Sunday, November 7, 2010

Fall Update smorgasboard (part 1)

The hectic Spring/Summer convention season has passed, so its time to play catch up on all the propwork that had to sit on the sidelines while we were bouncing around from convention to convention.Regardles, theres been a lot of materials flying around down in the shop!

Here's whats been going on over the summer, but hadn't gotten off my butt and posted to the ol' blog (May?? sheesh!)


Thundercats- Lion-O's sword
Tthis has been on the project list for a very lonng time, and I'm getting around to it (finally).

The eye is a huge xmas ornament, that I cut open and poured resin into. This was the first take on the eye. the white is styrene, that was heat formed over it.

The recessed textures are being done by using sandpaper (in this case, 3M sandblaster sandpaper), and gluing styrene to it . Found that its a great way to add a nice even texture. These bits are sintra, sandpaper, and styrene.
Here's the current state of the blade. Next up is the handle, and remaking the claw part of the guards, because i'm not too fond if their shape,







FFVIII- Squall's gunblade

Though the blues are not done, they're at least readable (for me anyways), so I'll start building off them once a couple of these are out of the way! So many nitpicky giblets on that prop, especially since the bullets will be removable and the rest of the bells & whistles!


and some Bonus busters...
My kid neighbors a fan of games (namely the Final Fantasy variety) so thought it would be fun to show him a bit of propmaking by building a basic buster sword with him. I'm making a second one as well. They're being made from insulation foam, tagboard, sintra, foamcore, and a dowel.

part 2 coming in a bit!

Sunday, May 23, 2010

LOTR- Boromir's Shield straps

Mike of blindsquirrelprops and I are "tag teaming" a set of Boromir's shields from Lord of the Rings. He's working on the shields, and I was to do the leather straps.

Here's some reference photos. Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of them to work from...

The first thing I did was make the stamps, since hand tooling the entire thing would be insane. I did the initial sculpt from Super sculpey, then poured resin into it. Since I didn't bake the sculpey, I was able to scrape it it out after the resin set relatively easily and used some paint thinner to clean the tighter crevacises. Though the stamping worked, I realised that I sculpted it in reverse of what i needed. Oops!

These are the ones I remade, and mounted them onto wood blocks to provide support. Did a test to make sure they were correct!

Laid the leather, wet, on a table, and used a C clamp to press them onto the leather, since they're too big to beat with a mallet, and i didn't want them to shift. The diamond ones were pressed harder than the others to emboss them deeper

Here's one of the straps, with the tooling finished, the edge was embossed with an overstitch wheel to use as a guide when punching the holes.

painting & dying the straps. First I laid down the black & red, then went over the whole thing with an antiquing gel. Those I got from Tandy leather factory the black straps were dyed with an alcohol based dye I tried out, which penetrated the leather nicely. A coat of black gel antique was added over that, and the straps were sprayed with a woter resistant spray.

The next phase was the pain in the... since I don't own a hand sewing machine they had to be sewn by hand. Since the leathers too thick to just sew through, I had to prepunch the holes with a diamond shaped punch, then use a set of pliers to pull the needles through. I recruited my fiance to help with some of the sewing. It took almost two days of solid work from both of us to get em done. Used a basic saddle stitch, which involves two needles. Here's my fiance toiling away!

Yay! The sewing on the straps are done, and our hands are sore!

The next step was adding the bluckles. Mike had welded together 3 of the lil' buggers and sent them to me to rivet. I did a lil' trimming of a couple, drilled holes, and riveted the straps from the underside after gluing them down. Mike's going to have plates engraved to cover the ones he did, since trimming them made them uneven. That'll cover up the holes I had accidently drilled too high as well ^^;

Aaand finished straps! I'll be seding these to Mike, and he'll be sewing them to the shield. Have fun with that Mike! (sarcasm!)

Thursday, April 15, 2010

TF2 and WoW wips..

Working on a bunch of projects in between commissions and such, and these puppies have been slowly making progress.


TF2- Intel case-


Here's a couple of photos of a TF2 intel case that I'm working on. This is for a commission, so it taking priority XD

Will be adding buttons and faux dials and such. The panel is made of Sintra.

5 minutes with a router became a full day with rasps & a surform, since I don't have a aforemetioned router :p

Turning the intel box into an intel case, by cutting it apart with a tablesaw


WoW- Sister Benedron cosplay

I never played World of Warcraft, but I saw a figure of Sister Benedron at a comic shop, and loved the design.. large axe & book of smackdown, lots' o' armor, and coincidentally, a white hood, which seems to be a common element in all the personal costumes I've made to date.. (pure coincidence!!)


Began work on the costume almost immediately after seeing it, though it got put aside when I saw the first images of Ezio from Assassin's Creed II. When Ezio's done, I hope to return to this project.... someday...

Built the base from cardboard, with a hook to attach it to back armor.

For the plates, I used Sintra sheets, which i engraved, and kickstomped in the driveway to give it the beaten metal like the figure.

Used hot glue to add texture in the carved out holes, and cut the excess off so the plates would fit over it easily.

And some painting to see how they look so far :)

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Temari's Fan- Naruto

I was commissioned to make Temari's fan from the anime series Naruto.



This was originally going to be a modification of one of those large fans that you can find at asian trinket shops, but I completely didn't trust it to hold up the rigors of cosplaying.

An 11th hour idea that came to me to use slats from a set of window blinds.



Since the ones i got were faux wood (plastic), i added some spokes that were wooden molding for support. I stacked them up and drilled a hole through the set of spokes.



after bolting it, I laid out the curve onto paper.



I mounted fabric to the front of paper, to give it strength



The purple dots were added by ironing on pieces of purple fabric with some heat & bond sheets.



made sure to measure out the spacing carefully, then used a straight edge to fold the fabric.



After tapering the spokes to ensure that the fan can close, I used double sided adhesive tape to secure the spokes to the fan.

aand thats about it! One really big fan!





After taking this photo, I had to let the gal who commissioned know that it would be unwise to open it outside. There was a slight breeze outside, and it was a challenge trying to make sure that the wind didn't take off with it...