Dragon*Con 2012. or "Cool Shawarma Shirt Bro!"

This year marked the third year we have attended the convention. While our costume load was a little bit lighter this year compared to 2010 and 2011, we still had a blast. Here are some of the highlights. For starters, David and I are huge fans of the Avengers and all the connected films. Shortly after the movie came out we found this site which sold shirts with the word “Shawarma” written on the front in the Avengers title font. After we bought the shirts we found that one of the restaurants in the Dragon*Con food court serves shawarma, so we decided to wear the shirts and stop there for dinner on Thursday. (Note: If you are new to Dragon*Con or this blog, D*Con unofficially starts on Thursday in that there are already people cosplaying and having a good time.) Without wearing any other costume materials, we went through the hotels to get to dinner and had people stop us to get pictures of our tee shirts. We did make it to the restaurant and we can both say that Tony Stark does have good taste for grub.


Later in the night we took out our main projects. Dave took his cheese mau5 head (write up coming soon) out for a spin while I took the Dalek (again, write-up coming soon) for its first test run. At this point we were still wearing our Shawarma shirts. Both of us had numerous people come up and say something along the lines of, “I love your shirt” without mentioning anything about the props. It was a baffling experience but we did get some love for the projects and day 0 was a blast.


The next two days consisted mostly of checking out vendors and panels and showing off the Dalek. David found some pretty cool Avengers prints by Chris Hamer of urbanpop.com. We have always had a positive response to our projects; the feedback from the Dalek was nothing short of insane. Pictures never stopped and there was always a Doctor Who cosplayer somewhere nearby. One of the many highlights was when our friend Volpin came by, wearing his Thomas gear, and checked out the Dalek. The folks at Beat Down Boogie, who you may know from this video, were on hand and got some great footage which will most likely end up in this year’s D*Con montage video.


During the evenings we switched out to the mau5 heads. While David had his cheese head and Jecca a red one I made (she added a bow to make it more girly), I brought out an all-white one and a handful of sharpies so people could sign it. We even ran into Grant Imahara from Mythbusters who signed the front as well, although I have no idea which signature is his anymore.


This was our second year in the parade. David went with the Venture Bros group dressed as 21 dressed as Sargent Hatred. Myself, along with our friend Ethan who flew in from Mojave California, once again joined the Ghostbusters. Due to space limitations I left the Game pack at home and sported Dave’s Tainted Love pack instead. One side story I will mention is that Ethan had not slept for the 24 hours before the parade due to work and travel. While we were waiting for the parade to start he was falling asleep sitting on the curve, so I put my leg behind his proton pack and he ended up sleeping like that for a good 15 min. I’m sure we’ll find pictures of that somewhere.


Sunday was probably our most eventful day. David and Jecca attended the Venture Bros panel with several of the creators and voice actors including: Doc Hammer, Jackson Publick, and James Urbaniac , which basically was run as a 70's talk show titled “Let’s All Smoking.” Afterwards, Dave got Jackson Publick’s signature on his henchmen visors, adding to the two he collected last year. While this was going on, I took the Dalek to the Sunday masquerade competition. Unlike the Friday Night Competition we had Delta in last year; this contest not only looks at craftsmanship, but also presentation and skits. Our skit was called “Doctor Dalek”, which had a Dalek cosplaying as the scariest thing he can think of, which is the Doctor. Originally he was going to wear a fez and a bow tie, but I like how he looked when we put the Tom Baker scarf on him at Con Kasterborus, so we went with that route. A friend of ours from the Maker’s shop, Jennifer, server as the fake operator/ Dalek victim during the skit. As soon as we find a video we will post it to the Facebook page. We took home Best Sci Fi. I am very happy with this because the completion really brought out the big guns for this. Literally, a few of the competitors’ costumes were over 16 feet tall.


