Deadmau5 Head: Part 2

I started cutting out the ears, leaving some space at the bottom to get it into the head.

You can see the basic circle I worked with in the middle and the rough cut out first ear. The ears are 13 inches x 13 inches in a circle.

Here's the one ear softened out. Funny enough, sand paper worked nicely to smooth out the rough edges even in foam. I'll be putting cardboard behind the ears I decided to make sure they hold their shape all the time instead of trying to work a wire or something into the foam.

Just a little reference shot, but wow is that hard to do without another set of hands! You can sort of see how big the ears are compared to the head.

Oh good, I look like an idiot. I have a balaclava on because my hair kept annoying me as I was trying to get the head on and off. You can see the helmet's temporary installation.  There's two inches of foam above it supporting the helmet and putting it in proper place. It gives me enough room to get the lights in where they have to sit, and puts the face in a nice place in the space of the mouth. The helmet's a nice comfortable fit and keeps the head off the shoulders for added wearer comfort.

After some doodling on the head itself - sharpies are the only thing that works on it, but actually can be erased with some serious rubbing. Dry erase markers don't stay very well but are good for temporary marking. The eyes are five inches apart, and I used the dome lights from the tap light I'll be using to make those little paper circles. Some temporary adhesive to attach the eyes and make sure it looked good. That's where the cuts will be. The lights will tap by pressing them on from the underside before putting the head on I think.

You can see the dome put on (using some of the stickiness of the temporary adhesive to hold it there long enough to snap the picture) at the site of the paper circle. That's exactly what it'll look like sticking out from black cloth I'll be using to cover this. That's all for now! Eye cutting will be next I think.

Deadmau5 Head: Part 1

This, basically, is what I'm making. Every time I look at it, I have to giggle. What an odd prop to be creating! This, my friends, is the head-piece that Deadmau5 wears. For those unknowing as I was, he is a DJ and music producer. This is the head piece he wears when he is DJing, from what I gather.

So my search began. What on earth could I use to make something so hard? For reference, a person's face is supposed to be centered in the mouth. Eep! One of my other fellow prop-makers actually came to my rescue with an idea. Get ready, it's a funny -- the head is actually the acrylic globe of a street lamp. Yep. A 14 inch diameter, 5 inch opening lamp globe. So! First things first, the opening was too small to get one's head through. So I began by cutting into the opening to make it 8 inches wide.

 

 

 

One fast cut with the dremel later, I had a perfect opening.

 Here, you can see a few things. One, I bought two different styles and sizes of lights to go into the head. The client ended up chosing the smaller but brighter light, on the left. With the lights out, it lit up the entire room with just one! In this picture, you can also see the lines I've drawn on the globe. They mark the center going around in all directions, including where the top of the mouth would be.

Here's the mouth cut out. It looks so big on the head, but the cut out piece looks smaller. Odd!

Hi? This is me with the helmet on. My head and the client's head are almost exactly the same size, so I was showing him where the head sat on me. You can see my face is nicely framed in this really blurry picture I tried to get with no flash.

After some quick research, I discovered that the material used in mascot's eyes is called Buckram. It's a very densely weaved material that, as we discovered at the craft store, only hints at the outline of the face behind it and lets me see through. The picture above is the shot in a dim room through the buckram. My client will be DJing with this head on, so I wanted to show what he would be dealing with as far as visibility, and offered that there was a second material of a less dense weave that would show his face more, but offer more visibility. He went with option A, the buckram.

This is the helmet I picked up at Walmart. I removed the outer shell and am going to be working with the hard inner shell. Once on my head, the whole big head no longer tipped forward (due to the slant of the human shoulders) and sat with my face perfectly frammed in the mouth without me having to hold it. I'll be soon attaching the helmet to the inside of the head so that the head sits comfortably at all times and doesn't move too much.

Last picture for this update - a simple shot of the beginning of one of the ears. The ears are a somewhat large oval shape, 13 inches wide and 13 inches tall. I'll be cutting these out and attaching them helmet probably on Wednesday. I noted that I'll need to insert something into the ears to make sure they stand upright instead of bending over... I'll need to ponder that over today and tomorrow!

