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Project: Alien Hospital
After a short break to do some other things instead of modding i'm starting a new project. I'm planning to post it only on TBCS, because it will be a long running project, and when i post it everywere everyone knows it and the suprise factor will be less. But offcourse i need some feedback, and i think TBCS can, because there are more model bulding people around here.
The idea: Also a bit to suprise, but it should be a alien witch has a crash or accident so he has some bloody wounds, broken leg etc. so they took care about him in a special alien hospital. How does a alien hospital look like? You will see...
I was a bit confused about the name, if it's correct english and a good name for this mod. Suggestions are welcome offcourse. The good thing is that there are only 1300 google results, far less than "alien crash" or "alien illness". Always handy when people searching this project.
The project does exsist of 2 important parts: The alien and the case. First i want to do the alien, it gives me more ideas for the case and time to figure out the exact dimensions. Offcourse the case will have a extremely hi-tech/industrial look. Lots of cable's, sttrange alien materials, blood and tools.
So i started with a small test model made of foam and putty, but that didn't work out too well. I decided to start working with clay.
My dad often comes home with some old parts from his job. For example this cool grill. By rotating the wheel left you can open and close it.
I havn't got pics of the head's frame, made of wire. But here it was covered roughly with clay. It's the hardest part because it should be perfect symetric and very detailed. Giving the face a real espression is not that easy either i think.
More usefull parts: RVS tubes in various dimensions. Very sci-fi look, if you've seen the matrix or some other movies you probably seen them before.
Wireframe of the body. The left and right side has some small differences, esp. the shoulders because both arms won't be in the same direction.
Moving on with the head: time to add detail. I made 2 eyes of 8mm black plexi. Mounted them with some self drying clay and a 20.000mcd green led beyond them.
You can barely see trough the eyes due to the black/smoke color.
His teeth
At 1 of the pics you can see a small piece of silver foil. I glued that with some disance behind the eyes to provide a reflector for the led's. The effect is realy cool, the lens effect combined with a reflector made of silver foil creates a nice light effect. It changes under each direction/movement.
Babelfish says this is a "oesophagus", the hollow pipe were food goes trough. It's the main part of his ring, together with a RVS tube. (or might i will replace it. Not shure.)
Well that's it for now.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Good work already, I'm looking forward to see how this all fits into the case. You might want to search for the Area 51 "Alien Autopsy" video for a few more ideas (although it looks as though you have enough ideas to see you through).
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Hey, this looks pretty cool. It's an original idea too-i don't think many people would consider an alien hospital, they'd probably go for an alien spaceship, or military site, but i can see where you're going and this looks really good so far.
Keep up the good work-i hope to see a lot more from you!
Oh, and that grill does look pretty cool.
-Dave
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Thanks, the tip for alien movies was usefull :) i've fond some movies on google video about it. Depending on the time i have left this week, the head could might be finished next weekend. But only the clay/forming stuff (mounted his teeth today). The paint should waith until the rest of the body is done.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
I like it very professional work. Will you be brush painting this or will you be using an airbrush?
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Brush painting :)
My mom does something with brushing ceramic. So she has a lot of paint, brushes and she knows some nice effects. My sister has a airbrush and i tried it a few times, but i think brushing should work fine here.
Mom's hobby room:
a stone-like mouse i've painted:
(the black one)
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
wow! took me a while to see the mouse lol can just make out the scroll wheel
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
that mouse is m-azing dude
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Awesome man, im excited about this mod!
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
cool mouse, nice alien, keep it up.
(I believe in the K.I.S.S. approach to comments :))
Love the alien so far, I like seeing some other people finding uses for some-hat everyday objects. Mod on man, mod on.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Wow the mouse is awsome. My mom paints too but she doesn't have THAT many paints. Cool.
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i still cant tell which one is the mouse?!
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Noo, the brown one heheheh ;) :P
Thanks guys :)
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Sorry for the late update, i was busy with some other things, like bulding a new subwoofer. But i couldn't resist getting my hands on the alien, and worked out some details:
The eyes have a smooth junction with the skin. (All the bright clay is self-hardening, other clay is oven-clay.)
