Chrix Designs shows how she made a staff of Kraken; it’s a staff with an orb surrounded by octopus tentacles. I found her technique for making the sculpted tentacles pretty interesting.
Kris Compas shows how to turn on a drill press in this two-part tutorial (see part 1 and part 2). Now, a drill press motor isn’t made to withstand the lateral pressure from full-scale turning of hardwoods , but Compas is turning doll-house furniture pieces out of basswood. This seems like a fine technique for all that small-scale kind of stuff you might need to do.
For Nic Howard, nothing is safe when it comes to molding and casting. She shows how she molds everything from bookplates to cookies in order to have a library of decorative castings to attach to objects.
For our upcoming production of Snow Queen at Triad Stage, I am building some super-awesome puppet animals. But you won’t see those until December. Instead, I will show you a stove leg I had to replace. See, the show needs a wood-burning stove, and we had a great one in stock, but one of the legs was broke and another was missing. I could have molded and cast some new ones, or sculpted a new one out of wood, but I needed a ten-minute solution that did not cost anything.
Luckily for me, I had ordered several sheets of Wonderflex for the aforementioned puppets. I figured I could just use a few of the scraps to make myself some new legs.
Wonderflex leg
Wonderflex gets sticky when hot, and I did not want it sticking to the leg, so I wrapped the leg in aluminum foil (not pictured here). Next, I heated the Wonderflex and essentially draped it over one of the legs. I worked it tight against the surface using my hands, and really dug in along the sides to pick up the raised-edge detail in the original. I wrapped the remainder around the back. Once it had cooled a bit, I carefully pried it apart and pulled the original leg out, than let the Wonderflex finish cooling until it was hard again. I was able to peel most of the aluminum foil off the back of the Wonderflex (the back had picked up the texture of the foil, but it did not show through on the front).
Trimmed and attached
I trimmed the excess material around the edges, leaving some extra on the top. I placed the leg in place and heated up this extra top material and shaped it to fit the underside of the stove. Once cool, I added a bolt to hold it in place.
Painted
Finally, I painted it. I started with a flat black spray paint, then dry-brushed some rust color and some grey. You can barely tell which leg is real and which is fake in the photograph above. Plus, the whole process was less than ten minutes of total work time, in between other tasks on the show. The end with the fake legs does have a block of wood underneath to hold it up; the Wonderflex is nowhere near sturdy enough to support a cast-iron stove on its own.
The Guildhall School of Music & Drama has a great-looking blog going for their technical theatre departments. This post has a lot of photographs of their work in progress for their current round of shows, but check out the whole thing for some inspiration.
The production designer for BBC’s What Remains has a behind-the-scenes look at the design, construction and dressing of many of the sets. It is a bit more focused on the scenery rather than the props, but it has a ton of photographs; I mean, if you printed out all the photos, they would actually weigh one ton. She gives a look at not just the construction and final product, but also the design inspiration that went into it.
An interesting story has come out of the filming for the new Star Wars film. The producers have reached out to the R2-D2 fan building community, and are using a fan-built R2-D2 in the film. Why have your prop shop build a new one when you have fans who have already constructed several?
I totally forgot to remind everyone this Wednesday (July 24th) was Propmaster’s Day. At the moment, most of the US prop masters are at their annual conference in Kansas City; I couldn’t make it this year, but hopefully I can share some of it next week. In other news, today is my last day at the Santa Fe Opera. I’ll be able to share some more things I built here in a month once the operas close. For now, enjoy these links from around the Internet:
At this year’s San Diego Comic Con, Adam Savage dressed as Admiral Akbar, with a mask built from the original movie molds. Check out the epic voyage of molding and casting it took for him and a team of skilled artisans to get there.
In the same vein, here is another intensive tutorial on sculpting, molding and casting brought to you by the creators of the indie film, He Took His Skin Off For Me. This one shows you how they made an actor’s arm appear to have no skin on it.
Disney Research is developing software to help design mechanical creatures and automata. They have videos and animations to help explain it better, but basically, you tell the program how you want something to move, and it shows you wear to stick hinges, pivots and motors to make it happen.
Rich Dionne has a great post up describing how to keep your painters happy. The simple rules he lays out are essential for getting the show up in time and not making everyone miserable in the process. Even if you don’t have a separate team of painters for your prop shop, these are good rules to make a mental note of while planning out the build and finish of each prop.
Tony Swatton, who we’ve seen on this blog before, has a new video where he builds a set of Wolverine’s claws from scratch. They are 18-gauge steel, and they are SHARP!
Vermont Public Radio has a story on 50 years of the Bread and Puppet Theatre. I first saw these guys around 1998 or so, and again just last year. Their performances are fun but compelling, and the design and construction of their puppets have almost certainly influenced many contemporary puppeteers.
Speaking of puppets, a few months ago, puppeteer Emily DeCola, of Puppet Kitchen, was struck by a cyclist while crossing the street. Her injuries left her with crazy medical bills and the loss of her sense of smell. Her fellow puppeteers have organized a puppet cabaret fundraising event for her TONIGHT, so if you’re in New York City, why not check it out? If not, you can always donate to the cause. Emily worked on a number of shows while I was at the Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park, and her work is always amazing.