Hei's Daggers - Darker Than Black: Part 4

You might wonder how these daggers turned out. Unfortunately, the person who commissioned me never paid their final payment, and thus I ended up sitting around waiting to see how it would resolve before I did my final post on them. I never did end up getting paid, so these daggers are going up for sale.

 This is the dagger from the previous mold out of the sander. With my client wanting the blades as thin as they were, I was coming up against a few major problems. Mostly, my cast was not perfect mirror image of itself, and I was having to handle that. I continued sanding it down, and gave them a fast coat of some boring black matte paint just so I could see the imperfections of the blades.

Clearly not perfected yet, but I showed them to the client. He was unhappy with them, so I offered to recast them and give it another shot. I also wanted to try a different method of putting the blades together, hoping for a smoother make.

You can see here the top blade is put together using a very strong adhesive, and sanded, while the bottom is the same adhesive, not sanded. So, after more sanding, I was finally happy enough with them to give them their first spray coat.

Problem: the spray coat bubbled. Oi, seriously? So, while the daggers looked better, I had to strip off most of the coat and go at it again.

The stripped coating and reapply turned out better. I started to edge them in silver.

Here are the basic final daggers. They're sitting sullenly waiting for an owner now, due to my commisioner not paying for the final payment. They've been sitting for about four months now, so I plan to touch them up. You can see how thin the blades turned out in the end, but I think that was part of what made this all so difficult to do. With a thicker blade, a little less accurate, I think it would have been easier to work with. In fact, I actually made FIVE daggers. One broke because the blade was so thin. You can see the difference between the final pair (on top) and the first pair (bottom). Final pair has the proper paint and final sanding while the bottom pair does not.

As always, I put my thoughts on the pieces. Well, first thought, is I would not do these out of resin if I did them again. I would do them out of wood like I had originally desired to. It was an interesting experience to go down though. Resin molding definitely has its advantages, but I think in other circumstances than what I tried to do with it. I think the biggest problem was the thinness of the blades the client wanted. It made for quite a few difficulities. I also think I would go at it more with a detail sander than the belt sander. All in all, the daggers look good in photographs, they have an excellent weight, and myself and everyone who's come into contact with them loves posing and playing around with them.

If you wish to purchase them, please email me at the email above and we'll come to a price. I'm willing to go fairly good on the price as these aren't made to anyone's specific needs and I'm only trying to get back what was lost due to lack of payment from the client. I'd also be willing to sell the first pair, but I would need to finish them off (final sanding and painting). They are a little thicker, a little heavier, and a little more sturdy than the final pair.

Hei's Daggers - Darker Than Black: Part 3

After all of those painful setbacks with the daggers, I was actually going into this part with a heavy and concerned heart. After using a product with the Smooth-On company before, I decided to give them a call and see what they suggested. They suggested their OOMOO 25 product, and so would I.

It's a really, really simple mixture. Take container A, add matching amount from container B, pour into mold. I built a mold out of some cheap thin wood I had lying around and hot glue, proving you can make a basic mold from anything. I put my dagger I built from the foam board/clay and poured this mixture over it. Low and behold, I ended up with the mold above.

Tis floppy, no? It picks up every little detail and texture, even the wood it was poured into! Its durable stuff.

Now, the problem came that their casting resin? Is 150 dollars a gallon. Mind you, I didn't charge my client nearly enough money to buy their resin. So, it got me thinking. I spent my lunch break hunting down some more fiberglass resin since Lowes decided to stop carrying it, and I lugged home a gallon of it for 35 bucks. Mind you, I didn't have any sort of releasing agent or anything for this. Now, after the problem with 'resin dissolves foam', I decided to do a wee test batch. I took a piece of the mold and cut it off, cut that piece in two, then submerged half of one piece into a cap full of resin and slathered a bunch of resin on the other piece.

