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Friday Links

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This video is the coolest thing I’ve seen all week: Legacy Effects builds the Apatosaurus from Jurassic World. The film required a highly detailed animatronic head and neck of this dinosaur for a key scene. The video goes into great detail of how it was done. Check out the massive mixers they have running all at once for their foam rubber, not to mention the giant injectors they use to fill their molds. It’s an amazing inside look at the work they do.

Marty Marfin had an interesting challenge: how to mold and cast a spherical shape with a hollow interior. Find out how he did it in this comprehensive tutorial.

Over at Instructables, WardWorks has a fun guide to building a ghost trap from Ghostbusters. I’ve kind of always wanted one of these since I was a kid.

Finally, check out this plethora of images from the construction of a model of the Galileo Shuttlecraft from the original Star Trek television show. They take you from the blueprints all the way through the final painted piece.

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Friday Link-o-Rama

My shows have all opened for the season, but plenty of other people are still doing cool props stuff around the Internet. Let’s check them out:

Tested has teamed up with Punished Props and Smooth-On to document the construction of a replica alien assault rifle from the film District 9. Part 1 is up now, showing how Bill drew out the design and cut all the layers from MDF and styrene.

The most incredible parts of Carnegie Hall are offstage. As a theatre person, I’m more interested in the backstage and behind-the-scenes parts anyway, but Carnegie Hall has some especially interesting and historical details going on under the hood. Atlas Obscura takes us on an illuminating tour deep into the depths of this famous performance hall.

Dug North continues his 16-part series of automata tips with this article on cams and cam followers. A cam can give some pretty intricate movement to a prop just from a single spinning shaft.

We’re going back to Tested with this great article on creating the practical creatures from Gremlins. Videos and photographs show how Chris Walas and Joe Dante made dozens of ground-breaking animatronic puppets on a shoestring budget to bring the story to life.

Finally, Popular Woodworking tests out some methods for removing rust from steel using only lemon juice and vinegar. It’s a nice little technique to keep your tools in tip top shape, or when you need to spruce up that antique you just bought for a show.

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Friday’s Reading List

How did they build all those vehicles in Mad Max: Fury Road? Credits has an article on the whole devilish process. They talk with production designer Colin Gibson and show off some of the CAD drawings they used to weld two Cadillacs together and build custom suspension and frames, among other things.

What’s it like to audition for a Jim Henson puppet workshop? Mary Robinette Kowal participated in one and shared her experience. She made it to round 2; we’ll see in a few weeks how she does in the next part.

You may have run across the cheap version of silicone mold-making, where you mix corn starch with hardware store silicone caulk. Make Your Mark has a quick little video showing how it’s done. Whether or not you already know about this technique, this is a great tutorial for it.

Frank Ippolito and Tested show us how to make a realistic horror skull prop. This half-hour video goes in-depth through all the steps and really digs deep into a number of techniques. The painting portion is especially helpful.

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Weekend Prop-pourri

Bondo. You either love it or hate it. Or love to hate it. If you do work with it, Make has some tips on getting the best results with it.

Mental Floss has put together a list of 10 of history’s most terrifying swords. The Urumi seems especially frightening. It would be awesome to see some stage combat done with these weapons rather than just the standard Western rapier dueling.

Tony Zhou has a new episode of Every Frame a Painting called “In Praise of Chairs“. He looks at the importance of the choice of chairs in production design for various films. Of course, we already know that, especially if you’ve ever worked on a show where none of the chairs you found were “exactly right”.

I like this ultimate guide to analog control panels in sci-fi movies. Hopes&Fears looks at the computers and displays from movies such as Star Wars, Blade Runner and Predator, and goes into details from the productions of these films to illuminate how they were made and why they ended up looking the way they do.

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Last Links of May

Vulture has a nice piece on the unglamorous, punishing hours of working on a Hollywood set. Below-the-line workers in film work longer hours than soldiers in Afghanistan. And it’s dangerous to do so. On the flip side, a film shoot has an end date, and if you’re a prop builder, you’re probably not on set.

If that previous article does not turn you off, Frank Ippolito has some advice on how to get started in the effects business. Though he’s talking about practical and makeup effects, the props business has many similarities, and there are some people who work in both worlds.

Tandy Leather has come out with their own thermoplastic, similar to Wonderflex and Worbla. Check out their introductory video on working with TerraFlex Sheets.

Wired has an epic oral history on Industrial Light and Magic, which just celebrated its 40th year in business. It’s interesting to note that the company which pioneered the use of computer effects in the nineties is the same one currently pushing the envelope of practical effects.

If you like the photos in the previous article, check out the accompanying gallery of the awesome props inside ILM’s vault.