Orc Horn and Other LARP Stuff

These past two weeks I have been exhausting myself (always an interesting experience) by making a bunch of stuff for an upcoming local LARP event. In other words, lots of people dressed up as orcs, elves, etc, running through the woods. Among the things I built was this orc horn, something I hadn't done before. The people arranging the event couldn't find a big imposing-looking horn, so I volunteered to build one.

My idea for the horn-construct was a traditional one, as far as prop-making is concerned. I built up a basic smooth shape using Chavant clay, and decided to cover it with paper and glue papier maché style.

However, I opted to use latex instead, since time was suddenly of the essence, and latex would set up faster that the wallpaper glue traditionally used for this kind of work.

I tore up small bits of newspapers and fastened them to the clay horn by painting the latex over the paper with a sponge. When the first layer was finished..

..I added another using tinted latex, so I could see if I missed any spots.

 When these layers had set up I cut a slit all the way down the latex/paper skin with a scalpel, and simply peeled it off like a banana skin. Liquid latex was used to seal the split.

Of course, the horn as it was so far was far too soft, so I reinforced it by pouring SmoothCast 325 into the horn, and slather it around by turning the horn. The plastic was tinted a dark brown to cover up the newspaper printing on the paper. I did this two times to add sufficient support.

The next trick was to add exterior support too, and a smooth bone-like surface. For this I used another type of plastic called Epsilon Pro, which is mixed up and painted onto a soft surface to add a hard shell around it. Two layers of Epsilon Pro created a very smooth and durable surface for the horn.

As I had also tinted the Epsilon plastic a dark brown, the resulting look was quite nice, I'd say.

But to make it an Orc horn we also need to adorn the horn with some crude metalwork. I built up a clay shape around the opening of the horn using Monster Clay soft, which is very quick to work with, and fine if you don't need very complex details in your sculpture.

The white surface you see here is the bottom of a paper plate, and it's there for a good reason.

 Onto the paper plate surface I poured DragonSkin Pro silicone to create a base for the silicone mold that would go around the sculpture.

One truly indispensable tool in my workshop is my little turntable, on which I built up a Monster Clay base for the mold making process.

The horn sculpture was turned upside down and placed onto the clay base, and clay walls were built up around the sculpture to contain more silicone that was poured around the horn.

The final layer of silicone was thickened with a special chemical agent and smeared on like butter. This was done to quickly build up a thickness of the silicone. Trying to save that ever away-slipping time again..

A middle section was created in pretty much the same way, using clay containment walls and DragonSkin silicone.

Finally, the mouth piece was sculpted and a small wooden button added at the very top to create the desired look.

This time, again to save time, I simply used a roll of soft carton to create a containment wall for the silicone.

All these sculpted bits were cast in SmoothCast 325, using silicone molds that had been dusted down with aluminum powder. This powder stuck to the darkly tinted plastic, and created a dull metal surface that would never rub off.

The final horn was sandpapered for a more organic, dull look, and the "metal" bits were weathered using black airbrush colors. And how does this magnificent instrument sound? Well, when I blow in it, it either sound like a distant breeze or a smattering fart. I hope the Orc who'll be wearing this can make more noise with it. You can possibly make out that two metal rings have been added to the top and middle sections. These are points where a leather strap will be added.

I also cast 16 latex Elf ears, and 11 Orc and goblin latex masks, some of which are shown below. 

It's quite a lot of work hauling big plaster molds around, and I don't plan on participating in any such project again. I started making LARP masks and props way back at the start of the 2000's. A big LARP boom was occurring in Sweden then, and although this hobby isn't practiced by as many anymore, there are still ambitious fantasy role playing events popping up in the Swedish woods around this time of the year. 

Goblin Wood Behind the Scenes (of a sort).

Some more YouTube stuff. These two little documentaries were made for the DVD, so Angelica could show them to her class. They are made to be watched by a 10 year old audience and therefore very simple. But I hope you'll find something in them to enjoy anyway.

Goblin Wood Film Up!

After finishing the DVDs for the folks involved in the film I posted it on YouTube (HERE). Still NOT happy with how YouTube compresses videos. The image quality when using HQ is fine, but the flow of the video appears disrupted and choppy. I can't have both good image and movement, apparently, though some YouTubers appear to have solved that problem. However, using their exact settings for compression doesn't solve mine. The web is weird.

Goblin Wood Trailer

I made this little trailer last night for my friends who helped me make this film. As of yet, they've seen naught from the post-production except stills. Hopefully I'll get the finished film up pretty soon. Still have some intricate soundwork to do.

