clap trap "bad hair day" Plush

So I made a claptrap plush for my 9 year old son to bring to PAXeast 2013.  My son has a mohawk and we both love seeing claptrap with his mohawk after "bad hair day". So I found a couple reference pics and made this guy the night before we went.  I think I was more excited about him than my son but oh well.  The wheel actually turns on him.  I wish I planned this ahead and got a sound chip to put in him, but he was last minute so.  Anyways here are a couple pics of him.

Marceline's Axe Guitar - Adventure Time

So I was asked to make Marceline's axe guitar from Adventure Time.  I went ahead and made it so you could play it, I'm pretty sure if I let my brother play it (he being a guitarist) he would have dope slapped me because I'm sure it did not sound great but sound did come out of it when you strummed the strings so I was happy.  Here is a reference picture of Marceline's Axe.

So I had to figure out the length of the neck.  34-36 inches seems to be the norm so I went with 36 because the neck of the guitar looks pretty long in most of the reference picture I found.  So I made the neck out of pine (yes I know pine is not a good choice for guitar necks.)  I had 1 48 inch long piece and one 36 inch long piece it went from 3.5 inches width at the base to 4 inches at the neck.  So I did insert a metal rod into the neck piece.  Basically I routed out a path to put the metal rod in and when I glued it together all was well.  I glued the shorter with 2 inches into the longer one and then it ended 10 inches before the top.  Sorry I don't have pictures of this.  So after it dried I cut out the coffin looking part of the neck where the hardware to tighten the strings is going to go.   I then useds some 1/8 thin hardwood strip for where the frets go.  I then found out a scale marker for a bass guitar and made the lines where the frets are going to go on the neck.  I went ahead and used a file to file the slots that the  frets will go.

Next the body of the guitar.  I made the curves of the axe were the neck and the back piec go out of 1/2 inch thick mdf board.  I cut 4 pieces total and glued 2 pieces together to give me 1 inch thickness.

Sorry I did not take many pictures of the progress of this.  

I went on to cut out 2 pieces of 1/8 inch hardwood plywood with a plastic coating  on one side to make the face of the guitar.  So I glued the back side together with the spacers at the edge.  Once it was dried I  started on the face of the guitar but I went ahead and drilled 2 holes for the knobs and marked where the back piece where the strings go.  After that some gorilla glue  and some clamps and it was one piece.  Last part was the neck of the guitar which I had to do some sanding to make the piece of the neck that as going to attach to the guitar a little bit round so it would make a tight fit.   I glued that and then I drilled a hole in the neck and used a screw to fasten it to the body.  

This picture is with it primered.

So now it was some final sanding and little cosmetic things I wanted to fix and it was final paint and attach hardware to it.

So was the first version I made.  I went ahead and made a fully electric one that my brother tried tuning for me and when he was done he told me not to quit my day job.  I'm currently in the process of finishing up a third version of the guitar that is similar to this one.  When I'm done I'll post pics of it.

Black Rock Shooter TV Version Rock Cannon

The title says it all.

So this is my attempt to make this cannon.  I started with the figma figure and then to get the proper LED placement I got some pictures of the anime.

So with that I decided let's do this thing.  Now I wanted this to be around 4 feet long.  So I started my blueprints with that length in mind.  Problems I found is that the barrel of the gun has 3 different widths to it and I like to use cardboard concrete tubes to use in this construction.  but with that I would go from 8 inches to 10 thenn 12 inch diameter this thing would be huge and would not look right.  So after some digging around I made the front part of the barrel out of 7 inch diameter stove pipe.  I cut it down to 24 inches and then got it set up

Next I added some foam sheets that I had cut out the pattern in.

Now I doubled up some 1 inch hard pink insulation foam and made the front part of the cannon.

Now to make the wider part of the cannon I went back to my old standby cardboard concrete tube.  i added some cardboard to each end and then marked off and cut out each slot.  Then I added a layer of foam sheets with the slats cut out.

Now a test run fit.

Now on to next section more concrete tube a make shift template and fresh exacto blade and here is the result.

Dry fit test.

