Dark Side Sith Lord - My Custom Creations - Zenia - The Creation Of Zenia

The creation of Zenia

After completing the first Gynoid Cyrah, I realized that I very much liked to make science-fiction graphics featuring her, so I decided to build a second Gynoid that would be far more advanced with a fully articulated body and glowing lights. Because of all the joints I would have to add, I wanted to make her small and lightweight so the joints would be able to support her weight, but her new body ended up redesigning many things after I realized it was taller than I thought and would make her even taller than myself. Because of this impressive gloving stature, she became the leader in the fictional story I made for the Gynoids later on.

The moment I decided to build a second Gynoid, I knew that I wanted to cast this small polystyrene head as her face since it looked very cute and Asian like, something that I thought would fit her well since I wanted her to be smaller than the first Gynoid Cyrah.

Using a mathematical head to body ratio, I learned that the full body for this head should be 170 centimeters tall, or 5 feet and 7 inches.

Since there are no products for casting things with in this country, I had to make yet another clay mold to cast the polystyrene head.

The clay was packed on all around the face to the thickness of about an inch.

Those of you who used to play with clay as a child already know that it is very soft and would not hold its shape properly once removed from the polystyrene head, so I left the clay mold in the freezer for a while to harden it.

Hey, popsicles!

After the clay had hardened enough, the polystyrene head had to be knocked to the floor a few times to release it from the mold, but still some small bits of it came loose inside the clay mold.

A coat of grease was applied inside the clay mold to keep it away from the resin and fiberglass that would be applied inside of it afterwards.

Without the grease, the resin and the clay sort of mixes and becomes an awful sticky grey goo that is absolutely awful.

Polyester resin mixed with fiberglass was applied inside the clay mold to make Zenia's new face.

After the resin had hardened, more layers of fiberglass were added along with a top coat of fiberglass mixed bondo.

After everything had hardened, the clay mold was put into hot water to soften up the clay again so that it could be removed from the face cast.

Now you know you can also replicate things in clay.

After spraying the face with white primer, all the bumps and imperfections were easier to see so that I could fix them.

The eye holes were also cut open.

A light bondo was applied over the face to smoothen out any imperfections in the surface.

Before I got to finish the face, I found an internet auction for a very lightweight fiberglass mannequin that I thought would be perfect since it would not be too heavy for the joints.

Later when I got it here, I noticed that it was not only taller than Cyrah, but also generally larger too, so my plan to make Zenia the smallest one of the Gynoids all went right down the white porcelain chair.

Later the Gynoid Sheera would fill this empty spot as the cute, little jumpy one in the group.

The face that I made earlier was now too small for Zenia's new body, so I had to reverse the mathematical head to body ratio to figure out how big her head should be for the new body, and the answer was that it should be one inch taller than before.

Three cuts were made along the face to elongate it.

After taping the four pieces together again with a bunch of dividing parts in between to keep the shape right, Zenia's face was now big enough for the new larger body.

The four pieces were attached back together again with fiberglass mixed bondo.

Regular bondo was applied over the previously cut sections to make the whole face seamless again.

I remembered having seen something on TV long ago about a mathematical formula for beauty and also a tool that uses this formula to measure beauty in all things, but could not find it anywhere when I sculpted Cyrah's face.

This time I was successful in my search and wanted to build the tool before finishing Zenia's new face to make sure she would be absolutely beautiful.

The tool that can measure the formula known as "Phi" or "The Golden Ratio" was made out of simple wooden materials.

The tool measures one part to 1,618 which is natures ratio for beauty in all things, unless you are ugly, that is.

So far most things on her new face were beautiful, but the tool also told me that the cheekbones had to be wider and the nose had to be defined a bit more, but I could already see this myself without the tool, so maybe I've just got an eye for beauty or something.

Before applying more bondo later on to finish the face, three slots for chromed tubes were cut through the head.

Fortunately enough the fiberglass mannequin was headless so that I could still use the face I made for Zenia.

Also the top of the neck had a nice flat area where I could mount the joints for the head movement.

Because the head that was not really there was looking slightly to the right, the top of the neck was angled, therefore a slot was cut along the right side of the neck to make it straight.

A small amount of fiberglass mixed bondo was applied inside the gap to hold the neck top up straight, but the surface was not made smooth until I started working on the rest of the body later on.

