Reaper Wing Progress

After last weekend's foley after foley, it was a breath of fresh, Autumn air when things went right this weekend :)

The projector is AMAZING*:

I made a copy of my wing sketch and shrunk it down a bit, so that most of the image fit on the projection at one time.  Here, I'm projecting it onto some foam from my bedroom, to the hallway.  I had to put up a plastic table cloth, to block out some of the sunlight from the living room, which helped to really make the image easier to see.

*Now, I'm sure for the more experienced artists, who all ready know about this technique, this projector is small potatoes to what is out there, but for the price I really think that this thing is decent.  It projects color pictures in color... which is exciting.... that in itself opened up the avenue to some other great projects that I've been wanting to tackle.  I'll share those soon enough ;) In anycase, for the home haunt project builder, I feel like this thing is fully sufficient.  The image of what you want projected needs to be shrunk down to 3.5 x 3.5, but that's nothing that a computer/scanner or a copy machine can't do!

Back to the wings!

Then I just moved the projector closer to the foam, till the wings were about the size that I thought I would need them.  Next, I whipped out the measuring tape.  I'm doing the wings in at least 3 layers as of now, so I traced layer 1 and layer two out on the 1/2 sheet of foam that I had left over from last year.  Layer 3 is too big for a half, so I need to get a full sheet to do that one.  Layer one is a little over two fee tall.

The traces were very crude, but it got the general shape and idea across so I traced over them and made some free hand changes.  I also printed out pictures of angel statues, to get ideas about what kind of details I want to eventually add.  Gairy helped  :)

Once I was pleased with the sketches, I brought them out to my new workshop and started cutting them out.  It didn't take very long, with a two nice, new razors.  It did require a lot of patience on my part though, trying to make sure that I didn't break the feather tips as I pulled the wing away from the extra foam. 

Above is layer 1 cut out and placed on top of layer 2, so that I could trace out the exact shape of layer 1.  Confused yet?  Don't worry, it all makes sense in my brain ;)

And finally we have layers 1 and 2.  I cannot wait to cut out 3.  These wings are going to be HUGE!  I'm also excited to work on the detail.  I think that I'm actually going to get to use my dremal tool on them this year.  

I'm hoping to get my hands on a full sheet of foam Friday. 

Stay tuned!

Happy Haunting!

- The Countess