Monday, April 16, 2007

Props ( Rebellion And Ebony & Ivory - DMC 2)

These here are the Rebellion sword and the Ebony and Ivory guns from Devil May Cry 2. The Rebellion sword is made entirely out of wood except for those spider web like stuffs on it. Those are a combination of strings, super glue, and think there was glue gun glue too on it. The handle, the hand guards, the sculls and rib cages on both sides were all carved out, filed out, and sand from your regular wood planks. Takes awhile, and hope I don't have to make those rib cages ever again. They were all squarish to begin with, and with the small size and spacing in between, you had to put your fingers there and let them get filed along as well in order to get a good angle. But the end product though small, is quite satisfying.
The Ebony & Ivory guns, are made with wood, wood fillers, and hard foam as base, and then plastic and wood again for the various accessories. The two pictures, yeah, they're just printed, and we stuck them there.
We made a gun hoster for the guns too with some left over material for Elrond (Elmo) the client. Though it wasn't how we planned it at first, but he did use them in the end. Nice guy.













Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Props ( The Wierd Ones )

This one is an example of one of the wierd orders we had before. Well, not excatly weird, just wish they stop doing that some times. This mask is the one from V for Vandetta. It's much more surprisingly difficult to make since they don't really sell masks with the excat features in Singapore, well, not where we looked anyway. Heard the people over at the Singapore Movie Club had to import the mask over, much like all the other costumes of theirs. Theirs' was made of rubber, and greenish in colour. This one here however was done with wet newspaper and Epoxy Putty, which was why it was freaking heavy, 3.5 kg to be excat......for a mask... Surprisingly and luckily, that client said that was what he wanted. Weight. Which was actually what had to be put in for some of the props every now and then. Apparently some people needed to feel the weight of the prop they hold in their hands. As such ever so often request would come in to use specific materials, like thick metal plates and whole chunks of acrylic. Bad idea;
1) Heavy means structure might just break, and plus the fact that some people likes to swing their prop around. Safety is a concern.
2) Acrylic. We used them in school, as in how many QUALITY stuffs did you get from schools in the first place? Acrylics are Strong, Meliable, and BRITTLE remember?
3) Full thick metal plates and bars...... you're kidding.


Props (The Little Things)

Thought I post some pictures of the little things. These are props that take very little time from just a day to 20 minutes, not counting the paint dry time. For some of them like the Lacus clips and Halos, they are so easy to make, we usually had spare laying around incase anybody wants, of course the price is alot cheaper than other props, cept for those like the medelion there BaoShin made due to the material costs. Heard from him its from a Korean comic. For others, these little things actually act as testing base for various experiments on materials we never used before. Like the Faith badge was a test with rasin. You can make lots of custom shape jewlry with those things! They are also quite good for starters or warmups.
Custom hair clips and jewelry, you guys might want to try it out and make them for any love ones.
Same deal, for hair clips, 2mm to 3mm thick plastic, cut out the shapes, and stick them tightly to those base clips that they sell outside. For jewerly, get rasin, hardner, moulding materials like Epox Putty or Liquid Latex, and follow the instructions on their packagings. But be really careful with the rasin, those things are really messy and can really cut like shattered glass....... heck they are kinda like glass in the first place, and you are going to cry if they got into your nails, eyes, or ears. So gloves, googles and masks, PLEASE!



























Monday, April 9, 2007

Props (Cerberus - Dirge of Cerberus)

Cerberus, acquired by Vincent from Dirge of Cerberus of Final Fantasy VII, and most likely the same gun he had in Advent Children. For this one, we went all out;
Included springs in there so the trigger is actually triggerable. The barrels were clockable, so you could actually remove those three tubes you see above the trigger, and the whole thing weighs about 3 kg. Actually, for this, we took apart those BB guns you can buy in China that is capable of chipping cement off the walls and we made replicas of the different parts. Material used were, wood, cardboard, metal pipes, epoxy putty, and plastic. The whole set sold for $450 including the gold armor parts that Vincent wears. But that armor was the easier part. Clive made that in a day. Damn, this gun took weeks!
See that chain at the handle of the gun? That was bought at Comics Connections. $10 in a box including a pin size replica of the lion head on Clouds' left shoulder armor. Lucky!
On a side note, we were the first people on this planet to have made this gun out. Not something to go parading about, but hey, it's good for keeping the records.
Which reminds me, Hasswan decided what the heck, and drew a to-scale plan for an actual firing mechanisim, never got to see that though; There was a potential client that wanted that kind of mechanisim and willing to pay quite high for that. Anyway, the dude drew the plans on blue-print paper, brought it over to the police station to check just incase, and according to him, the policman at the counter had the stun look, called his college, who had the same stun look, then brought him over to a room where they acked for his IC, asked a couple of question, and made him shred the plans then and there......Hmm.
Anyway, due to the many features, the prop's structure isn't strong at all. Actually it broke. And as it turned out, the client didn't need all those functions, the fact the trigger can move is more than good enough. Based on what I could gather, Clive got so excited discussing about the prop with her that she decided to let him go ahead with those features...... Lesson learnt in confirming things.





Props (Japanese Sword)

Here's a little advertising. The traditional Japanese sword, specifically a Katana, one of the different types of Japanese swords. Zero metal used, just wood, paper and plastic. (Yeap, we make cardboard look so good.)
Total material cost was about $40 to $60 depending on how many times you screw up......
You don't even need anything fancy. Money saving tips from Clive Lee; See those carvings on the handle butt and the hand guard? You just cut them out of 2mm 3mm plastic sheets. (Those you use to wrap books, are 0.5mm to 1mm). The carving of the dragon on the handle, that was taken off from toy Katanas bought at neighbourhood provision shops. And the dark blue laces for the handle and sheath? Those are freakin shoe laces. You put them all together, and pray real hard you don't screw up on the paint job, and Whala!