture of both cloth and hard props. I got help from my mom on the cloth. I think I might be able to do the next on my own  now. Tali's helmet turned out just as I hoped. The vacuumforming of the visor was the most stressful thing I've done cosplay-wise. The entire photoshoot can be found at my cosplay groups DA page: http://shinkastudioscosplay.deviantart.com/

Art: Took a break on the art while I wos working on the props. But now I'm going to focus on portraits so I can try and help out with a charity that does portraits of dead soldiers.