Much to my joy, the resin didn't eat the mold material at all! Even MORE of a surprise, when I gave a light tug on the piece I had half-submerged? It slipped right out! No damage to mold or resin.... PERFECT.

So, I mixed up a match of resin, realized quickly after pouring it I made way too much, and hoped.

Very quick note: I discovered that for some reason or another, the resin will stay where you pour it. Meaning if you pour it thick in the tips, instead of evening out like, say, water... it'll stay real thick at the tips. Oh well, lesson learned... the instructions for fiberglass resin says to add 'a few drops' to it - screw that. I always had 'a hefty squirt' to it. It dries faster and, if you screwed up and didn't add enough hardener, you won't accidently have half-dry-but-unable-to-finish-drying resin like I had once.  >.>

One hour later...

I had this beauty. It slipped RIGHT out of the mold without any problems or damage to mold or dagger. It is PERFECT. It took to every detail like a charm. The dagger is going to need some facetime with Mr. Belt Sander and Mr. Dremel though, but I call it a huge success.

How thick it ended up being - thicker than required but that's what a belt sander is for.

Detail shots. You can see how the angles turned out beautifully.

I actually poured a second one right after this. I will have to play with the pouring to get an even thickness, but produce four or forty of these will be no problem. I need to do two more tonight, hit the under sides with the belt sander to get an even thickness, glue them together, then belt sander+dremel v. 2.0 to get the daggers even and flat all around. Then its gesso, painting, aging, and... SHIPPING! On schedule for Sept. 1st delivery date.

Hei's Daggers - Darker Than Black: Part 2

It probably seems like I forgot about this prop, but I haven't. Actually, it turned into a complete nightmare. First, if you remember, I laid out the pattern on cardboard. Then, I cut it out.

Either I need a new knife or this particular cardboard was crap - it was so hard to cut evenly. But, it gave me and my client a perspective on the 3D design of it.

After some consultation on the length and width and such, we cropped it down to this.

So my original plan was to make it out of foam, sand it, then put a layer of clear resin over the foam to be able to make it into a mold for, well, molding.

While this started out as a success, and I was very pleased with my brand new jigsaw, there quickly became a problem I had never had before making props - it snapped, clean in half. I think I stared for a solid minute at the broken blade before I sighed and realized this wasn't going to work. Due to the double-bladed design of the daggers, I couldn't get in along the edges properly without the foam snapping. So, I ended up trying something new.

Don't laugh! I used this when I was in college. It's called foam board - two layers of thick paper with foam between them. First was the trick of finding this stuff in a new location since I didn't have a huge art supplies store (actually I had two) in Philly. Once I found it - surprisingly on sale which got me a lot for five bucks - I laid out my design on it. Now, building that cardboard cut out before? Came into amazing amounts of help. The foamboard version turned out nicer and was easier to cut.

Now there's a trick to it. To use foamboard like this, I had to layer it. You can see it in the picture above. The other problem was that this has very slight angles on the edges for the blade, which is quite thin, so I couldn't build on it. After some pondering, I carefully cut 1/8th of an inch from the edge into the paper and removed the first layer, then sanded the foam beneath to give me a sloped edge!

Now, all of this was very rough, not smooth, and clearly doesn't have the beveled edges the dagger should. So, that process began with an old friend of mine - Sculpy Clay!

Here's the final. I used my heat gun I have for paint stripping+wonderflex melting and baked the clay right onto the dagger as I was going. It's a nice, smooth look - not perfect, but I'll have to do some sanding on the resin when its molded. This is one half of the dagger - they're symmeterical, so I'll make four copies and glue two halves together. I am pleased how this is coming out after some serious agony about what was going on with it. I give a huge thank you to J-F, who is another builder and my good friend, who gave me some encouragement to keep going after the foam-snapping incident. (And after the clay-gourd 'frankengourd' incident, too.)

Gaara's Gourd - Naruto: Shippuden (Part 2)

Two important things in one picture. First is the gourd itself - here it is in its completed resin state. The entire gourd has two layers of resin soaked fiberglass cloth on it. It is nigh-on indestructable in this state as I can well testify to, it can survive anything I've accidently done to it so far!