I'm pretty disappointed with how my vids turn out on YouTube. They're often blurry and "jumpy". My animation often looks like crap, which bothers me more than anything else. I'll seek counsel with one of my mates, who's a lot more successful with his uploads. So the linked-in version you can see here is quite shitty. Go to the trailer on YouTube instead and see if you have the "HQ" button in the lower right corner of the YouTube viewscreen. Click that and the film will at least look decent.

Goblin Wood Firefly Puppet

I had high hopes to finish the film Goblin Wood (see earlier posts), shot this past summer, before the end of 2007. I realize now that that was incredibly optimistic (as always), so let's say instead that it'll be finished during the spring of 2008.

In this film the elfin heroine fights a firebreathing, flying dragon-insect-something -a "dragon fly", quite simply. Previously I have built all my animation puppets using latex, sometimes reinforced with cotton to achieve a leathery, shell-like feel to certain parts of a puppet's anatomy. I've used this particular technique for insect-like or crustacean creatures. For the dragon fly I decided to cast the hard parts of its body in plastic and cover the joints with latex.

This monster was sort of inspired by the works of Swedish horror/fairy tale artist Hans Arnold. Check out his web page and you'll see what I mean.

The head of the dragon fly was sculpted in Chavant and a mold in Dragon Skin Q silicone rubber was created for it. The head was cast in SmoothCast 325 plastic. Spikes were added to the back of the head using Apoxie sculpt and a flexible lower jaw was built up with wool string and latex over aluminum wire.

The body was done the same way as the head, with holes drilled out for attaching the legs and the wings. The tail was created by wrapping yarn around aluminum wire and adding cast patches of latex skin from existing skin molds over that. The horns were also cast in latex from different old "monster" plaster molds. Recycle if you can; it saves both time and money!

The wings were a bit of a bother to make. I had to sculpt them as thin as I possibly could and create a silicone mold for them. I say "them" but of course I mean "it". I only sculpted one wing and cast four duplicates in plastic.

The legs were easier to do (I think I did all six in about twenty minutes) and created the way I do all puppet armatures -braiding aluminum wire attaching one end to a power drill and holding the other with pliers. The stiff parts of each leg was built up with Friendly Plastic. Normally this construction would then be covered by foam rubber, latex and paint.

Here are the finished legs and wings attached to the body. I really should do something about the floor in my workshop!

A view of the belly.

A black base coat has been added to the puppet. But how come it's got no head?

Because in the film the monster blows its own head off at the end. I attached a short screw to the end of the puppet's neck, so I could screw its head on and off the body (the creature being headless after the explosion). The eyes are bought from a taxidermist's supply house.

The finished puppet was painted with acrylic airbrush paints. The joints for the wings and the legs were covered with sewing string and tinted latex.

For animation the puppet was mounted on a flexible support rod. It was simply two thick pieces of aluminum wire braided together and stuck to a block of wood. The wire was covered with thick, soft string painted blue. Thus the support rod could be keyed out with the background.

Two stills from the film showing the fire fly on the prowl in the woods where I shot most of this project. Atmospheric filters and motion blur have also been added. In the last photo the heroine has shot a pine cone-tipped arrow into the snout of the monster, which acts practically like a flame thrower, and jamming it. So I guess you can figure out what happens next. KA-BOOM!

Props and costume for "Slayers of Evil".

When my LARP friend Martin and I decided to produce our own little fantasy epic, we immediately settled on having it look like it jumped out of a 1970's Dungeons & Dragons rule book. Which meant that the wizard should have a pointy hat, the elf must wear Robin Hood tights and the barbarian princess must have a very skimpy outfit.
All of this also meant another call to my invaluable dress-making friend Liz Mattsson, who's provided clothes for both actors and puppets in a number of my films. Nothing is impossible for her to make and if she doesn't know how to make it straight away, she'll figure it out. There is a great freedom, and I have to say relief, not having to rely on what you might find in a theatre wardrobe. Sometimes you strike gold there, but more often you get something that is kind of, sort of what you have in mind. It is a hundred times better to be able to design the entire look of a character from scratch and then be able to stick to it. It's an added cost of buying material for the costumes, but it's worth it.



For our wizard, Aronaxx (played by Rolf Berg) I bought bright red cloth and painted hundreds of astrological and alchemical symbols over it with gold textile paint. It took two full days to do that. Then Liz pieced it all together in the form of a typical wizard's robe. Easy to put on and get out of, and Rolf could even go and have a wee-wee while wearing it.





