Giant aliens bursting out of walls.

So, things have once again gone all quiet. This is mainly due to a-levels, and then the summer. I'm soon to run off to uni down in London so things may once again go a bit quiet, but hoping to keep up with some sketching/keep ideas floating around.

I am however working on a project to be finished before uni starts. And that is an alien head, bursting out of a wall in the style of Giger's alien.

So, updates as the build progresses can be found on the Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/WilliamJohnProps

However, here's a little teaser of the sketch it'll be based on.

A Brief Musical Interlude

As some of you might have noticed, things have been a bit quiet round these parts recently. That’s due to the pretty huge workload that studying German comes with and that I’ve been working a show for the last God knows how long. We’ve been working up to it since before Christmas and it’s finally done.

The Sound of Music is now officially over, and I’ve loathed every second of it. The musical that is, don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Sweeny Todd fan, but Sound of Music just does not float my boat musically. However the cast, crew and everyone involved have been no less than bloody marvelous, this has genuinely been the finest couple of months, despite the soundtrack.

And the production was no less, than superb. 

So, since I’ve got relatively little to show in terms of serious prop work and huge stuff, I thought I’d give a run down of what we’ve been working on at the costume department for SoM. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff had to be hired due to time constraints, so not nearly enough making for my liking, however we found ourselves making a lot of Nazi gear oddly enough, because it’s not exactly easy or cheap to come by.

Coats in production.

The director had the idea of making the show a bit more audience oriented, so it was decided that the theatre that the audience was in would be the theatre for the Salzburg festival. Due to Austria being occupied at the time, we had soldiers patrolling at the interval and as the audience were walking around.

For that, we converted some Russian greatcoats and made armbands to go with them. Red cotton was used to make the actual band, and felt for the swastika, as we could cut and glue it pretty easily, the main theme of these costumes was budget and time; making over twenty of the buggers was pretty time consuming.

Zellers Costume

Zellers costume was a bit of a last minute affair. We were told, about a day before the actual show night that he needed a leather coat instead of the greatcoat we'd had him in, so we had to run to Manchester in the break between dress rehearsals and pick up a leather coat... with a nice fur collar. After ripping that apart and sewing the lining back onto the leather, it was ready to go.

The Banners and Uncle Max.

The ending scene included soldiers searching the audience with torches for the Von Trapps, and for the festival scene we had two large banners that fell during the scene and had to be winched up afterwards. The flags were made from cotton entirely; the swastikas glued onto the fabric and eyelets punched into their length. We ran some cord up the eyelets to actually enable them to be dropped and then pulled up again, in essence, venetian blinds. 

For the running away scene, we had to make some travelling cloaks for the children. They were pretty simple to whip up, using pleather we cut large circles with a hole for the head and sewed a clasp to each cloaks, flowery for the girls and knotted navy themed for the boys with a tiny little one for Gretl, the youngest.

The Captain's Jacket

The Captain’s navy jacket also had some serious alteration work done to it by Sophie, who was working the prop table for the production. She did some fantastic work, altering it to include brocade up the sleeves and made some very nice epaulets from the velvet left over from the curtains.

We also had to make some curtains for the evening scene earlier in the play, they were pretty easy to make, just stitching velvet to match the military theme of the house either side of the iconic curtain fabric.

The Wedding Dress

Final Curtain Call

Wedding Procession

The Von Trapp Children

Uncle Max, The Captain and Elsa.

The Costume Room

In addition to all this stuff, there was the usual altering of a few costumes and fixing some costumes when they broke on the night. I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone involved, particularly wardrobe; Alex and Ariana for doing an absolutely stellar job on the night and with making the flags and everything else!

Thanks also go to Bell Costumes for providing a stunning wedding dress amongst other costumes, to PADOS for the loan of some tailcoats and a very nice tweed suit for the Captain and to St Monica’s High School for the loan of the curtain costumes.

I’m also working on RENT at the moment, so expect a write up for that coming soon, and also some pictures of some smaller things I’ve been working on in the meantime, until then, cheers for reading and auf Wiedersehen!

*I’d like to add a wee note to this, just to clarify, I, nor anyone involved in the production endorses Nazism in any way, we’ve made these simply for the show and they hold no sentiment for us in any way. 

Fallout Caps

So, post apocalyptic money.

These are some badges I made a while back as a mini-project with some leftover stuff I had lying about. This is just a quick post up of the pictures of the ones I'd already made (Don't have them anymore, various people do or don't have them now, depending on how cruelly they've been treated)

I'll be making a 'how to' guide in the next week or so and putting it up so you guys can make some delicious Fallout badges if you so desire. They're pretty simple to make, but if you spend a bit of time on them they can look pretty tasty, so it'd be great to see what you guys come up with!

Until then, here's some I made earlier, Blue Peter style.

Cheers for reading, if you're interested in slightly more frequent build updates, full picture gallery and some funky extra sketches and musings of a madman, give the Facebook group a like, or follow me on Twitter. 

