Category Archives: Useful Sites

Useful Sites

Friday Friday Prop Prop Prop

“Don’t Touch That!” The Trials & Tribulations Of A Props Designer – Here’s a fun little piece from TheatreNerds.com to share with your friends and family who might not totally understand what you do for a living.

How to Paint Foam Props to Look Rusty – Punished Props has a great video showing how to make flexible foam sheets (EVA, XLPE, craft foam, etc.) look all rusty.

Shortcuts to Good Design – Christopher Schwartz shows how he uses scrap wood and wire to quickly mock up a furniture design. He can check the proportions and scale from all angles before building anything too complicated.

Build Props and Costume Armor with Paper, Pepakura, and Bondo - Shawn Thorsson demonstrates how you can turn a digital model into a file to print out, cut, fold, and assemble into a three-dimensional prop. You can then stiffen it with polyester resin and Bondo.

Useful Sites

Everybody’s Propping for the Weekend

Star Trek just celebrated its 50th anniversary. Make Magazine has rounded up seven fun Star Trek–themed projects. Some are goofy (“spocks” are socks with Spock on them), while others are quite ambitious (an Enterprise Bridge playset for Star Trek action figures).

2StoryProps has started work on a replica of the spacesuit used in The Martian, and his first post is on recreating the astronaut’s helmet. The whole thing is built from scratch and is pretty cool.

Tane Williams is an illustrator who worked on the 2013 remake of Evil Dead. He has posted 15 illustrations from the Necronomicon used in that film over on his blog. Careful! Grossness ahead!

It’s not a tasty treat; Popular Woodworking shows us how “sandwich construction” can help make thick wooden panels using multiple layers of thinner plywood. I do this a lot when building prop furniture, and I’m sure others do as well, but I’ve never seen a write-up with illustrations showing the process.

Make Magazine tells us everything we need to know about lube. Ever wonder whether to grab oil, grease, or WD-40? This article breaks down all the different types of lubricants and describes when to use each one and when not to use each one.

Useful Sites

Friday Links in September

Detached eyes, dead horses, and giant disco balls: The weird world of prop builder Seán McArdle – Seán tells City Pages how he made a horse fall over on cue and glued seashells to half a Volkswagen.

Prime and Smooth Props and Costumes with FlexBond – Rosco looks at a number of cosplayers using FlexBond to coat pieces constructed from Worbla.

Corporeal Intangibility – The Alley Theatre made custom acrylic furniture and props for their production of The Nether, including a gramophone and a rocking horse. This was clearly an interesting project.

Working with EVA Foam for Costume Construction – Make Magazine has rounded up a number of videos and tutorials dealing with using EVA foam (or, more precisely, XLPE foam) to build armor and prop pieces.

Useful Sites

First Links of September

I love that Oregon Live has put together a list of 10 Must-See Props at the 2016 Oregon Shakespeare Festival. From wedding cakes to bears, you can learn how the OSF prop shop made it all happen.

Kamui Cosplay has a great video tutorial on adding animated LEDs to your prop. Making your LEDs pulse and chase really bumps up the wow-factor compared to static on/off lights.

Did You Know The Props On ‘Melrose Place’ Were Covert Works Of Art With Coded Meanings? I don’t know what else to say about this article other than repeating the title. Apparently an art exhibition showcasing these works of conceptual art is now running in NYC.

Did you know that new overtime rules for workers in the US are going into effect in December? American Theatre tackles how this may affect theatres, particularly non-profits. All of us should be aware of the rules and regulations that govern our wages, particularly since theatre and small films are so rife with infractions. A combination of ignorance, lack of oversight, and the belief that we should “suffer for our art” keeps it from improving. My worry is that these new overtime rules will either be ignored or hand-waved away like so many other labor regulations that some theatres do not follow.

Useful Sites

Props for the Weekend

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Center Theatre Group highlights their prop master, Andrew Thiels, in one of their latest blog posts. He talks about his favorite props from his 14-year career and what his job entails.

Shreveport has their very own movie prop maker with Jim Hayes, owner of LA House of Props. He has built props for films such as True Blood, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Armageddon, and so many more. It’s worth fighting the popup ads to view the massive photo gallery of his work.

With the Harry Potter movies turning 15 this year, the Evening Standard sits down with the films’ prop maker, Pierre Bohanna. He talks about how the designs of all the fictional objects evolved from the pages of the book to the screen.

Finally, Bloomberg News takes us on a video tour of Creature Technology, the Australian animatronic company building life-size moving dinosaurs for live performance. There’s nothing really to say here, except “can I get a job there?” and “can you move your shop to Burlington, North Carolina?”.