To make the head move around, an old TV antenna was used for the vertical movement while a two-way water distributor was used for the horizontal movement.

Most of the TV antenna housing was cut away to make it fit onto the top of the neck.

After attaching the rest of the TV antenna housing to test its pivoting, holes were made to mount it to the top of the neck.

After removing most of the plastic from the TV antenna housing, I attached the water distributor onto it by screwing the two parts together.

The water distributor was attached in a specific direction to make a click when the head is pointed straight forward.

A black plastic tube that fit right on top of the water distributor was screwed onto it so that the top of the head could later be screwed onto the top of the black tube.

The hose coupling of the water distributor was cut off and stuffed into the top of the tube.

The top of the head could then be screwed onto the coupling.

To hold the sides of the face onto the joint parts, a piece from a wooden pole was screwed onto the water distributor, then a metal wire was wrapped around the parts to keep it securely in place.

The sides of the face were screwed onto the wooden pole, and the top of the head was also screwed onto the hose coupling inside the black tube.

The head joints that I made for Cyrah had the horizontal joint underneath the vertical joint, resulting in the head tilting to the side whenever her head is moved, but since Zenia's horizontal joint is below the vertical joint, her head will always be straight when looking to the sides.

After the joint parts were attached to the neck, I could finally get a good look of what Zenia's new body looked like with the now larger head.

The "Phi" formula was also used to determine how high the head should be above the shoulders, and so far everything looked good.

To make the back of the head, a clay mold was made of the same polystyrene head that I cast the face from earlier.

The clay mold went through the same process of hardening in a freezer, then it was lubricated and filled with polyester in fiberglass, so there is no need to show you another photo of this mold with fiberglass in it because I forgot to take a photo of it in the first place.

After making the bottom of the new back head align with the back of the neck, it was clear that there were some gaps to fill in with more bondo.

Two cardboard templates were made of the gaps, then they were taped to the back head and applied with fiberglass mixed bondo.

Two smaller pieces of the wooden pole were attached to the larger pole to mount the back head onto the joint parts.

After showing you this photo, I don't really need to tell you that I attached the back head to the joint parts, but I just told you that now anyway.

I was wondering for a while what to do for Zenia's ears since many Gynoids have round perforated parts there instead of ears and other such things, but instead of trying to invent a whole new robotic listening organ, I thought that I might as well just make some regular ears for her.

Since Cyrah was conveniently already equipped with a couple of ears, I made two clay molds of those.

After freezing the clay molds and filling them with bondo, the end result was two new ears for Zenia's head.

Cyrah was originally made in a large rotation mold, so her ears had to have a mold releasing edge behind them, but since Zenia's ears were made of solid bondo, this edge could be removed.

And fortunately enough the screws that hold the back head onto the joint parts were located just where the holes of the ears are normally located.

Before finishing off the face with bondo, the surfaces that had to be built up and altered were marked up.

After all the bondoing and sanding, the face looked as it should according to the beauty measuring tool.

She was also equipped with a couple of nostrils for smelling things with.

After yet another coat of white primer, the face became much clearer and was not looking bad at all.

Since most of the back head would be covered with hair anyway, there was no need to smooth off the surface of it before spraying it with primer.

Here is a comparison photo between Zenia's new larger head and the smaller polystyrene head from which it was cast.

To make a grid for the hair, a pencil was clamped into a vise, then the head was rotated around it to make steady lines for where the hair would be.

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After all the lines had been made, more lines in the other direction were made to form a grid, then each line crossing were marked off for where to drill all the holes for the hair.

Yes, it was really boring.

3 years later, and all the holes for the hair had been made.

Earlier I wondered if the drilled fiberglass areas would become too weak and break apart, but they actually held together quite well after all.

Before painting the face, I wanted to finish it off further by shaping the eye openings to fit with these interior lights that would eventually become Zenia's glowing eyes.

The interior lights originally had a small 12 volt bulb with a blue light diffuser, but these would later be replaced with white LEDs to illuminate Zenia's eyes.

The blue light diffusers were later used inside Sheera's eyes.

Now that the interior lights had been taken apart, I could use one of the silver hemispheres to shape the eye openings after they had been heated with a heat gun, then they were cooled down again in cold water to keep the right shape.

In case you asked your computer screen why I used the silver hemisphere for this, this text will explain that this way I would not have to risk scratching the white one.