Tag Archives: clay

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Donkey Mask from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

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In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Nick Bottom finds his head transformed into that of a donkey, courtesy of the mischievous fairy, Puck. The donkey head is among Shakespeare’s most distinctive props, and has been on my bucket list of famous props to build. Recently, Triad Stage mounted a production.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream", Triad Stage, with Rebecca Hirota and E.E. Williams. Photo by Bert Vanderveen.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Triad Stage, with Rebecca Hirota and E.E. Williams. Photo by Bert Vanderveen.

The mask was designed by our costume designer, Hannah Chalman. She designed masks for all the fairies as well, so we split the fabrication of the masks between the props and costume departments.

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Useful Sites

Saturday’s Monstrous Links

First Person Monster Blog with Shannon Shea – Shannon Shea is a well-known creature and effects artist who worked on films like Predator, Batman Returns, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park. He has not updated his blog in a few years, but it has a treasure trove of stories and information if you are willing to dig through the archives.

How to Make a Halloween Mask “Sculpting” – Ed Edmunds shows you how to sculpt a scary monster mask out of water-based clay in this half hour video.

Building a Life-Size Replica of Poe Dameron’s X-Wing – Not quite life-sized, but still pretty amazing.

Got bored, made electric shaver (handheld heatwire foam cutter) – Here is a short little tutorial about making a hot wire cutter run off of a 9V battery.  I am not sure why you would want a hot wire cutter that is the same size as a knife blade, but here you go.

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The Week’s Links

I am currently in tech for Pump Boys and Dinettes at Triad Stage, opening next Friday. This means I’m really tired, but I can read lots of things on the Internet. Here are some articles I’ve come across recently:

First up is this interview and video with prop master Russell Bobbitt. He has, perhaps, one of the more enviable positions in the world of prop-making at the moment: providing the iconic weapons for the Marvel Universe, such as Captain America’s shield, Thor’s hammer and Iron Man’s arc reactor. The article doesn’t delve into much detail, but it is still a fun read.

In the New York Times is this fantastic profile on set designer Eugene Lee. You may not recognize Lee’s name (unless you attended USITT), but you probably recognize the set to Wicked, or to Saturday Night Live, which he has been designing since it began. His house is practically a props warehouse, filled to the brim with objects and collections he has acquired over the years, and this article has plenty of photographs showing it all off.

Here is a promising new blog with a fun name: Eat, Clay, Love. It only has a few posts so far from UK-based artist Shahriar, but I’ve already picked up some new techniques I want to try.

Finally, if you have been following Shawn Thorsson’s quest to build a life-size ED-209 from Robocop, part three of his series went up last week. He’s doing a lot of molding and casting of the parts for this installment, and explains how he does it.

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Friday Fun Links

Happy Friday, good props people!

Though a few years old, this tutorial on making paper clay is pretty useful. Paper clay is a great sculpting material if you are working with kids, or otherwise need a cheap and non-toxic medium.

I always enjoy when Lost Art Press posts 19th century texts about workmanship. This recent one on “Good Workmen and Good Tools” is such a post. Take care of your tools!

Designing a vinyl toy with Joe Ledbetter is a bit different than what most of us do. He steps us through the many procedures one goes through when one designs a vinyl toy and works with a factory to put it into production. It’s kind of fascinating.

Finally, if you want a video to zone out to today, check out this mesmerizing one of Philippe Faraut sculpting a human hand from clay.

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Link-o-Rama

Make Magazine has a great slideshow on “Ten Tips for Drilling Better Holes“. It is a good reminder that even seemingly simple tasks can have a lot of considerations in achieving a good result. While I would not take anything off the list they present, I would add one: be sure the drill bit will not hit your hand as it exits the other side of the material (or if it slips off).

I saw this over at La Bricoleuse and had to share: it’s a Rit Dye color chart. Choose the color you want, and it will tell you which Rit dye or combination of dyes will give you that color. Now, a lot of other factors go into achieving certain colors on particular fabrics, and Rit is not the best dye for all types of fabrics, but it is readily available at most local stores and easy to work with in a pinch, and this chart is a good starting point for many colors.

I just stumbled on a cool blog called the “Creaturiste’s Labatory”. He has a post on oil clay vs water clay in terms of sculpting, though many of the other posts are useful and interesting as well.

This is pretty cool: The official licensed replicas of props from Doctor Who are being manufactured by the same prop maker who builds them for the show.

Finally, here is a very cool video of Tony Swatton forging one of the swords from the series Game of Thrones. He has a number of videos showing the making of other weapons as well. It’s amazing to see the mix of tools and techniques he uses for hand-forging custom weapons at the pace which the entertainment industry requires. Though he mainly does film, TV and theme parks, I’ve heard his name mentioned in theatrical circles as well.