The wizard's pointy had was made out of a kind of soft, but sturdy cardboard with glue on one side of it. You remove a protective paper covering from the glue side and press the cardboard down on a piece of cloth. In this case I painted on the symbols after I had attached the cloth and assempled the cone.

This photo is taken at the end of the last day of shooting for Rolf, and as you can see he sweated quite a bit!















The wizard's staff was a very simple construction. The staff itself was a wooden rod used for hanging curtains and the top was a styrofoam ball, covered with latex and spraypainted gold. The detaling on the orb was made from latex castings of clay sculptures. It was all made very quickly the day before shooting started.

Rolf was wearing a beard made out of human hair. I bought it a coulpe of years back and originally used it for a film called The Haunted Mill, but since the beard is attached to lace fiber, it can be reused again and again. Which is a good thing since it was really, really expensive.












The character who needed the most elaborate props and costume was probably Vulvia, the barbarian princess (played by Malin Hermansson). Malin was chosen for a number of reasons; she has the looks, the figure and the humor for the job. She can also act and dance, the latter being a plus when fight choreography is used.

Vulvia is certainly the toughest in the bunch of heroes, so we decided to juxtapose this by giving her a taste for pink. Actually (not referred to in the film), the pink fur comes from a bear-like monster living in the wild mountains that are her home.

Parts of her outfit, the cape, the shoulder pads and the boots are taken from a costume made a few years back. The leather arm braces were made by a friend of Martin's. At the time of filming this project, Malin was a brunette and we felt she didn't look Scandinavian or valkry-ish enough. So I bought a blonde wig.




Vulvia's necklace was inspired by barbarian bling-bling seen in Frank Frazetta's Conan paintings. I sculpted the skull of an unidentified nasty little animal in clay, made a silicone mold and cast the finished skull in plastic. It was the painted and stuck on leather-imitation thread with four latex bear claws.

Vulvia's helmet was also sculpted in clay and cast in latex from a plaster mold. I wanted something soft and comfortable for Malin to wear. After I had painted it in dark grey PAX and aluminum paint, Liz dressed it up with pink fur.

The cups Vulvia's bra were made in the same way as the helmet. They were stuck onto one of Malin's own bras. The straps were hidden under some fake leather strips.

Vulvia's sword had to look powerful, but needed to be light and easy to wield. I recycled the blade of an old sword made many years back and used in many projects. The hilt was, again, inspired by a Frazetta painting of Conan resting against his sword. I sculpted the crossguard and the pommel in clay and cast plastic copies from a silicone mold. The parts were painted a dark black/iron and stuck onto the tang of the blade using more plastic as a fixing glue.


The grip was covered with more plastic, and PVC leather imitation was wrapped around it. At the time I didn't have any real leather thin enough for the job, so I had to make do with what was avaliable. It worked out fine and the sword came out as a very sturdy, well-balanced prop. The blade is made out of aluminum stock and was tuned and bevelled for me many years back by a friend's dad, who had a machine-shop. I engraved Norse runes along the fuller of the blade. It's a big sword, but quite light.

The sheath had been made many years earlier and was created out of sturdy cardboard, wrapped in duct tape and the covered with leather imitation (because it was cheap). The metal details on the sheath were cast in plastic. The belt is a garage sale find.

Martin played the dapper elf Falgolan, who likes to dress up in Robin Hood or Peter Pan fashion. Liz made the tunic from my specifications (one of them being a photo of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood). The shirt, the belt and the boots are Martin's own. The mint green tights are ballet tights for men and were bought. They were probably the hardest item to find for the costumes! I also bought a Prince Valiant-style wig. Martin provided the bow and quiver. I made flower-stick arrows with plastic heads, and Martin spent a morning adding "feathers" made out of sticky tape, folded, cut and glued in place.

My co-worker Agneta Rapp-Svensson played the Sorceress, named Lamaria in the script but actually never adressed by name in the film. I bought her dress straigh off a Halloween costume page on the web. I figured we couldn't dream up something as tasteless ourselves. It fitted Agneta like a glove, too!

I did make a couple of things for her character. I sculpted a snake diadem, cast it in plastic from a silicone mold, painted it and and added a glass ruby.



The sorceress also carried an evil-looking pendant. The little horned skull was sculpted in clay, a silicone mold was created and plastic cast in that mold. After spraypainting it with a high-gloss aluminum paint it was attached to a necklace chain.

What we wanted to do was to go in the opposite direction of how things look in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, and I think we succeeded with that. Our hope is that at least some people will experience a feeling of nostalgia when looking at this stuff. It's from a time when fantasy was less textured and could even be allowed to indulge in some silliness.