kyle gilbert

Costumes, Props, & Builds

Bilbo Baggins

by KyleDecember 29, 2013Graphics and Web / Life in General

A few photos walking through the process of my latest drawing party illustration.

Tagged : portfolio

Working with Clay

by KyleDecember 6, 2013December 13, 2013church communications / Graphics and Web

One of my favorite things about my job is that I get to work on a very wide variety of tasks and projects. But, this promo graphic for our upcoming kid’s event took things to a new level.

And since I couldn’t resist, we went ahead and put together a short stop-motion video for promotion as well.

Tagged : claymation / portfolio / stop motion

A Few Recent Projects

by KyleDecember 3, 2013December 13, 2013Graphics and Web

Kind of as a joke, and partially just for fun, I doctored up this Pop Tarts image with an imaginary new flavor.

A series of large outdoor directional signs.

Creating logo guidelines for the Faith Promise brand.

Digital mock up of large signage in the Lobby area.

Signage concept for children’s space. Final installation pics here.

Concept mockup on hardware.

Illustrator concept design.

Mailer design.

Wall signage design.

Emergency signage design.

Booklet design – InDesign

Tagged : portfolio

Anderson Campus Space Design

by KyleAugust 16, 2013December 13, 2013church communications

One of the projects my two-person team has been working on over the past few weeks.

Thought it would be fun to compare some before and after shots from our Anderson Campus. The “afters” are mockups of the space to approximate the final look.

Tagged : Faith Promise / portfolio / space design

Happy Mother’s Day 2013

by KyleMay 14, 2013June 17, 2020Life in General

Because shooting one Mother’s Day video was clearly not enough this year…

Tagged : portfolio / stop motion / video

Mother’s Day Tribute

by KyleMay 11, 2013June 17, 2020Graphics and Web / Life in General

I created this stop motion animation in honor of the two greatest moms I know. Happy Mother’s Day, Keri and mom. I’m forever grateful for your love and kindness!

Tagged : happymothersday / portfolio

Kid’s Space Design

by KyleMarch 29, 2013June 18, 2020church communications1 Comment

One of the coolest things about my job is that I get to work on a wide variety of projects. Since we recently launched a new facility at our Pellissippi Campus of Faith Promise Church, we’ve had the opportunity to branch out into designing components for several spaces in the building.

As Heather Burson (our Graphic Designer) and I talked it over, we decided that it would be nice to try to make our outdoor modular building feel a little bit more kid friendly. The inside was great, but the outside of the building needed something to make it look more exciting.

I mocked up some designs and put them into production, and today my dad and I installed the elements (he’s in the pictures, but I promise I was doing the work too – LOL).

Cutting the shim pieces to bring out the pieces to meet with the edge of the door trim.

First piece in place. Shim pieces tacked.

Preparing the mounting brackets.

Sign from the back.

I would make several changes if I could do it over again, but I’m still very happy with the overall improvement to the space.

Tagged : children's ministry / portfolio / space design

Completed Boba Fett Costume!

by KyleOctober 23, 2012December 13, 2013Amazingness2 Comments

Finally, after months of building my Halloween costume, it’s finally finished. :)

For photos of the work in progress, go here.

Tagged : boba fett / portfolio

Boba Fett Costume Build

by KyleJuly 17, 2012September 7, 2014Amazingness / Costumes / How To24 Comments

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been building a Boba Fett costume for Halloween. It began with my wife’s innocent comment that it would be fun to dress up as Star Wars characters as a family, and when the costume I bought online didn’t live up to my expectations, I began to research how I might build my own costume. Fortunately, there’s a ton of great tips online, and I quickly found myself totally hooked. I love a good project, and without a doubt, this has been the best project I’ve ever attempted.

Below are photos of my costume through the process. I’ll continue to update this post as I add new components.

Rather than just serving as an example of my compulsiveness, I hope that others attempting to build a Boba Fett costume might find some ideas here and avoid some problems I encountered.

I started off by trying to paint the toy blaster to look more realistic.

