August auspices

'Allo folks, welcome to season 5! Doing a public patreon/fb-linked post as is the norm by now for the season starters. Lets me write with more formatting options, and ever so slightly reminds people that the Patreon exists :p

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I've spent the summer enjoying the weather, but unfortunately with too much actual work also. Long story, company drama. I reckon I'll tell stupid stories from it once things have settled down properly, but that's going to take quite a while. In the meanwhile we're back to our regular topics: suits & latex!

We can sum up season 4 as 'catchup'. Smaller things aside, I finally caught up to the suit rig plans... kind of. Ended up taking a step back and reworking the ideas quite a bit. The whole 'catchup' season was sorely needed, finally gave me time to process my way through things. Finishing subprojects, improved working environment, tax paperwork, etc. Lots of musings about it in the previous pre-summer Patreon wrap-up post.

Now it's time to talk about the future. I've got the path pretty much charted for the upcoming months, and as usual it's like 50% bullet points.

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Suit rig v8.4: The One That Should Work!

Scrapped my way through variants over the catchup season; 'bellows' was too complicated, 'dipping' too mechanically intense on the molds, and the rebuilt 'spraying' setup is just giving me a quality headache (see pic on this post). Done a few attempts to refresh my skills, and I can conclude that it's a big questionmark how this even worked before. Not sure what's changed, getting a lot of new artifactcs that I haven't seen in previous v7-casts.

However... I ended up getting acquainted with a local animatronics guy, coincidentally enough. Got a bit inspired by some of his manufacturing methods, and I think I finally have a design that'll work for the suit casting. Already sneak-started on it too!

Looking over the previous rig prototypes, they all had permutations of issues:

• Any bi-directional pump system will be too complex/tricky/expensive to maintain at this level of industry, i.e. 'one dude burning all his spare time'
• Way too much latex is needed for the 'one vat fits all' style, even with fillers. It's technically doable, but a major hassle + money sink.
• Too much displaced liquid for horizontal dip rigs, puts huge stress on the mannequin molds. Not just 'straight up', but angular on the anchor points due to bouyancy/center of mass too.
• Casting quality of spraying is absolutely not good enough for real production. Might try to figure out the issues still, but yeah...

If we examine the requirements again, there a few firm ones that I simply cannot avoid dealing with;

• Standing after cast/with a controllable angle (5-20deg tilt useful, mold shape & drips)
• Head down & feet up so that gloves & socks cast correctly
• As little dead space as possible in the mold/rig cavities

...and more importantly, a few 'would be nice'-ones that can be sacrificed:

• 'One vat fits all'-style casting. Works for smaller pieces, but not really feasible for the suit molds. The scale complicates the handling too much.
• Dipping rather than draining for ease of control. Still very, very nice, but not fundamentally needed if I can get the latex quantity requirements down enough for the fill/drain to be manageable.

All of this boils down to me realizing that I can steal parts of the concept from silicone casting techniques. Fiberglass outer shell on the mold, but instead of having the outer shell precision-molded I just need to offset it with ~1-3cm of padding across the mold since this mold is just a positive. A bit of plumbing to be able to fill/drain via gravity, and voila. Design sketches still TBD, coming in next post.

This has a few advantages and solves most of my major problems;

• Small amount of latex needed per cast (best-case scenario 50L or less, depends on offset and precision)
• The low latex amounts won't exert much mechanical stress on the mold
• Small, compact 'rig' with basically a durable blobby mannequin, tanks and tubing
• All complicated parts for the plumbing are separate from the 'casting shell', easy to upgrade/tweak/fix.

and a few downsides that aren't severe enough to kill the concept;

• 'One size fits one', will need new shells for all major mold changes. Plumbing will be reusable and the shells are somewhat compact, so not the biggest problem.
• Fiddly casting process with the preparation/sealing/filling/draining/unsealing/drying. Practice makes perfect.

Having learned a couple of lessons over the last designs, I genuinely have high hopes for this one. The plan is relatively simple;

1) Rework mold (more compact arms + repair head/legs): ongoing

2) Get supplies for fiberglassing. Done.

3) Cast shell.

4) Build simple fill/drain system.

5) Verify functionality with water.

6) Attempt a cast.

I'm sure something weird will require extra effort, but eh, usual deal. I'm pretty sure I can handle whatever crops up. If all goes well there'll be a prototype cast or two on the store when done.

Other stuff

Besides the suit rig, I'm going to do a bit of hood stuff during the autumn. Hoods and Patreon does keep the project going, after all, and that's ever so more needed now with the overall cost-of-living crisis. There's going to be a few things happening;

• http://suitworks.se reopening next week after the 'summer shutdown mode'
• Adding red + lighter skin to the color repertoire. Often requested, and I can recycle supplies from the bigrig.
• Going to try shifting to a 'make on demand' setup instead of pre-making batches. Stressful in different ways, but I think I can manage. Lets me keep the stock and production effort to actual sales level, instead of guessing wildly and having a bunch of space eaten by hoods.
• Will try a few feature tweaks, e.g. thinner hoods, in order to prepare for the future suit situation.

Of special note there is perhaps the last bit - thinner hoods for the 'suit situation'. As many of you may recall, there's no way I can feasibly make the suit faces out of foam latex for actual sales. Way expensive/tricky to make, fitting issues, and major durability problems. At the same time we all want good kinematics in the masks.

Assuming I get the suit production sorted, at last, my next big focus will be on revamping the kinematic mask design in order to make them a bit more production-friendly. I've got a pretty solid idea for how to do it, but it'll of course require a bunch of time and effort. Focusing on the hoods for a bit will be a nice change of pace after the humongous suit project too.

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As I've still got some day-job drama to deal with during the autumn I'm going to keep the plan at this somewhat loose level for now. Finish suit rig, do a hood push. If things go well it's easier to do a new plan and add more.

I'm not quite sure how I'll handle the media, posting schedule and so on yet. Should know the day job drama level by next month.

To wrap things up - I've said it before, and I'll say it again: thank you all for the continued support. It's been a long journey, and hopefully we're about to hit the suit milestone at last.