Voyage Trekkers: A Qwest for Sight

One of the Voyage Trekker props I was asked to improve upon was the Lt. Jayda mask. The original mask that was sculpted by Brian Blackwell for season 1 was cast with the eyes solid, therefor the actor could not see anything. This is where I come in... but I think before I get into the modifying of the mask we should all watch the first episode that featured Lt. Jayda.

Now on to the new eye constructing. This is how the mask looked when it arrived at my shop, 0% visibility. A second mask that was a bad pull out of the mold was also dropped off as well for testing purposes.

 

First thing I did was purchase a set of acrylic ornament balls at a craft store that were the correct size to Jayda's eyes. Then I cut out the eye from the second mask that was the bad cast and used it to trace an outline on the acrylic ball so I knew where to cut. Making sure to label the top of the eye and which eye it was so there wouldn't be any confusion later on.

Once the acrylic ball was all cut and the edges smoothed out I test fitted it over top of the eye on the screen used mask.

The next step would be making the eye black, but still allowing the actor to see through it. I tried several different methods, but this way seemed to be the best fit overall.

I first cut out a piece of 4 way stretch black cloth that was slightly bigger than the acrylic eye piece.

I stretched it around gluing it every 1/4 of an inch with gel super glue making sure to keep the fabric tight.

This is how the final result came out. Completely black with about 90% visibility.

The next step would be attaching the new eyes to the existing mask. So what I ended up doing was drawing a line about 1/2 of an inch in on the original eyes that would act as a cut line.

Then I used a sharp hobby knife and cut on the line drawn.

Once the middle piece was removed I applied more super glue gel to the remaining section of eye and glued the new eye in place.The same steps were repeated for the other eye.

I didnt do a whole lot with this project, but what I did do will hopefully make a world of difference for the actor playing Lt. Jayda. Here is the final product with his new peepers.

What a revision already?

So there was something that was just not right about the finished Casey Jones mask. I ended up having a friend look at the movie on bluray and he noticed the brow was different. So that meant back into the garage to work out some changes.

The brow was cut in a "V" shape, heated and pushed forward.

Then the back was refiberglassed and more filler applied to smooth it all out again.

A couple more hours and some paint and I was finished... again. I still need to drill the strap hole before molding, but that will come later.

The class is pain 101, your instructor is Casey Jones

Ever since I was a kid I have always loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My favorite turtle when I was a kid was always Leo, but the older I got I related to Raph more. I always loved the scene in the movie where Ralph first meet Casey Jones. After watching the movie yesterday, I'm thinking why hasn't anyone built a screen accurate replica mask yet? Well the time is now.

Start off with some reference:

 

I figured the easiest way to build this mask would be to use a program called Pepakura Designer. Pepakura Designer allows you to create paper craft models from 3D models. Now personally I hate working with paper craft, but the class is pain 101.

To start off, I contracted a very talented artist to 3D model the mask, as I am not that familiar with 3D software. Within a span of 24 hours he came back with this:

 

I was absolutely amazed at how fast he was able to produce this. Unfortunately the amount of polygons in this rendering was too high for Pepakura Designer, so we had to lose some of the detail. But all in all even with the loss of detail it was still perfect for a starting point.

This is how it looked once it was imported into Pepakura Designer, unfolded and ready for print.

 

Next step, print, cut, score and glue.

Now that I have a 3D paper model I can start the wonderful world of fiberglass.

Some features were lost when the file was converted to a lower Polygon count, so I had to do some cutting and shaping to get the correct look back.

Pieces of cardboard were added to fix the nose area. Then it was fiberglassed, filled and smoothed.

Next step was to add the brow lines. To do this I cut the shape I wanted out of ABS and then epoxied and screwed the pieces into place,

More filler was added to cover the screw holes and hide any seems. The same thing was also done for the nose.

 

Lots of filler and spot putty.

 

Primed and ready to cut the mouth slits.

For this I designed a template in Adobe Illustrator, lined it up, taped it down and cut it with a Dremel tool.

More spot putty.

Finished piece primed white. There are some minor changes I still want to make which I will show later when I am finished.

Tools of the Trade

Well I figured I would post up a project that I was working on this last week. No it is not a prop, but something needed to make one... a table. It is hard to find a decent strong table these days that wont cost you a fortune, so I set out to build my own. With a few drills, a sander, a saw and my trusty pencil and tape measure I set out to build a good sturdy work bench. This work bench will end up holding my metal break and my drill press. I wont go into detail about how it was made, but Ill show you the pictures as it happened. Enjoy!

 

And the eyes have it

This is just going to be a quick post on how I painted the eyes for my silicone Gizmo from Gremlins.

First I started by mounting a ping pong ball to a golf tee so it could be mounted to my drill so I could airbrush perfect circles.

The first layer of paint was black that was lightly airbrushed onto the ping pong ball.

 

Once the paint was fully dry the next step was to paint small thin lines. I started with a dark brown for the background color.

 

Once the background lines are finished I moved on to painting the foreground lines in a lighter brown followed by a light wash of dark brown around the edges. This was to give them more dimension.

 

The final step before clear coat is to put the eyes back into the drill and paint the centers black. This was done with a small paint brush and a steady hand.

Now once they are fully dried they were sprayed with a high gloss lacquer spray paint.

I let them dry over night, then it was time to test fit them into the head to make sure they look good :)

Voyage Trekkers

So back in January I went to a web series screening of Voyage Trekkers at the Film Bar in Phoenix. I sat down with the director after the screening and discussed building a few props for their season 2. I am very excited to say that the first set of props are completed and are already in his hands for shooting at the beginning of this month. I will be helping build more props for the rest of the season so look for future updates on those.

Here is a teaser of what you might see:

 

What does this case contain? Could it be the answer to world peace? You will have to check out Voyage Trekkers Season 2 to find out!