amberthevalkyrie

Big fat (sister) disaster

Added 2025-10-08 18:27:36 +0000 UTC

A tragedy in 20 parts.

So as y’all may remember, I am currently working on a Big Sister cosplay from Bioshock 2. I am attempting to learn not only 3d modeling and printing but also to work with worbla. Not even to mention sewing a quilted bodysuit. This was an ambitious goal in any capacity, but it would seem the thermoplastics in particular would serve to be my downfall.

After two weeks of cutting and sanding and wood burning the holes, and then using painters tape to make patterns out of thin craft foam as a base for the lenses I had a very nice base for the divers helmet.

Now mind you, I live in an apartment with paper thin walls so most power tools are out of the question for me, I was left to wood burning holes in the acrylic sphere. This took ages and I had to buy new respirator filters once already, but things were going great. Until the incident.

See, somehow along my journey of burning holes in this acrylic light globe it never clicked in my head that its susceptibility to heat was perhaps more universal than just the point of a woodburner. After all that work, and having constructed a sturdy neck piece to join it to the chest plate, I attempted to use strips of worbla to meld the neck of the globe to the collar.

Somewhere along this process, the pressure I was putting on it combined with the heat from the gun being trapped inside the globe caused two rather large flat spots. Definitely cause for panic, but not entirely unsalvageable, right?

Wrong. Although worbla could best be described as ornery yet forgiving, whatever turbo BPAs made up that globe were far less understanding of my inexperience. I tried using the heat gun and a bowl, my hands, and several other increasingly impractical implements to reshape the sides, but the plastic simply could not handle it. It ended up splitting into a gaping wound reminiscent in size of a solar flare, and exactly as devastating to any vaguely earth shaped objects in range. Gentlemen the sphere no longer fits.

I won’t lie to you, I shed a tear over the loss. Not only of several weeks of meticulous foam work but also for my lungs as I now embark on The Exact Same Fucking Thing but Again.

Until next time