Tag Archives: contest

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Friday Night Links

Here is a special Friday night blog post. I couldn’t write it earlier, because I am in tech for one show, starting rehearsals for another, and oh yeah, my baby just came home after 14 months in the hospital. But here are some fun prop things to read and watch:

I don’t know anything about this, but Comikaze Expo 2015 in LA is having a prop making contest. It looks like you may need to be there in person to show off your prop if you’re selected.

Tested has a very cool article on making a Furiosa Cosplay Prosthetic Arm. What makes it extra special is that it was made for a woman who is actually missing her arm.

TOTL Podcast has a quick interview with Evil Ted. If you’ve never seen his work and how-to videos, check them out!

This is from a few months ago, but has a ton of great photographs of vintage soda bottles from throughout the twentieth century.

News

Winners of the Prop Building Guidebook Contest Announced

It is the day you’ve all been waiting for. After two months, the winners of the Prop Building Guidebook Contest have been announced! Head on over to the official announcement page to see them. If you just want a list of the winners, here they are:

Professional Category: 1929 Bicycle – Stop Motion Animation, by Michael Jones.

Student Category: Flintlock Pistol, by Magnus Yule.

Group Category: 19th Century Barbershop Chair for Sweeney Todd, by Rachel Peterson Schmerge and Michael Jones.

Popular Vote: Chainsaw Hand, by Haley Borodine.

This contest had 81 entries from a wide spectrum of prop makers, and it was a challenge coming up with the winners. My criteria for judging was creativity, quality, and presentation. While many of the entries were very strong in one or two of these categories, the winners were equally strong in all three.

I want to thank everyone who entered. It was amazing to see how many prop makers are out there and all the crazy things you’ve built. I also wanted to thank all of you who voted; there were over 900 votes cast to decide which prop was your favorite.

Of course, thanks to Focal Press for creating and running the contest. Thanks to the companies who provided prizes as well: Rosco, Wonderflex World, Design Master, and Beacon Adhesives.

And who knows, maybe I’ll have another contest next year. What do you think?

News

Voting Begins!

Hi, everybody. I start my summer job at the Santa Fe Opera today; I was traveling and settling in this weekend, so I did not have much time to write.

But I did want to take this chance to remind you to enter the Prop Building Guidebook contest. You still have until April 30th to enter. But more importantly, today is the day you can start voting on entries. You get one vote per day. You can vote on your own entry every day until the contest ends, or you can vote on a different entry every day.

Either way, the entry with the most votes when the contest closes will win their own prize of $100 worth of Focal Press books.

So vote early, and vote often!

The Prop Building Guidebook contest

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Good Links for a Good Friday

Tested has another great episode of their talk show where Adam Savage, Will Smith and Norm Chan discuss building an inexpensive toolkit for beginner makers. By “maker”, they mean someone doing small-scale fabrication of wood, various metals and plastics, some fabric and leather, model-making, and a bit of electronics, so really, it’s great advice for beginning prop makers as well. You can either watch a video or listen to a podcast of the show, which runs about 41 minutes long. They have also written down the list of tools they suggest, though it’s a good idea to listen to the show because they talk about how to buy tools and why you should get certain tools as well.

In case you missed it, I came across The Painters Journal, a publication about scenic art that ran from 2003-2010. All 22 issues are available online to read. Scenic art deals with paints, coatings, texture and sometimes even sculpting, so many of the articles are invaluable to props people as well.

Make Magazine has posted ten tips for using a circular saw. They’re all pretty good, though I would add that hearing protection should be worn too, as circ saws are almost always loud little beasts. A dust mask is usually a good idea as well.

I liked this recent article about Nick Ruiz, a theatre carpenter in the San Jose area. It’s simple and probably familiar to a lot of us in the industry, but stories like this are so rarely written.

And just a reminder that you have less than a month to enter the Prop Building Guidebook Contest! Surely you have a photograph of a prop you’ve built, and who doesn’t want a grab-bag of prop making supplies? The entries I’ve received so far look fantastic, so thanks to everyone who has already submitted.

Useful Sites

Some Weekend Links

Just a reminder to enter the Prop Building Guidebook contest if you haven’t already. You have until April 30th to send in a photo or video of a prop you’ve made; there are already dozens of really great entries.

NYC Past has gigantic black and white photographs of New York City throughout history, from the early twentieth century through the 1990s.

When you have the time, take a listen to this interview of Christina Haberkern, a film prop maker. She mainly does graphics and illustration for ISS, and has made props for films such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Argo, Inception, and J. Edgar. It’s a much more in-depth, down-to-earth and personal glimpse into the life of a working prop maker than most of those behind-the-scenes “aren’t props fun and crazy” fluff pieces that are often produced.

Here’s a fun idea: ray gun parts you can mix and match to make your own ray gun. The Propnomicon website has pictures and details.

Finally, as a nice break before the weekend, check out this video where famed prop maker Dragon Dronet (Star Trek shows and films, Babylon 5, Eraser, and many more) is challenged to recreate a prop gun from District 9 in only 3 days. It’s a fairly quirky film that ventures into the surreal, but it does a great job showing Dragon’s process, and the result is a really cool prop.