Now the arms.  So I'm trying to make this as lightweight as possible and I just picked up a handy dandy hot foam cutter so I figured let's try this bad boy out.  here are the 3 arms in rough cut.

So I sanded those bad boys down and added some thin plastic to the sides and top.  unfortunately I have no pictures of that.

So The back piece is made out of double cardboard and craft foam. 

Now for the handle and the insides.  I used a 4 inch pvc pipe for the back part of the handle because whoever designed this didn't think of real world practicality, (crazy an anime that is not grounded in reality)  so where the person holds the gun it needs to be at the tail end and the only way I could get it stable enough was to run a smaller pipe down the center of it and have it attach to the front metal part of the barrel.  So this way when you hold  it from the back it will stay straight and it will be sturdy.  So for the insides I cut 2 round MDF discs that would slide down the gun and fit perfectly into the front part and the back part would be wider since the tail end of the gun is more wide.  I'm so glad I figured that out before construction because I might have lost the rest of my hair on having that fail. Also for the 2 light up parts I drilled a total of 8 holes in the long pvc tube 4 in each section that light up so I could place the led's there.  I used a total of 12 leds 4 for the front 4 for the first light up part and 4 more for the final light up part.  i also had a on/off switch located at the back of the gun and I placed the battery holder near the the grip and out of site.  Phew here are some pics of it.

Ok after that I gave it several coats of primer paint and then I went with a flat black and then a spray of textured black paint before I sealed it with a satin acryllic sealer.  After that I added a thin piece of translucent plastic to the inside of each light up section to help diffuse the light and give it a nice glow instead of individual lights look.  I also crafted a front translucent piece with ridges and a pattern to give it a little better look.

Here is the final product she stands at 50 inches tall and weighs in under 5 lbs.  I'm pretty happy with it.  This one took a couple weeks to build but it did involve a lot of head scratching.

So there it is.  This is a fun project and I think I have made up to 4 of them now.  

Seraphim leaf katana from Kore wa Zonbi Desu ka?

So I'm digging Hulu plus it has a lot more anime on it than crunchyroll,  I'm not a crunchyroll hater still like it but Hulu has my attention right now.  So being really afraid of zombies of course I had to check out the series "Kore wa Zonbi Desu ka?" which translates roughly to is this a zombie?  Fun little series.  I want to make the chainsaw from the main character but I figured I make a little palate cleanser first and make Seraphim's leaf katana.  Seraphim is a vampire ninja and seh can use leaves to make katana's and other ninja weapons.  Here is a picture of the main female cast, Seraphim is the one on the left with the dark blue cape and yellow shirt.

This picture really doesn't do the sword justice so I found a couple more but eventually ended up screen capturing several fight scenes so I could get a better view.  Here are the ones I found on the web.

These are a little better but not great.

So what I did was I used 1/2 inch MDF board and cut two templates of the sword out.  Then I glued them clamped them together and let them dry overnight.  Next day I got my table top sander out with the drum attachment and sanded down the rough spots and curved the edges and added a slight edge to it.  After that I decided to carve in the dark green lines to give it some depth and better detailing.  Tried the dremel first but it just wasn't happening the tip liked to skip on me.  So brought out the old trusty files and grabbed a round one and went to town sanded in the grooves.  After that I started finish sanding with 220 grit sandpaper and went on up to 600 grit before primer paint.  3 coats of primer and it was time to use some emerald green paint to finish it.  After 2 coast of that paint and s rub down with 600 grit sandpaper to take off the shine it was time to paint the grooves.  I used a dark green and handpainted the grooves making sure to stay in the lines and clean up my mistakes.  Once it dried it got 3 coats of matte acrylic sealer cause I did not want it to shine too much.  and here is the final product.  Took around 4 hours to make a template, cut, glue, sand, file, paint and detail paint it.  (this does not include drying time)

Better picture of the grooves and the smoothness!

 Another one not the best quality picture unfortunately maybe I need a photography lesson.

 Better up close view

 Don't worry no animals were harmed in the displaying of this prop.

So the sword measures 40 inches in length and the blade is 1 1/2 inches wide with 1 inch thickness and  weighs a little under 2lbs.  Fun little breather project