brenblog

Kinda more wiring than I had originally intended to cram into this box :P

Soooo yeah... been a while since my last post, partly because of a slight case of apendicitis! So progress has pretty much looked like this for a while...    :P

Got the crossbars in for the triggers, gone for off-centre triggers as I want to avoid the "hot-spot" effect in the middle. Quite like the wooden look, keeps with the colour of the shells. Just need to get a few electronics and a couple of extra heads now!

Lugs off!

Made myself a cool bracket to attach my kick pedal to the kick drum, basically four pieces of timber, screwed together to form an I-Beam type construction, with a metal T-plate from Wickes, stained then varnished, and bolted to the bottom of the drum, works a treat, rather pleased with how it came out! :)

So yeah, I've been fancying a new electronic drum kit for a while now, and you can get some truly great looking kits now that look and feel like real drums (check out  http://www.jobekydrums.co.uk/  ) However. They cost moneys, lots of moneys. So I started looking into cheaper alternatives, and seems it's pretty popular to modify existing drum kits and doing electronic "conversions" to turn acoustic kits into ekits, and depending on what kind of kit you buy to convert, works out a lot cheaper than building a kit from the bare shells.

Just finished the hat! Was gonna fill it with various steampunk gizmos but ran out of time! Now all I need is my waistcoat and fob watch and I'm ready to roll! In case your wondering what this is all for check out this:  http://www.londonexpo.com/  and if anyone else is going tomorrow i'll see you there!!

The gun is finished!! Been a while since the last post as i've been too busy actually making the thing! So here's a few makings of that I should have posted ages ago!

First big valve and first coat of paint in place!  Drilled out the indents and stuck some funky lights down the barrel!  Happy paint!

So before diving in and giving the big super soaker the steampunk paint job, I thought I'd test out the technique on something smaller. So I grabbed one of these toy guns from the poundshop, picked the most interesting looking (originally blue and orange!!), grabbed some emulsion tester pots from Wilkos and gave it a shot using this method:  Indy Mogul Check it out and let me know what you think!

Me and Gilan are going to the London MCM Expo again this year, and just like last year cosplay is definitely on the table! :P This year is going to be Steampunk! First item on the cosplay shopping list is a big badass steampunk gun! Like all good steampunk creations mine will be good ole fassioned home made! My starting point will be this very sturdy looking water pistol, ready to be painted steampunk colours!  I grabbed some of these car light bulbs from the poundshop, ideal valves! Some quick initial sketches.  I love this thing, has a great loading mechanism for the soft darts!   ...and even a fully functional clip! Will look great sprayed brass :P Stay tuned for the next update!

Gilan showed me this amazing website full of celebs with inverted features, and I thought...my god, this is so brilliant I have to do some myself, the results speak for themselves...

Ok, let me first start by saying that Prometheus exites me beyond belief, the source material has perplexing quantities of awesomeness to explore, and the latest trailer gives me no doubt that Prometheus is gonna kick major ass, it just looks SO good. Anyway, the usual spots like aintitcool.com and alienprequelnews.com are the first to spot all the hiden jems in these kinds of trailers, but I haven't notice anyone mention this: A rather large round structure where they enter and find the giant head and ampules which curiously resembles a piece of artwork H.R.Giger produced for the original Alien called the Egg Silo aka the Temple... Pretty interesting read detailing the origins of this piece of artwork, with a few parallels with Prometheus! Full read :  http://aliensandpredators.tumblr.com/post/832087332/egg-silo-i-by-h-r-giger-in-the-earliest-alien Apologies for the nerdyness, but this film is slowly revealing my inner fan-boy ^_^

So in my spare time I like to learn new stuff for my work (which is animation by the way), and I've been developing this auto-rigging tool for building advanced Motion Capture rigs in Maya. Check it out and leme know what you think!

So I've got an absolute ton of DVDs, and anybody in a similar situation will know how much space they take up. I've never been the biggest fan of DVD cases either, they're big and cumbersome, all to hold just one little disc, and I really like dvd and cd cases that come in a custom cardboard case, so I thought why not try making some! So I grabbed some colourfull card and got to business. Several failed prototypes later and here's the result! Takes up much less room on my shelf and looks way cooler too! (and incase your wondering I didn't use my favorite movies incase i messed it up!!) If your wondering how to make your own let me know and I can put some instructions together! Also... I'm totally up to my face in flu at the minute, so I'm staying inside with soup, making things, and listening to the new blink-182 album (which is awesome by the way).

So for 2012 I thought I'd start a blog! Reason being that I've got tones of stuff all over the internet, and it would be cool to bring it all into one place. So expect a total mish-mash of drawings, animation tests, drum covers and probably some music too! To kick things off here's my latest doodle, and it's another robot! Completely Useless Robot ::5 by ~ foreign-body on deviantART