Teeths were mounted in some clay. Note it will be sanded etc.
The top of his head. Trough the mesh you'll see the "brains". Wich are actually exist of a small HDD, some PCB's and fibers. A digital brain hehe ;)
The blood wich should "run" trough his veins should come from somewhere... Ecaxtly, the small tube should do the trick. 2 of them leaves the body and enters the head form both sides. Later i should figure out how to make a nice blood-like liquid. tips/sugesstions? No need to have the liquid flowing trough the tube, as long as it looks like there is a liquid in it it's OK.
Look, brains 8) I replaced the metal spacers with acrylic ones. Just put 2 green led's in it and the platters will light up awesome!
The fibers were feed trough a spiral made from very thin metalwire. It prevents braking them and looks very technical. here are 2 fibers on each side, Rx and TX with red and green light.
I've polished/cleaned the grill, and found a usefull motor for it, works on 12v and has a slip meganism on it so it doesn't mather if the motor runs a bit longer than it should.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Very nice. Looking forward to seeing results from this.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Finaly a new update.
I'm back from a hollyday trip, did some work and other important modding/hobby's and now there is time for modding again. I realy need to, before i would forget all the ideas i have. To make it even worse i've lost some paintings and idea's i've made.
Anyway, i bought a new tool:
Normaly i cut acryl with dremel, this should work much better with less heat, noise and dust.
The alien is in a hospital, so here is a part of is operation. A open wound in his stomache. It's hard to visualize because you don't see the natural colors, that's making the modding more dificult too.
Head+ body together. Note the difference in both shoulders. The reason for that is that both arms are in different direction. (and it's very hard to work symmetric hehe). The skin is rough, there will be details added like his head. ( veins, scratches/wounds etc.)
Close-up of the open wound. after painting i hope it's clear that there is a piece of skin flapped away, offcourse with some blood etc.
The brains. You can barely see 4 fibers on the left side (painted black). With some imagination these act as fiber channels to the HDD. With some led's the brains will produce a nice light effect because there will be light emitted between the HDD platters too :)
The wall of fame ;) various newspapers and magazines where i'm in, AFAIK 1 magazine is missing.
4 fibers are connected to his head. 2 RX and 2 TX channels. Here you can see the TX channel, with reen led's. All the led's will be connected to a microcontroller to let them blink lika a real data pattern. (or HDD activity)
His dangerous looking mouth.
That's it. I'm realy hoping to make some fast progress with the brains. I want to know how the head turns out when painted.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
As soon as I saw the title of this thread I went "Oooooh". So much potential here and it looks like you've got a good start. Can't wait to see it finished.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
the "blood" could be cooling fluid (even water with food dye) but it seems to me as the perfect oportunity for water cooling I'm thinkin' a window covered by thet awesome grill (what I think you had in mid anyway) and some red cold cothodes, or, if you really want some extra ninja points (the international currency of Jacobia) you could buy a cheep disco ball thing
http://www.plustron.com/it020020.jpg
and replace the light bulb with LEDs and all of the translucent things with shades of red and some bright martian green.
Oh, and Jack Bauer will give you some pirate gold
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
I seem to recall seeing in a movie commentary that they used vegetable oil and food coloring for blood. I don't know whether that would be necessary in this case since it's just going to be sitting in tubes but I figured it was worth a mention.
In any case I agree that the best thing would be to integrate it into a water cooling system.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
The grill will be acting like a window yes, but it doesn't need acryl. It can both act like an intake/outtake hole and window.
Intergrating the veins into the watercooling would be difficult. Those small tubes would dramaticaly increase the flow resistance.
But i can make it look like it's in a watercooling circuit. Just a pump, reservoir and some sci-fi looking parts around it. (like its a machine for adding oxigen to blood.) When the water or blood, just how you wanted to call it, is flowing it will be prevented of sinking to the bottom of the reservoir and form a residue.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
i think if you just add some red food colouring to water you could achieve the colour. it would be cool if you made the veins part of the water cooling system. if you did, you could get some u/v green coolant, and then put u/v leds in various spots to make it glow.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
update
It has been a while ago, but i've got a nice update for you:
I was planning to make veins on tha alien's body. But it didn't worked out great, because the air-drying clay didn't hold well on the alien his body. (that problem will return in a later stadium :( ). But i had already made some gaps with the dremel. So i decided to make this .... wound (don't know all the english words hehe) instead of veins, to fill up the gaps. After sanding and painting i guess it looks good.