As usual, Dragon*Con rocked at we had a great time. Concerning next year we will be taking a bit of a pause and we both start looking to upgrade our housing and transportation, which we really need to do now as we are running out of room to put all the props. While David and Jecca will be skipping 2013, I will be back, most likely with the upgraded Dalek and a “smaller” new costume (on the table at the time of writing is the 10th doctor’s space suit or Loki). We are also going to try to pop in some smaller cons throughout the year. In the mean time we have a few more back logged write ups to post in the coming weeks, and I’m sure we’ll have a big write up concerning the Child’s Play auction which will have three Zelda items built by David. Be sure to like up on Facebook to stay up to date with our future projects and appearances! 2012 Dragon*Con Album

Tainted Love Proton Pack

I know I have several work-in-progress posts for this project already, but since that was some time back, I figured I'd start from the beginning again. I'm only going to be hitting the major points anyways, so I won't need to finish any lengthy detail discussions. Also, I missed a LOT of opportunities for taking photos for a variety of reasons, so there will be skips in this post. I can't make up for it, so I'm just going to do my best to plow through it. Apologies in advance!

I both love and hate building props from comic books. I love it because it's often times something not used in a primary media (if we're considering comic books to be a "secondary media" to movies, like in this case - Ghostbusters) and is unique to the comic book or series. I also love it because it's rare that you find people actually making things from comic book aside from all the super hero stuff, so the number of potential projects that haven't even been touched by other builders is exceptionally high, and I love having a seemingly "secret" or untouched pool of projects available if I get bored with all the other mainstream stuff.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a happy happy joy joy situation. The big (and probably only) reason why I hate building from comics is that comic book artists, while awesome at their craft, are rarely consistent panel to panel when it comes to details, shapes, and even proportions. They're under tight deadlines and pressure from the publishers, so it's understandable that they'll rush through a page without such considerations, but that doesn't seem to be the case with this particular project. Ghostbusters: Tainted Love was a fantastic little one-off comic book that introduced Ghostbusters fans to a new piece of equipment. It goes unnamed in the comic book, but it's essentially a miniaturized proton pack. It's worn on the arm, and it emits less power than it's backpack predecessors so it will do less collateral damage for house calls. The catch, though, is that it takes all four Busters to use them at the same time in order to wrangle a ghost instead of just one or two using the big packs. Anyways, what's wonderful about this comic book, from a prop building reference point of view, is that the artwork is incredibly consistent throughout the issue, and that made identifying all the parts and details fairly easy.

 

I began with an oddly-shaped assembly of plastic scraps and Bondo can lids, but quickly decided to scrap that version because it really wasn't looking right at all. Starting over, this build began life as several pieces of layered MDF and sintra. A few washers and sections of PVC pipe were thrown into the mix to finish off the detailing.

 

 

 

I'll go ahead and apologize again here and say that this project turned into one of those back-burner projects, so I ended up losing steam in taking photos. Among the non-existent photos are the the molds for this thing. I made a mold for the main body of the upper arm piece so that castings would have all the details already on them, and all I had to do was paint the cleaned up fiberglass casting. Nothing terribly flashy, and really, it's nothing new for the methods we've used before on previous projects. I also made a mold for the top drum section so that hollow castings could be produced from it as well. Since this was being worn on the arm, I wanted it to be as light-weight as possible. That's really all you should take away from it.

In order for the pack to be worn, a backer piece had to be made, and I decided to make a vacuum forming buck out of some MDF and a section of mailing tube. A sheet of styrene was pulled over it, and then that piece was trimmed and fitted to the inside of the main shell. The little humps you see on it form-fit to the upper arm, and later on a nylon webbing strap would be inserted through it to secure the assembly to the upper arm when worn.

 

Additional detailing was fairly straightforward, as it consisted of sections of PVC pipe being fitted to the shell of the main body. Another casualty to my lack of photos was the progression of the bumper piece. Seen in the photo below, the bumper was made by layer several sheets of sintra together with super glue. The ribbing was particularly fun in that I used some ribbed cabinet liner vinyl as the texture. Additional detailing was made by using a few washers, and finally a mold was made for it so I could produce fiberglass copies.