William John Props Facebook Group

William John Twitter

Knives, Knaves and Knackering

I'd hoped to have some pictures of the goggles mid-progress by now, but my knife blades seem to have all decided to go blunt on me, or snap. Hoping to get some more at the weekend but trying to cut the plastic this thick with blunt knives is just ruining the shape.... and very nearly my fingers.

This is one of the woes of making props. The sheer amount of equipment that I have to get and replace on a pretty regular basis. There really is truth in buying good tools saves you money, my leather punch has lasted me years because I splashed out a little, but knife blades aren't something that seem to last long it seems.

Not a day goes by I don't wish I had a lathe, the things I could make I think. Then I'm reminded they cost literally an arm and a leg and I have to carve the damn thing by hand again, cursing my lack of powertools as I work.

Despite the lack of tools, I've been developing the sketches for an 'add-on' to the sketch I posted up before, it completes the picture a little, anyone guessed what it is yet?

Oh, and I'm hoping to make it big, pretty damned big indeed.

The Near and not so Near Future

So, after Asylum I've had a few ideas floating about and I had the time today to put one of them down on paper. I'm hoping to have this made for next year along with some other stuff, but I wont be saying too much about it just yet, I'll let you guys guess as to what it's supposed to be.

In other news, I've also got the first picture of a project that's been in the works for a while due to time issues (Being bloody busy) but now I've done a mockup and worked out how I'm going to make it. It's going to be a pair of goggles the character Rita Mordio wears and I'm hoping to have these finished fairly soon, going shopping for the materials tomorrow actually.

Should be some updates on the goggles coming soon and some more sketches from Asylum if I can find time to get them done!

Asylum 2012

So, now back in Manchester after the madness that was Asylum 2012 (Pictures down below). It's been the first time that I've been to the giant Steampunk weekender over in Lincoln and we've had one hell of a time! The Manchester group Cottonopolis Coglective were there in force which was fantastic to see and the parade of banners and military parades had some really nice stuff on show, we even got a flag for it and everything!

Mostly though, the weekend has given me some food for thought in terms of prop making and inspiration for some new ideas. There was some absolutely great stuff on show, particularly in the backpack department and leatherwork. After seeing so much simply awesome stuff on display I've got quite a few ideas for what I'd like to do next year, sketches of which are more than likely to get posted up on here in the next year or so as I frantically try and get everything I've said I would, made for Asylum 2013.

One game I was playing the whole weekend was 'is it real brass or not'. It's interesting to look at how people have disguised plastics and foams as metals and I've come to the conclusion that the only avenue to go down when faking metal is to make it weathered as hell. I just can't seem to think of a way to recreate the shine on new metals (that I saw on so many guns made of real brass) with plastics!

If anyone can find a way to make realistic looking shiny metal from plastic then that'd be a godsend, but I'll just have to try some experimenting and see what I can come up with, in the meantime I'll stick to my normally, extremely weathered work, which seems to have become somewhat of a favourite of mine, as nothing grates me more than really, really shiny rocketpacks, the things are supposed to shoot fire, which in my experience, tends to make something a bit mucky.

That sounds really bad but I just really hate shiny brass at times, aside from my slightly worrying personal gripes, here are some pictures of the weekend and the Cottonopolis Coglective to give you a taste of some of the stuff on show.

That last picture is our jolly lot in the parade, but as you can see, the costumes on display are absolutely phenomenal, I was particularly impressed by the leatherwork in the first picture and the steampunk DC was simply inspired.

If ever you're in need for inspiration, best place to look is at what other people have made, because some of it is bloody brilliant.

Here's a wee link to the Cottonopolis page on FB, in case you're interested in steampunk in the Manchester area, and also the link to my new FB page where I'll be uploading pictures of my portfolio and some other bits and bobs.

Finally, I'd like to say a massive, huge thank you to everyone who made the weekend one to remember, I'm looking forward to next year more than I can describe and a smashing job has been done all round!

http://www.facebook.com/groups/CottonopolisCoglective/
http://www.facebook.com/WilliamJohnProps

Enjoy!

Boba Fett Jetpack - Quinary Phase

I apologise profusely for the lack of posting in recent weeks, the simple truth is there hasn't been anything to post about as I've been on a hiatus in that time, generally getting about and doing other stuff. However, the summer is near over and I'm back to old tricks and have a couple of projects on the horizon.

However, I feel that it is slightly more important to finish off the last one! I actually finished the jetpack a while back, a week or so after the previous post but never got a chance to get some pictures of the finished job. Leon has kindly sent two pictures my way from his show that I can share on here to give you a glimpse of what the 'pack looks like finished.

Now, those aren't all I'm going to leave you with. I'll be taking the jetpack in soon hopefully to get some repair work done on it (The strap system needs a bit of fiddling with) and general strengthening to cope with the heavy use on stage.

When it comes in I'll get some proper full shots of the jetpack and that should hopefully satisfy some of you who've been asking after some photos of the finished article. 

Until next time, when I'll probably be putting up my first post for a pair of 'Rita Mordio Goggles' followed by a full and final update of the jetpack in the near future, have a good one  and cheers for reading!