Okami, Thunder Edge WIP

Hey, sorry it's been so long since my last post. I had actually meant to put this up earlier along with pics of the finished 'secret project' but I accidentally forgot to take pictures of the secret project. So I've been waiting for pics from the twins I gave it to, but they went on a short vacation and were unable to send me pics. I'll post those in the next post, I suppose. Anyway! The Thunder Edge:

Current Progress: 50% or so

Alright, so this is what I have so far. The first thing I did was get materials! I went out to Home Depot to buy my base material, Insulation Foam. (I actually prefer Lowes, but Home Depot was the only place in my area that sold the kind of foam I wanted. =/) The one that I picked up was of the Owens Corning brand and its product name is 'Foamular.' They come in various sizes and thickness but the kind that my Home Depot had were these huge 1/2 inch sheets for about 11 or 12 dollars.

Second, I bought some posterboard which I have seen others use as a sort of spine or the foam to stick to for support. I printed out the template I had already drawn of the Thunder Edge on several sheets of paper and traced the design onto the posterboard. It took two sheets to make sure it was the full length. Hahahaha.... I also bought some Bondo, but I'll get to that more in depth later.

I then cut out and traced that template onto the insulation foam, making two copies. One for each side of the poster board. Oh, and you can see my very first Thunder Edge on the top of the photo. One single piece of styrofoam usually used for floral arrangement, made without any reinforcement, and was also shorter than what I wanted. I don't recommend using it for large props such as this, but I've found that it works great for smaller accessories, such as novelty sized beads. Oh, and by the way, insulation foam comes covered in this plastic film. You'll want to remove that before doing anything with the foam.

Here is another picture to show the pieces ontop of each other along with the piece of poster board in the middle. Oh, there is also a yard stick in there for comparison. The whole prop is about 51 inches long, I had meant for it to be 50 but the computer skewed the proportions when I blew up my drawing. =/

And here's one final picture of what I have so far. It's a picture of the cloud shaped piece that is meant to float in the hole in the middle of the glaive. I made the piece using the shame process as the sword, by gluing posterboard between two pieces of foam. I've decided to mimic the floating effect by tying fishing line (which is transparent!) to holes I've made in the posterboard in both the cloud and sword pieces. I reinforced the hole areas by gluing together more pieces of poster board. You can kinda see the fishing line in the photo, I'm actually holding up a piece. Can't see it? Good! That's the point!

Oh, I forgot to mention, I cut out the details in the foam using my Dremel Rotary Tool on it's low speed setting. (Don't own a Dremel? Get one! It is my favorite and, in my opinion, my most versatile/usefull tool. =) ) There was also an odd gap where the various layers of poster board and poster board met, I decided to try out my newly acquired Bondo, the all-purpose type, to fill in the gap. It wasn't really worth it, it was difficult to work with and I ended up with a lot of unused material since I was only filling in a small space. One thing I learned though was to never use bondo on unprimered foam, it doesn't stick well. But, it did the job and it was a learning experience. I covered the whole thing in a layer of gesso. It needs another 1 or 2 and a good sanding, but once that's done it'll look awesome. =)

The next step, after finishing the cloud piece, is to attach it to the main sword piece. Then glue the whole thing together and finish shaping it. I look forward to seeing the finished product, and I hope ya'll do to.

Signing out,

Solvash

Summer 2010 Project Line Up

Alright, Solvash again, time for the new post! As you can tell from the post's title, this post is all about what projects will (hopefully) be coming up this summer. And boy! What a line up it is!

Let's get started. Here's how I'll list'em:

Picture of Prop
Prop name - Series it came from - Whether it is a commission, gift, or something for myself - Price, if it is a commission - Estimated precent completion if already started.
And then below it all I'll post a little snippet of what I think of the prop.

http://okamiworld.com/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Amaterasu_15_-_Thunder_Edge.jpg
Thunder Edge - Okami - Gift - 30%-35% done
This is one of the weapons that Amaterasu can wield in the game Okami. Okami is one of my all time favorite games and when one of my friends asked me to make it as birthday gift I was really excited. The only problem being that the first two times I tried to make this...it broke. >.< So her gift has been delayed for quite a while. But I'm pretty confident with how this version is coming out, so hopefully it won't break this time.

No Picture
Name is yet to be decided - Original Creation - Gift - 40%-45%
I'm not gonna say much about this. All I will say is that this project is pair of props that will be given to two of my friends, who are twins, on their birthday.

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/2876/caseee.jpg
Revolver - Final Fantasy VIII - Commission - $125
The Revolver is just plain cool. It's simple, yet still intimidating. I really look forward to making this prop. I plan to make it so that the barrel will be able to spin and so that the hammer and trigger actually work.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3602/3507028007_44d1199db3.jpg
Hei's Two Daggers - Darker Than Black - Commission - $60
I don't really know very much about Darker Than Black, although I have been meaning to watch it. The only thing I do know anything about is the main character's name, his mask, and his two daggers. I must say though, I really like how the dagger's are simple but are still unique. In anycase, I've found several good reference pictures so I don't think I'll have any problem with these.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100528111714/kingdomhearts/images/8/83/Ven_Key.png
Fresh Breeze - Kingdom Hearts - For Myself
When I first saw the design for Ventus' Keyblade, I instantly fell in love. It has a very simplistic design (If you haven't noticed by now, I'm a fan of simplistic, sometimes bordering minimalistic, designs) and has a great color combo in my opinion. I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to do this before the summer's out, but if I do have time I look forward to it.

Alright, so those are all the projects I have planned for the summer. Quite a few, eh?

First Entry

Alright...So this is the first official post of my first official blog...It's interesting. Well, in anycase, my name is Solvash. I don't plan on really giving out any other information. So don't bother asking for my any personal information.

Hmm...so. What to say...Like I said, this is my first blog.

Well, I guess I'll just get to the point then. This will be my blog to chronicle my adventures in the wild world of prop making! I've actually only started making props since last year, so I'm still relatively new. But I think this is the perfect time to start a blog like this. With this I'll be able to log all my experiments with different techniques, processes, and materials. Hopefully those of you who will read this will find these entries useful.

Well, anyway, that's pretty much my goal: to create a record of how I make specific props and also to create a record of my progress overall.

And that's it for my introduction.

Signing out,
Solvash