 

The forearm unit actually went rather quickly, and again I didn't stop to take photos. It was sculpted out of MDF with a dremel, and then detailed with various bits of plastic, some washers, and that same cabinet liner vinyl from the bumper. This component also needed to be lightweight, so I made a mold of it and produced a hollow casting out of Smooth On Smooth Cast 300. This one had some severe undercuts on it, making casting the thing seem more like an acrobatic interpretive dance. Like the upper arm component, it needed a backer piece, so I used the same method and produced a vacuum formed styrene backer that was fitted to the inside of the forearm piece.

In the above photo, you can see an MDF framework that I installed with a little hot glue. This framework serves two purposes: 1) The back plate bolts to it, and 2) the hand grip would later be attached to it instead of the hollow plastic shell. The hand grip was carved out of some MDF, and was originally intended to be molded and cast out of resin, but time restrictions caused me to use the original MDF master on the current working copy of the proton pack.

After all the components were built and cast, all that was left was to paint it, detail it, and assemble it. After it was painted, Wayne installed some LEDs in the top portion of the pack. We were rushed for time due to an upcoming photoshoot with Dim Horizon at Sloss Furnace, so the forearm unit went without electronics. One thing I wanted to make sure was in place was the correct style on/off button. As it is in the comic book, they turn on the proton packs by pushing a little button on the front of the forearm unit. It's a small detail, but it's fun in that there are no fancy hidden switches or anything to it. Just push it and the lights come on. Not terribly complex at all, but it's still a fun effect.

Check out the full gallery here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2storyprops/sets/72157624892827955/with/7946214994/

Again, sorry for all the skips and lack of certain photos. This post really didn't flow like I had hoped, but I hope you can gleam some usable information from it. Four blog posts in a week really took a lot out of me, especially since I lost steam after that last one. But Wayne will take over for a bit with a Dragon*Con write-up and perhaps another build log here shortly, so stay tuned next week for more updates!

Samus Aran's Pistol

Samus Aran’s Pistol The Samus pistol was a commission requested earlier in the year by a client preparing a Samus Aran costume for Dragon*Con 2012. This specific version of the pistol is from Metroid: Other M, and the client supplied several pieces of reference artwork. Blueprints were developed from that artwork, and the pistol was scaled to my very first prop replica (pre-2StoryProps), a Republic Commando sidearm from Star Wars. That older pistol had a very hefty size and feel to it, and I wanted to base this new one off of that.

There were a few criteria I wanted to meet with this project. The main one I wanted to meet was to make it as light as possible for general convention use, but also light enough that it wouldn’t slide down the client’s leg when holstered on her thigh. The other criterion I wanted to meet was to make the barrel light up when you pulled the trigger. A lot of people would likely find that to be a rather simple task, but I rarely include electronics in my work. I can work with LEDs and soldering, but making a working trigger mechanism was something new to me. Fortunately it sort of automatically fell into place. More on that later.

In order to make it light, I decided that a hollow build was necessary. I transferred my blueprints to some ¼” MDF sheet and cut out several layers. The inner layers would then have their interior sections cut out, leaving a lightweight framework for the interior. The framework would allow for a battery pack inside the grip, and more than enough room for an LED, a switch, and all the necessary wiring. The design of the gun in the reference artwork allowed for a hinge for the trigger right on the trigger itself. It’s not a typical hinge location, but for the purposes of making the barrel light up, it was perfectly suitable. The spring action in the trigger would be provided by the spring action on a momentary switch placed at the top of the trigger and mounted to the frame.

I love making gun props (mostly because I get to play with them as I build them!), and fortunately, after the interior was taken care of, the rest was just cosmetic. The exterior was mostly made up of layered sintra (hollowed when possible) and “For Sale” sign styrene.

A few bits added to it were resin castings, both for symmetry and for strength. I also decided “slide release” things pivot for a little bit of realism (I don’t know gun anatomy). These pieces are also like the pieces that are going to break (IF they break at all), so making resin castings allowed me to provide the client with a fully painted set of replacement parts, should her conventioneering go awry.

