Speed Prop Building or Are You Crazy?

 

Sometimes I think too much.  I make too many plans.  Then I get frustrated when things don’t work out to the complicated plan.  Sometimes just sitting back and letting things just happen is the best way.  Sometimes not.

The day before we were to leave for Dragon*Con, I took off work so that I could pack and just try to relax before we left.  Work had been more hectic than usual and I had not had any time off in 2011.  Instead of packing, I decided to relax my own unique way.  Could I build a prop to take to Dragon*Con in just one day without spending any money?  I had concerns about the drill arm for Subject Delta surviving the trip to Atlanta and then surviving the full weekend.  If it were broken, badly damaged, or stopped spinning, that would be bad.  Plus, I could just get tired of carrying it.  It isn’t exactly light.

Looking at Delta’s arsenal and what I had lying around, I decided the perfect thing to build would be the launcher.  I also had just gotten the Subject Omega action figure and he came with the launcher.  Perfect for reference.

Now I knew that in just one day, I could not make an exact replica.  That would be impossible, but could I make something that looked enough like it to make people say “Oh cool!  The Launcher!”

Looking at the general shape of things, I would need:
A big tube, smaller tubes, some pipe, a big box, and a handle of some sort.
Easy enough to find around my shop.

The main body tube is just the old tank from the original Subject Delta concept (it was too heavy to use). Now it will get a second chance at life.  The box is just a cigar box I still had.  Kind of pained me to have to paint it, but it was for a good cause.  I would make the handle portion out of MDF easy enough.  Some metal straps, screws and glue for assembly and it was well on its way.

The clamps are holding the MDF back together with glue from where it split when I screwed it onto the tube.  Yes I pre-drilled holes, but this MDF is a bit old and splits easily.

The outer barrel tubes (blast deflector/heater) would be made from 1/2 inch PVC bent to shape and mounted on MDF brackets.

                           

After this came paint and distressing, and once it was dry, I added some copper pipe for details.  The pink bits inside the barrel are just foam bits that covered the screws where they broke through the pipe.  I didn’t have time to cut them all off.

The final result was not bad if I say so myself.

At Dragon*Con, it was actually my wife in her Eleanor costume that used the launcher more than Delta.  That is because her syringe actually did not survive the trip.

                          

Well, that is what I can build in one day with no work distractions.  I was happy, and as it turned out, it was a good practice for what came next.

After we got back from Dragon*Con, and I got better (con-crud hit Saturday night, and we had to leave Sunday), a friend of mine posted on facebook that he needed a prop Mauser and quickly.  He made the post Tuesday afternoon, and needed it by Thursday morning.  I was also back to my real world job and couldn’t take time off.  After talking to him, he just really needed a photo ready prop.  It didn’t have to be highly detailed, just enough to get good reference in photos and maybe use at cons for a while.  I took the challenge.

I found a scale picture of the Mauser to use, printed it, and cut it out into the components I thought it would need to be built in using my old friend MDF.

 

I broke it into 4 pieces: barrel, action, body, and handle.  I got the pieces cut out after work and assembled the barrel and action, then glued it all together.  Hoping it would be ready for paint Wednesday.

A few things didn’t glue as I had planned, the handle being the biggest issue, but given the truncated time table, it would have to work. 

If anyone out there has ever had to paint MDF, you may know that if you have sanded the surface, or have exposed cut edges, painting is a pain because it just soaks up the paint.  I had to quickly seal the whole thing with some fiberglass resin.  Then painting was easy enough.

You can see in the pictures an area where the resin roughed up while drying.  If I had time to sand and re-coat I would have, but again, this had to be ready in no time.

I delivered it to my friend and he was very pleased with it.  There may be a more detailed one in the future, but for now, it was just what he was after.

Speed prop building has been pretty successful.

Dragon*Con Day 2 – Parades, Fish & Disease

 

Saturdays at Dragon*Con are really known for 2 things: The parade on Saturday morning and the parties of Saturday night.  We’d be replacing the parties this year with a trip to the Georgia Aquarium for Dragon*Con night and a photo shoot with people from Irrational Games (The company behind the game for our costumes).  We were really looking forward to that.  Our hotel, The Ellis, has a restaurant with a balcony that overlooks Peachtree street, but it had been booked for 7 months prior to the parade.  Yes, this is that big of a deal.  So, we got some coffee, and found ourselves a nice spot on the curb right outside the hotel, about an hour before the parade was to start.  Even an hour early, it was crowded.

Now, I don’t usually do this, but I’ve got to this time.

The above is a picture of the biggest douchebag father I’ve seen.  Everyone in this area had been there over an hour.  The couple behind us had two small boys and the boys had been sitting where douchebag dad is now sitting.  As small boys will do, they got up to go see mom for a second, and as they left their spot, Mr. I am the center of the universe, ran in and slid into that spot, taking it from the boys.  The parents and everyone around us was shocked and appalled at this, but douchebag dad didn’t notice at all.  Now, being the Boy Scout that I am, Melinda and I scooted back just a little to open a spot on the curb and offered it to the boys that douchebag dad had just screwed.  The parents were grateful, and we got to set a little bit back right.  Moral of the story, DON’T BE A DOUCHEBAG AND TAKE KIDS SEATS AT A PARADE!!!