First coat of paint.

Finished Boba Fett blaster.

Cutting my torso armor from and old box.

Front armor cut out of cardboard.

This is the flight suit that I purchased from an military surplus store. Wrong color and wrong pockets but a nice fit.

Cutting out sheet aluminum and wrapping the cardboard. I took a break to get some gloves after cutting myself.

First piece wrapped. Nice start.

My wife took this pic with my son right before I was banished from the living room, never to return with this project again.

Covering the sharp back edges of the aluminum with duct tape.

Spray painting the finished armor.

Armor after battle scarring.

Starting work on the knee armor.

I learned that PVC can be heated and shaped using a heat gun.

With the pieces shaped, I marked up each piece for my trim lines.

Using a dremel to cut the PVC. This is a very messy process. PVC dust everywhere.

Knee armor is completely cut out.

Side pieces cut from wood and screwed to the PVC using a countersink from the inside.

Beginning the shoulder armor.

Wrapping the shoulder armor in sheet aluminum.

Both shoulders cut and wrapped.

Both pieces shaped by hand.

First layer of paint for the knee and shoulder armor. This is the point at which I knew there was no going back. I was completely hooked.

The only canvas I could find for the cape was the wrong color, but through experimentation I discovered that I could bleach it to the army green color I was looking for.

By this time, I realized that there were too many fabric components in the suit to continue without learning to sew.

Distressed cape.

Next up were the side belt pockets. I had no pattern, but I figured out how I wanted to try piecing it together.

Nearly finished side pocket turned inside out for sewing.

Finished belt pockets! I left the belt loop material unattached until I had the belt created and knew how big the loops needed to be.

Side view of the completed pockets. This was a proud moment. :)

Distressed and finished knee armor. Though the side blasters aren’t exactly the right size, I love how these turned out.

Masking off the left shoulder for the Mandalorian insignia.

Beginning work on the neck piece. I just zigzagged the material back and forth and taped it down as I went along.

Side view of the neck seal in progress.

I attached a round piece of cloth at the bottom so that I’d have something to tuck into my shirt and keep there from being any gaps.

Neck seal laid out flat.

Using one of my daugher’s markers to rough in the design. I should have checked to make sure I could wipe it off before doing this. Ended up being a pain.

Design painted onto the shoulder armor.

After painting over all the marker.

After failed attempts to bleach and dye the flight suit, I resorted to trying spray paint. This was a pretty miserable start, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

Beginning work on the ammo belt.

Cutting out the ammo belt.

Finished shoulder armor.

My wife helped me to finally come up with a solid solution for attaching the knee armor.

This rope belt is worn under the ammo belt. I didn’t have to make it since it’s a horse belt (not kidding), but here I spray painted the belt.

Velcro sewn to the back of the belt to match the look of the movie and eyelets installed. This was another very happy moment.

Rope belt dry and ready to go!

Since all the pockets on the flight suit were the wrong size and in the wrong places, I ripped out all the existing pockets. I would salvage this material for the new pockets I would make.

Beginning work on my first thigh cargo pocket.

Thigh pockets installed. It’s looking pretty patchy here, but things are starting to come together.

Working on the pocket flap.

Thigh and shin pockets are complete with hardly a scrap of leftover fabric.

Beginning work on the ammo belt. Here I used my chop saw to cut eight identical blocks of wood.

Blocks of wood sanded and ready to go.

Creating a pattern for the material to wrap the block.

Copying and cutting the pattern. Tedious work.

Detailed sewing. Stitching the flap portion for each pocket.

Attaching the pockets to the belt.

This was a mess!

The belt with all the pockets attached.

Now, I began wrapping each block and gluing it together with super glue.

All the sides wrapped.

Completed ammo belt with pouches! Hurray!

Sporting the ammo belt! So happy that it turned out like I was hoping.

Flattening out a section of PVC for the shin tools.

Sketching out the shin tools.

Cutting out the back portion of the armor from my old box.

Cutting the aluminum to wrap the cardboard.

Bad side of the back armor.

