Category Archives: Resources

Online and offline resources to help you in all aspects of propping a show.

Cosplay building tutorials

I’ve mentioned various communities online, such as the ones centered around making movie prop replicas or building Halloween prop displays, where you can find a plethora of prop-building tips and techniques. Cosplay is another such community.

Three Cosplayers
Three Cosplayers

Cosplay means dressing up and role-playing as fictional characters. It’s most popular in Japan, with cosplayers dressing as anime characters. However, it is also present throughout the world and involves characters from science-fiction, fantasy, and history as well. It can be extended to Renaissance Faire participants, or even Civil War reenacters.

As such, websites focused on these communities have a plethora of information on making DIY armor, swords, and other weapons.

Here is a collection of props and armor tutorials from one such forum. There are tutorials on working in fiberglass, polystyrene, foam, and vinyl.

Cosplay.com has another thread collecting various prop and costume tutorials on working with certain materials or building specific items.

The Prop Blog, by Amethyst Angel, showcases her work, tutorials, news, and information. It’s also a huge gateway to a number of similar cosplay sites and showcases around the internet.

Studio Creations has what they call the “definitive how to costume and prop building” guide. They have guides to vacuumforming, painting and distressing, as well as a basic primer on prop building.

Movie Prop Replicas

As I’ve mentioned a few websites dealing with film props, I thought I’d point out some communities based around replicating famous props from films. These are great resources for a lot of tutorials, such as vacuforming, casting, and working with fiberglas. They also focus on DIY and inexpensive solutions, so any prop shop can benefit from diving through the wealth of material they have.

The Replica Prop Forum – This is one of the cornerstones of the community, with members interested in props for a wide range of films. It also has discussions about costumes and scale modeling. Since it is a forum, it can take some time to navigate and search around, but it’s worth it.

TK560 – This site has tutorials and guides to building a number of props from Star Wars, Star Trek, and a number of other sci-fi films.

TK409 – Another site with tutorials for making do-it-yourself Star Wars props.

The previous two sites are part of the 501st legion, the “world’s definitive Imperial costuming organization.” It is an organization of over six thousand people who dress like members of the Empire in Star Wars. All of these sites have a plethora of links to other DIY prop and costuming resources throughout the internet.

The Magnoli Collection of Prop Replicas – Indy Magnoli’s collection of prop replicas. Most are based around the Indiana Jones’ movies, but some other films are represented as well. There are a good amount of paper props as well, with descriptions of how they were made.

That’s it for now. Let me know if there are any other sites you find interesting. You can also point out any other communities or groups which would have useful information for prop people.

Control Booth Collaborative Articles

I’ve been lurking around ControlBooth for awhile now. Though it’s mostly geared toward the lighting and sound kind of theatre technician, you can find some useful information for scenery or even props.

I just discovered the site has a whole section called “Collaborative Articles“. This is a collection of articles written, surprise, collaboratively. It’s organized alphabetically, and there is some useful information there.