Offcourse the alien needs 2 arms, this is his right arm including use of the RVS tubes. This arm will be laying on his body, the left arm in some kind of bracket/bracing because there will be a open wound in it.
After baking the right arm and claying the left arm:
This photo and the following ones are made with my new Canon 400D instead of a fuji S5500, such an inprovement! Need to fine-tune some settings etc. and i'm planning to make a small photostudio with good light conditions. I like casemodding and i like photographing them, so that was 1 of the reasons for a new camera.
The left hand/arm is not final, it needs to be much smoother before baking, but that will take quite some time with those small fingers and details. I still considering to ad the same nails on the left hand, but maybe a small saw blade in it would look good either because i think it's nicer to have 2 hand's with both different "weapons".
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WoW ! nice work ! looking forward to the final results !
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Quote:
(don't know all the english words hehe)
Don't worry, your English is very good!
The work looks great. Keep it up!
-Dave
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Wow, I think this is a pretty sweet idea over all, and the work you've done so far is awesome, keep it up!!
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wicked mouse i couldent find it till you said which it was
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man you're doin good. where's the hospital? lol
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Thanks :D
The hospital will be made when the alien is (almost) finished.
My previous project was supposed to be a case with some spider web's and a spider on the side. But it never came that far, because it took so much time to create the spider. So it's a case with spider webs but no spider :( Due to that i decided to change the building process and start with the alien instead of the case.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
This....
IS REALLY COOL!
-Mita
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Quote:
Originally Posted by _ferry_
Thanks :D
The hospital will be made when the alien is (almost) finished.
My previous project was supposed to be a case with some spider web's and a spider on the side. But it never came that far, because it took so much time to create the spider. So it's a case with spider webs but no spider :( Due to that i decided to change the building process and start with the alien instead of the case.
I still have a pic of the head around here. I was very interested on it, sadly, no spiders... (Kumo means Spider in japanese ;) )
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumo
I still have a pic of the head around here. I was very interested on it, sadly, no spiders... (Kumo means Spider in japanese ;) )
Cool, you remember :D
The head of this alien looks better, that spider head was nice but not the way i wanted it. I've been working on the legs too, but i didn't came much further on it.
1 good thing about it: it was a good practice and gave me some good ideas for this alien.
(and now i'm going to add the last details on his arm :) )
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
New update, with the finished arm:
As you can see his left arm weapon is different than the right hand, i took some copper wires. I would like to tell you about the exact function of those but i can't: The alien has never been seen by human, so nobody knows what it does. :D
The open wound in his arm. I made a spring from some wire and put some wires in it.
I bought some styrene to start detailing the brains. Those should look like a computer, IC's, HDD and communication with the body. I showed some pictures before of the platters. Now it's time for the read/write heads, they look boring without any connections/controller, so i ended up today with this:
The flatcable will be fit with some glue onto the styrene. Below the styrene base 4 fiber wires act as communication channels.
Note it's a laptop-HDD, the styrene base is only about 1x1.5cm. I've never build with styrene before, but i like it! Details can be added exact the way i want, but it took quite some time.
I'm thinking of ordering a simple airbrush. I don't have any troubles with brushing and brush effects, but parts like this are hard to brush due too the deep gaps. They are sold at e-bay for +/- 40€ so it's worth the try :) . Can i connect them to a normal compressor instead of a special airbrush compressor? And almost every waterbased paint can be used? Any other important things i should know about it?
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Sunday evening means update time :P
I've been working on the top of his head as i showed you in the last update. Time to move on with that.
Here you can see his head, with the HDD and some styrene works, a small fan (2cm) with some kind of circuit around it.
I made a cover for his brains before:
But i wasn't totally happy with the result. That's the reason why I've painted it, because i wanted to try how the color turns out. Quite like skin color isn't it? We'll come back on the paint stuff later.