Armor shaped by hand and sanded to prep for paint.

Back armor painted.

I laid a tshirt on top of my fabric, lined up the seams, and traced that shape for my armor vest – making adaptations for the vest fit.

Vest in process. I think it was mostly luck that the thing fit. Backwards from what I anticipated. Setting seam marks, and wondering how to get this thing off of myself without waking up my wife for help in the middle of the night.

Vest shoulder pieces cut and stitched.

Using epoxy to attach bolts to the corners of the armor. I never would have thought this would be a good idea, but someone online suggested it.

I started out with the JB Weld steel stick epoxy at first, but I wish I had just used the regular JB Weld.

Fitting paper to the back of the armor and marking the bolt holes to get a good fit when making holes in the vest.

All armor fitted with paper patterns.

Taped the paper patterns in place and marked the bolt locations.

Vest with eyelets installed at each of the bolt locations.

Vest with armor bolted onto the reverse. From here, I attempted cutting off the extra bolt on each one, but that was a miserable failure. Should have cut all the bolts before attaching them to the armor. Had to reattach most of them.

Considering using the pvc for the ground-level buildout of the gauntlets. Not sure if this is a good idea or not.

Cutting out the shin tools from the flattened piece of PVC.

Beginning to shape out the knife.

A lot of imperfections due to the inexact process of shaping with a dremel tool, but still looking close enough that I was happy with the results of these two pieces.

I had to make a new front neck piece in order to make it connect to the back piece.

Drilling holes to connect the front and back.

Underside of connecting slot.

Old keyboard keys used for shoulder studs. Used JB Weld to secure nut to the bottom of each.

Top of the shoulder studs after painting.

Beginning work on the gauntlet missile.

Front cone near completion.

Hoping I can turn these canvas shoes into boots.

Completed missile!

Using superglue to affix vinyl to the shoes.

I purchased this piece for the gauntlet on Ebay. It’s a resin cast of a calculator that was used for the authentic suit.

Beginning work on the gauntlets.

Cable fittings for the flame thrower.

Starting on the second boot.

First layer of pain on the boot uppers.

Weathering the paint. Here you can see the elastic side of the boot that is stitched in.

Applying piping to the boots. I used painted stereo wire and superglue.

Masking the visor on the toy helmet to apply paint.

Back of the helmet before paint.

Side of the helmet before paint.

Silver and black paint applied.

Helmet pieces glued together and filled with Bondo.

Green paint applied.

Masking off the helmet for red paint.

Ready for red paint application.

Back of the helmet.

All paint applied. Way too clean and neat for Boba Fett.

After distressing and battle scarring.

My garage workspace with several pieces in progress.

Forming aluminum for the front of the shoes.

Metal screwed into the front of the shoes and filled with Bondo. Sharpened wooden dowels added for spikes.

Other than a bit of paint on the front of the shoes, they’re pretty much complete here.

Starting work on the left gauntlet.

RadioShack buttons for left gauntlet.

Beginning work on details for right gauntlet.

Bottom half of left gauntlet.

Installing buttons.

Gauntlet halves are starting to take shape.

Fitting the missile.

Installing nails for right gauntlet weapons.

Button area masked off and ready to paint.

First layer of paint!

Pics of completed costume here.

Tagged : boba fett / bounty hunter / costume / diy / mandalorian / portfolio / star wars

Drawing Party

by KyleJuly 8, 2012December 13, 2013Graphics and Web / Life in General

Every once in a while, my two oldest kids and I will sit down and have a “drawing party” together. Sometimes it’s coloring, and other times it’s freehand. Today was a freehand day, and since the sketch turned out nice enough, I decided to go ahead and ink it in. Maybe I’ll add some color digitally, like I did with the Wild Thing last year.

By the way, if you haven’t heard yet, my wife and kids are dressing up in Star Wars costumes for Halloween. I’m building my own Boba Fett costume, and I’ve become completely obsessed with the project. Maybe I’ll share a few pics sometime soon. :)

Tagged : illustration / portfolio