The small green ball on top of the gourd is actually a replica in a sense. It is also a plastic-rubber ball wrapped in fiberglass and resin, albeit only one layer. It was to do a very important test.

I had to make sure that the resin had not chemically bonded to the plastic-rubber ball inside, as was my fear, and that only two layers would survive losing its internal base.

One knife stab later, we had proof that indeed the gourd would survive the ball popping. So, the two interior balls were popped and carefully removed along with most of the clay that had been supporting the two balls together.

Here is the gourd after it has not only been popped (you can see through it slightly) but sanded as well. Sanding took probably a good two hours with an electric sander, sand paper, and a dremel.

After some experience with the spray paint I chose to do the sand-texture and final color, I knew that painting the gourd before hand would be a huge time and money saver. So I went to my local hardware store and for 9 bucks picked up a hand-picked can of colored paint. I would go with a darker/more orange color next time, but it turned out good enough!

Unfortunately, I missed a picture here so I will explain. The first painting is never the final one. Painting brings out every single defect in the resin surface - a hole here, a missed drop here, a rough spot there. So some plaster was required to fill in the rough spots. Tiny holes were filled in, gaps between places where the resin ran, edges that weren't quite smooth. Then, a final layer of paint was put on to cover the plaster and that is what you see above.

Here, in my very messy cosplay room, you can see the final spray painting job on the v.2 gourd as compared to the v.1 gourd. With the layer undercoat, the gourd turned out slightly less orange in color, plus I did a spritz of a secondary textured sand color to give it some black flecks in it.

And here, the final picture of the completed gourd. It has the large cork in the top, the MWM symbols painted on (there are four of them) and the white wrappings + temporary harness wrapped around its middle.

All in all, pleased with the project. Have some ways to save money now, and a definite on just how quickly I can make one. There's no way to save time on how long it took - I did it in record time and other than problems with the weather there was nothing I could have done to take less time. Next time a darker/orange underpaint will be used to enhance the color.

Gaara's Gourd - Naruto: Shippuden

This project is one special to my heart. I created the first Gourd back in 08 when I had almost no idea what I was doing, simply giving something new a shot when I was in a cosplay funk. It became a difficult, aching project that both worked beautifully... and was a failure... in the same shot. It looks absolutely perfect, and I'm pleased for that, but it is very large and heavy - and impossible to carry on my back. So, I always wanted to redo the whole project.

So here I am, two years later, with a similar but different attempt at the same project - this time, keeping careful track of time and money spent.

My apologies that the pictures all end up on their side. Here's the first attempt at getting things started. It was 5 dollars for the two large bouncy balls. Between them is a 1/4 of a $20 dollar box of model magic that'll form the neck of the gourd. On the bottom isn't a base, just a large bowl I use for resin work.

This is the neck between the two balls, the top ball, and the ring of clay that'll be the opening of the gourd with its comically large cork inserted. Yep, it's a real cork that huge!

The very first batch of resin work. That'll be that lovely brown-yellow stain on the green ball. I started with the neck between them as it needs the most support and will keep me from cursing every time the two balls fall apart. I was glad to quickly remember some of my resin-ing skills from two years ago. I also learned that I needed at least two layers of cloth/resin to make the ball hard enough you could no longer press inwards/the ball was squishy.

Beside it is the original gourd. You can see the size difference in the two like this. They're actually just about the same height!

Addition of more resin - the gourd is upside down to let the newly formed clay base dry. You can also see the fiberglass cloth that I didn't have enough resin to lay down but was already stuck to the gourd - that'd be the white along the side.

One weekend's worth of fiberglass+resin. The bottom ball is pretty much done - I'll be double checking it tonight for any 'weak' (squishy) spots and laying over patches if needed. 50% of the top ball has its first layer of resin+fiberglass and 25% has two layers (closer to the neck) so I'll be doing that next.

This gourd is far, far lighter than the original gourd even with the clay and balls still in it. Keep an eye out for further developments!