I know, I can't wait to see how it turns out either!
Unfortunately, I'm going as fast as I can with the spare time that I have away from real life responsibilities. So in other words, it’s not done yet.
But if you’re not bored by progress reports, maybe this stuff will help pad some time:
When we last left off, I needed to separate the pin joints that held the arms and legs together. The best way to do that is to heat the plastic up until it’s soft and then pop them out. You can’t do it with a heat gun because that will just heat up the surface and melt it. The best way to heat it evenly is to
boil it. Yes, that’s right- I made Zuko stew. Don’t try this recipe at home it. It tastes nasty. Trust me I tried it.
It only takes a few seconds in the boiling water to soften the plastic into a rubbery state and then it’s a cinch to pop the joint pins out. If you look below you’ll see the parts that make up Zuko’s arm all the way up to his chest.
The round, circular part that makes up the shoulder joint was one solid piece and the shoulder-tube that kept it in place had to be cut to get it out. There are similar circle joints were the legs meet the hips. I’ve decided to call these joints
Arm Loopies and
Leg Loopies for obvious reasons.
There are two things that are taking up a lot of time right now. First, I’ve cast some of the parts to make the molds I need and the Silicone takes up to 6 hours to cure for just one side. With the number of molds I have to make for this, it adds up to a lot of waiting.
The other thing is the engineering of the figure.
“Tea Shop Zuko” is actually radically different than
“1st Season Zuko” -my base model. He’s even radically different from “Refugee Zuko.” Have a look below at my reference drawings:
Fig.1a: Here we have
"Refugee Zuko" who has arms that are similar to
"1st season Zuko" by virtue of the way he has a puffy shirt coming from his shoulder that gets tucked into forearm wraps. If you look at the
"1st season Zuko" figure, his arm is pretty much identical except for a little spike at the tip of the wrist. So basically the original toy’s joint and pivot locations could remain the same with only minor sanding to that wrist spike and without much more work, we’d have
"Refugee Zuko’s" arms. But were not making him….
Fig.1b: Here we see
"Tea Shop Zuko"with his fancy-pantsy Ba Sing Se duds. The overall look of the character is similar to maintain continuity but in reality the addition of the long sleeved under robe changes everything. The same goes for his pants!
"Refugee Zuko" kept his pants tucked in his boots
(fig.2a) while
"Tea Shop Zuko" leaves the pant legs out around edge of his ankles
(fig.2b)All these subtle changes in shapes mean I can’t just use the joints and pegs in the same configuration as the original toy. There just wouldn’t be any space in the hand to house the pivot plug. Again look below for an illustration of what I'm doing to make it all work:
Step.1: The original toy’s arm
Step.2: The arm is boiled and the joints are popped out
Step.3: The parts are cast in a two-part Silicone mold and hard resin copies are produced
Step.4: The joint system needs be rearranged to better work with the new figure’s anatomy. So we cut the elbow joint and forearm in half...
Step.5: …Then glue the plug joint to the end of the hand and sculpt a new forearm & shirtsleeve onto the elbow loopie.
Step.6: We then recast the new parts in
yet another Silicone mold and make all new hard resin copies of the pieces that can then be painted and assembled.
Step.7: (Not Illustrated) Pass out after having to do this for the other arm and both of the legs too.
So that’s where we’re at. I hope to have something more tangible to show you before the Dec.1st premiere of the new episode. Thanksgiving’s coming up and that’ll give me some time off to play around on it. So long as I don’t accidentally get any of the toxic plastic casting chemicals mixed into the Turkey dinner. Mmmmm… Yummy!