The rest of the time before the parade started was people glaring at him and talking about what happened and him being completely oblivious to it.

Then the parade started!!

Box Heros!

And just to show you the sense of humor at Dragon*Con, the parade organizers put the above My Little Pony costumes right in front of
The Road Warrior Costumes.

The Sci-Fi Janitors cleaning up the mess.

After the parade it was time for breakfast to let the crowds die down a little.  Still it was crowded and busy in our hotel.  They actually ran out of regular glasses at one point and so my milk arrived like this:

Our waiter apologized, but it struck me as incredibly funny.

We didn’t even try to go to any panels or other events. The people who come in just for Saturday always push the attendance to over the 40K.  We did go to people watch for a while though, and wear our other costumes.

Melinda as Alice from Resident Evil.

Me as a Sandman from Logan’s Run, and yes, I had a red life clock in my left hand, but it didn’t last long before the heat melted the glue.

Human version of My Little Pony characters.

Scooby and Velma

After a while we found a good spot to just overlook the anthill of people and I just started taking random shots.

The most bizarre thing we saw all weekend, an escalator with no one on it.

This is the Mayor from Nightmare Before Christmas.  The Mayor had two faces that spun around in the movie and this guy caught that in a creative way. He actually used a lamp shade for the mask and would just spin to show one face or the other.  Great job.

After this, it was in the upper 90s, no breeze and a lot of people that the heat was causing to be rather rude at times.  So we went back to our hotel (got Quiznoes on the way), ate and got ready for the aquarium trip.

We were going to have to drive ourselves there instead of taking one of the con shuttle busses for a couple of reasons.  I wasn’t sure how Delta would fit on a bus or survive the trip and the Aquarium had a strict no weapons policy and I was going to take a 3 foot long drill arm.  While not a traditional weapon, still a weapon and with the vague no weapons rule, I didn’t know how they would react to it.  So I wanted to be able to put it back in the car if they said no.  It took a while to get there because of road closures for traffic flow, finding the parking garage ($10 to park there) and then walking all the way around the aquarium to get from the garage to the entrance. Yes you walk the entire perimeter of the aquarium to go from the garage to the entrance and from the aquarium exit back to the garage. Ugh.  Once we got to the line to get in, they were doing bag checks of course, and in front of me was a Viking princess with what had to be an 8 foot spear with a metal tip that was covered with just a piece of leather.  If they let that in, the drill would have no problem. They didn’t look twice at her, the guys eyes did pop out when he saw me carrying the helmet though.  I love that reaction.

When we got in, we were greeted with a scream from Ashley from Irrational Games.  She was blown away by our costumes.  She had to stay at the entrance, where we were causing a stir getting the helmet on and then tons of pictures being taken, so she called over Sarah, who jumped up and down.  Sarah then basically guided us through the aquarium.  She and Melinda talked the whole time, I couldn’t really hear anything.  Sarah guided us to the Irrational Games photographer and then into the aquarium’s tunnel under the tanks.  The photographer wanted some pictures in there.  Perfect spot really, but no one told me about the two way moving floor.  So as I was standing there posing as the photographer instructed, I was nearly doing a split.  This caused some amusement when everyone noticed, and they moved me to the stationary middle section.  I’m really looking forward to seeing the pictures when they are published. 

After that we made it into the main area, where we had some more pictures taken and met several people that I know from various online forums.  That was one of the cool parts. Actually meeting online friends in real life.  We were told that the main picture meet up with everyone and Irrational was going to be in the main observation room at 10.  We made it in there early again, and just hung out.  I was actually starting to feel tired and a little worn down.  When 10:00 arrived, there were people and flash bulbs everywhere.  Thanks to everyone that came and thanks especially for those that took pictures and posted them online allowing me to get copies.

This is in the main observation room.  The room is blue because of the 50 foot long 20 foot high observation window.  It was amazing.

So far this is my favorite shot from the whole thing.  The little girl is dressed as one of the Little Sisters from the game and was just perfect.  Only problem is I didn’t know she was standing beside me until she started reciting a nursery rhyme from the game.  So I’m standing there and I hear this little voice reciting the creepy rhyme and I totally got chills.  Even Irrational’s photographer got creeped out.  I could hear him saying “This is really scary”.  We did good.

These are a couple of other pictures from Friday night of me and Melinda.

After we got back to the car, we managed to find our way back to the hotel.  I was tired and thirsty, so I started drinking a Gator Ade we had brought with us.  It didn’t help. I felt worse after, and just kept feeling worse and worse.  Sometime around 11:30 or midnight, me and my old friend, the porcelain god, reintroduced ourselves to each other.  For the next 13 hours, we were best friends.  Con-crud had struck hard.  I think my system was still weak from having been sick earlier in the week, and I just couldn’t fight off the germs at Dragon*Con. 

We ended up leaving around 3:30 Sunday, two days early.  That totally sucked.  It took until Thursday before I was able to eat without my stomach hurting and the fever didn’t break until Wednesday morning (spiked at 101).

So we only got to attend one panel, but had some amazing pictures taken, just have to find them now.