This was the new idea, plexiglas shapes with clay between them. Nice idea, but it looks like ****.
Oh well, the paint stuff:
I've ordered a nice airbrush pistol with some colors, those on the left are for the alien, those 'ecoline' colors on the right are for brushing on paper to get the airbrush feeling.
The pistol itself was even better looking as i thought, because it's some kind of new model. On the website the adjusting screw was on the edge of the back, without gold color. I've been brushing the whole saturday, flame's, stripes, dots, circle's, thunders etc. It's hard to learn, but painting the alien isn't that difficult as flames. (At least, i hope so)
OK, were back:
The idea is the same, but now with more straight lines, going from left to right instead of a random pattern. Both left and right are better in balance when we look at the shape and there is less clay between the acryl. It's drying now, and lets hope the clay holds on the acryl. When the clay is hard i will add details with my dremel.
Hopefully i can start painting and brushing soon. But i need some advice for that.
I'm thinking about that skin color I showed above, but that would might look too much like a human bod? A darker color, like green, grey or black, with some highlights would be better? Just like The Alien It's almost complete black. But my idea is to give all the details like veins, tubes, finger skin etc. a slightly different color.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
hey ferry!
i really like your alien! You´re doing a great job!!
me and my brother also have 1 alien project in the backhand which is paused at the moment (all those body parts are lying around.....like in a weird horror film) i think we will start finallizing it in the next month´s.
But i have one question, the open HDD in the Head? is it used for anything or just to decorate the head in some way?
The idea to use alufoil for modulating the single body parts is really good and i think a lot easier than using foam.....(like we did)
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
This is great. I'll be interested to see how your airbrushing goes. I almost bought one a year ago for a completely different project, but didn't due to cost.
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Quote:
Originally Posted by
thechoozen
hey ferry!
i really like your alien! You´re doing a great job!!
me and my brother also have 1 alien project in the backhand which is paused at the moment (all those body parts are lying around.....like in a weird horror film) i think we will start finallizing it in the next month´s.
But i have one question, the open HDD in the Head? is it used for anything or just to decorate the head in some way?
The idea to use alufoil for modulating the single body parts is really good and i think a lot easier than using foam.....(like we did)
Hi! Alien's are cool hehe, guess you have a nice theme/case for it as well?
The HDD is only for decoration, it's an old laptop disc, and already crashed before i opened it. There is no circuit board, only the platters and read/write heads.
I was quickly reading some books from my mom, about making gnomes and other clay models. Those were made with metal wire and foil. That was the base for my alien.
Using foam would be impossible, because that would melt direct when backing the Sculpey clay @ 150c celcius. Off course you could use foam, when using self hardening materials. Note that foams gets affected by putty, strong glue, paint and other stuff.
Only 1 thing that could might give some trouble: Connecting all the body parts together with the self hardening clay. That clay is hard to stick on other materials. It's a bit elastic, but I'm petty sure that it would cause cracks when bending the arms too much. So when all the parts are connected i must be very careful and put the alien in a stable position.
Quote:
This is great. I'll be interested to see how your airbrushing goes. I almost bought one a year ago for a completely different project, but didn't due to cost.
Thanks, It was about 110€ for airbrush and paint. For a project like this it's worth the money, and i really feel like doing more with it. Brushing some flames on my bicycle for example. My girlfriend likes it too :D
I should be able to paint the alien with small brushes, that was also the plan. But airbrushing will work much faster and easier, and "good tools are half the work" an old dutch sentence says.
BTW, spell check in firefox is very nice! Previously I've made plenty of mistakes, while i was thinking it was correctly spelled hehe :banana:
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
Perhaps you all ready answered your question - but you don't need an airbrush compressor to run your airbrush.
If you are going to buy a compressor for it, however, I recomend getting one with at last a small air tank to keep the air flow consistent.
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This is looking absolutely great. Can't wait to see it finished.
-Dave
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Re: Project: Alien Hospital
wow there has been a lot of progress since i last visited and i am extremely suprised (in a good way). definatly not what i thought was going to happen with it. keep it up, i expect at least one more suprise like that before its finished ; )