Another criterion I wanted to meet was to provide the client with the full package: a pistol with a holster and thigh pad. Neither addition was requested, but I’m somewhat of a completionist, and if she ever wanted a holster, I wanted it to be a matched set with the pistol. So after a few hours’ work on some MDF, I had a reversible vacuum forming buck, and I made an inner and outer shell out of some styrene.

After completing the pistol build, I decided that an access panel was necessary for the LED, should it ever need to be replaced for some reason. Aside from the battery pack, the rest of the wiring setup is inaccessible, but having access to the LED at least gave the client the ability to swap that out if it ever burnt out.

This was a super fun build, and I really enjoyed working with the client. As this is a back-logged write up, I can’t remember the exact working time frame for this project, but it took somewhere around two months to complete. And here are the studio shots!

And here's the full gallery:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/2storyprops/sets/72157629064632532/

Skyward Sword: Scattershot

This is perhaps one of the most unique props I’ve built to-date in that it’s actually fully functional. I’m not a huge fan of the slingshots in the Zelda games, but only because they’re not terribly exciting. I like them as much as you could like any other tool in the game functionality-wise, but they’re just not terribly exciting to use, in my opinion. However, I do greatly enjoy the design of the Scattershot from Skyward Sword, and that’s really what drove me to build this prop.

Since 2StoryProps started, we’ve collected a lot of molds that really just sit around and collect dust for the majority of the time. While it’s great to be able to cast up something on a whim because you have molds available, it can be financially stressful to make a mold and only make a few castings out of it. So I decided that I would build a one-off original item instead of a master to be molded. But that doesn’t stop me from getting clever with it!

I enjoy papercraft, but I enjoy it in the sense that it can be used as a base for later sculpting work. I can go on and on about my thoughts on papercraft, its merits and weaknesses, but for the purpose of this writeup, it’s just important that I often use it in ways that aren’t typical of papercraft projects. This one started off as a quick 3D model that I built in Rhino. I knew how I wanted to assemble it later on, so I intentionally built it in three separate components. Note: I wanted to pause and mention that early stages of this were not photographed. I was “on a roll” and didn’t feel like stopping to take photos. Sorry! Anyways, after printing and assembling the 3D model, I filled each piece with Smooth-On Smooth Cast 300 resin. Next came the interesting part: I sanded away all the paper, leaving solid resin pieces. The sanding process also removed the polygonal shapes from the paper model and left me with a smooth surface almost ready for assembly.

After a bit of smoothing with some glazing putty, I assembled the pieces with some JB Weld, and a steel rod going through the entire assembly for some added strength.

Painting was pretty straightforward, but the tricky part was the grip – in the game it appears to be teal leather, and I was expecting to be searching and searching for this stuff, or else I would have to make my own teal wrap. Fortunately, a semi-local vinyl supplier actually had teal fleece-backed vinyl. I had to actually shave off the fleece backing, though, because it made the grip too thick and the fleece poked out of the edges when wrapped. In the end, it finished off the piece nicely. After applying a faux wood grain to the painted piece, I attached a yellow leather sling with some rubber bands (acquired off of other slingshots, no less). What’s cool about the rubber bands is that they aren’t extruded rubber sheet like your typical office supply rubber bands; these are poured rubber sheets cut by hand, so the thickness is very uneven and they have a very hand-crafted look to them, perfect for the aesthetic of Skyward Sword props.

Check out the full gallery here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/2storyprops/sets/72157628483918905/

This prop will be available for auction at the Child’s Play charity auction dinner in December of 2012, along with my two other Skyward Sword props.

We're on Facebook!

Well we just got back from Dragon*Con, and we'll likely get a write-up about it on here soon. In the mean time, for those of you that we met at Dragon*Con and received one of our business cards, I'd like to invite you to check us out on our Facebook fan page. Head on over and "like" our page to receive all of our updates, exclusive WIP sneak-peek photos, and all of our completed project photos in one place!

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