Claptrap Figurine Part 1 - Initial Carving

After stumbling upon Volpin Props, I decided to make a wooden figurine of the iconic Borderlands character, CL4P-TP (for those not in the know, Claptrap). I absolutely loved the original game and sank at least 60 hours into my first character, and seeing this character figurine in my mind as I imagined all of this was great.

So, I did a little digging around for a fairly recent issue of Game Informer (specifically issue 207) that I remember having an interview with Gearbox Software's own Lorin Wood, creator of our star character. It had his original sketch, some conceptualizations, and the full high-resolution 3D model. I used that model to come up with the 10-minute design sheet I always start a build with.

I knew I wanted to make the figurine at least 6-8 inches tall without the base and arms, so I hit up the local Utrecht art supply store and got a couple of 4 x 2 x 12 inch architectural basswood blocks. I glued them together with some generic wood glue and clamped them together to cure for 12 hours (overnight).

I do apologize for the garbage quality images, but my camera is being temperamental and my iPod had to do in a pinch. The finished glued block is 4 x 4 x 12 inches, the size I wanted. I do realize that I could have just ordered a block of basswood that large online, but it would have been only slightly cheaper.

After a bit of deliberation of how I wanted the base to look, to sketched the basic front and side profiles onto the wood.

Then I grabbed my basic wood saw and small hobby hacksaw to cut out the basic rectangular shape of Claptrap and drew the outline with a marker.

I'm no advanced wood carver or anything, but I think the base has been coming along nicely. My plan is to have Claptrap standing on a bed of rocks or cracked desert earth. I've also started to hack into the side to make the necessary angle while finding the best technique to make the sides go by faster.

Just a close-up of later on in the side panel. I've found a pretty efficient technique for it, but it still takes quite a while to make any progress without proper carving tools (I'm using an x-acto knife with a curved blade to not crush the grain in the wood).

Benihime Sword Prop

Back in 2007, my friend came to me with a ticket for Phoenix Comic-con saying his sister couldn't make it. I gladly accepted but it turns out the con was in a day. That's not exactly the kind of news you want to hear when you are a cosplayer.

Luckily, I had some leftover wood from another build and decided to put together a Kisuke Urahara costume with some older martial arts gear I had lying around and a store bought Urahara hat. Being pressed for time, I didn't really have any time to make this as nice as I wanted or take any pictures of production.

I started the build by drawing the sword's outline onto 1/2 inch MDF I had in the garage, and drawing the hilt on 1/4 inch MDF. I cut these out with a jigsaw, and made a duplicate of the hilt. Using wood glue, I sandwiched the 1/2 inch MDF between the two hilt pieces and clamped it to dry. After it dried, a little power sanding was used to dull the edges and round the grip enough so it was comfortable to hold.

After the sword was built, I cut the designs and hilt flourishes out of craft foam and glued them in place. When that was dry two coats of black gesso was painted on. In any other case, I might have added another coat of black paint, but the gesso turned out just fine. I masked off the hilt and blade to paint the silver and gold touches on the sword.

The rest of the details were pretty simple as well, especially in a pinch like this. The tassel was a red curtain tassel I found at a craft store attached with a gold eye screw. The loop at the top of the grip was made of braided red needlepoint thread, and the gold triangle chain was made by folding paper footballs and painting them gold. They are attached with fishing line under the red loop.

Playstation 3 Joysticks

I built these fight sticks when I learned that Super Street Fighter 4 would be released in March of last year. They are both 1 1/4 inch poplar frames with an inlaid 1/4 inch MDF panel for the controls so the finished product would be light. I drilled holes in the panel for the joystick and a six-button configuration based on the layouts I found at Slagcoin. I cut out the shape for the joystick with a Dremel tool.

Since I was using a six-button configuration, I needed a place for the other five buttons and decided to put them out of the way on the top of the frame facing the screen.

Some of the wiring work. At this point in the build for this stick, I was impatient and forgot to drill the holes for the extra buttons in the top. Good thing I used zip ties and quick disconnect terminals for all the wiring. The second stick build went much more smoothly. The wiring was made simple due to the fact that the Playstation 3 Sixaxis controller uses tech similar to a standard PC keyboard, with the clear plastic contact sheet. The go-to place for American and Japanese arcade parts in the US is, hands down, Lizard Lick. I got both sets of Sanwa and Seimitsu parts from them, as well as a couple of octagonal gates for the joysticks (because I like them better than square gates).

Lizard Lick also supplies the heart of the whole project, the Axisdaptor, which is a pre-fabricated chip to wire the components to a ribbon cable that plugs into the controller's circuit board. Once the wiring was complete, I fed a 6 ft USB cable from the controller through a notch cut with my Dremel and hot glued the connector to the board and the wire to the notch with a healthy dose of hot glue. The last step was to secure another panel of Lexan to the bottom so the circuitry was visible (a design choice really).

I made some art in Photoshop CS and printed it at my local AlphaGraphics (back in my Arizona days), as well as had them laminate it to protect it. The art was then sandwiched between the MDF panel and a Lexan acrylic panel of the same size. I then cut the holes with a curved hobby knife and installed all the arcade components.

A pretty simple Vash the Stampede Photoshop job, with an admittedly not so good rendering.  I went with a off white cloth texture for the background with bright red components for this one.

The Sonic stick turned out better than I thought it would. I did some quick sketches of Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, and (of course) Vector the Crocodile in Photoshop and replaced the black color of the sketch with their respective colors and putting in blue, yellow, and red components to match Light, Medium, and Fierce attacks.