A titan-ic update!

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your eyes for a few minutes...

After some frantic weeks of school work, the stress of life's little issues, and most recently a two-day bout with the plague, I have finally found a few minutes to create an update post on my latest diabolic creation.

First, let's take a step back in time for all of those who appreciate the recap bump that is featured before all of your favorite television programs...

Fabrication, stage 1:
In stage one (building the feet), three seperate templates were used to trace the basic shapes (foot pad, toe joint, and toe pad) onto some light card stock (ie. broken down cereal boxes). I then used basic scissors and an X-acto blade to cut out the shapes and scour lines for folding. By using minimal adhesive points, the strenght of the material allows it to bear the weight of the structure without putting undue stress on the weak points (ie, the places where you glue). Super glue was then used to attach the toe joint to the foot and then the toes to the toe joints.


here are both feet completed with completed ankle joints. For scale purposes, that is a 16" wooden clock base (availible at Michael's, A.C. Moore, Home Depot etc).

Fabrication Stage 2:
In stage two, I got to move away from the cardboard for a little while and got to work a little on the fine details. Here we see the most complicated aspect of any titan... the pistons. All of the pistons you see below are made from 1/4" and 3/16" inch sytrene tubing (availible from the good folks at www.Hobbylinc.com... huge variety of tubing, dowel and sheet styrene at great prices).Both halves of the toe pistons were cut to 3/4", sized and sanded to fit their location before gluing. The longer leg pistons were sized to 1.25" before being cut and fit appropriately.

(As this is my first time building something on this scale... there is going to be quite a lot of gap filling that will need to be done, particularly where some of the pistons meet a flat surface. Suffice it to say, this is a learning process... )

Here's a closer view of the front foot pistons before the placement of the leg armor:

Here are both feet built up to the middle leg with pistons. The joints are built from 3/4" wooden dowel, cut to 1" in length, wrapped in .025" sheet styrene and superglued into place.

While working with the pistons, I also got the change to add some fine details that needed to be installed before all the various parts were brought together. For a little dramatic mechanical effect, I added some medium gauge bass guitar string to the side of the pistons that stretch from the bottom of the middle leg to the top of the lower leg. I am definitely happy with the effect and am trying to decide on where else i can use it... of course, as all hobbyists are aware, it's fine line between 'cool effect' and 'over done' effect....

Finally, here are the legs built up to the upper leg with the shin armor plates (currently unattached). If you look closely, you can get a better glimpse of how the joints were constructed...

Well, that's all for now... tune in next time to see the hips/waist section and the completed lower body!

Cheer,

Ben