Gotham By Gaslight Project: Part Three-Belt Buckle

The buckle for the utility belt was heavily based on Boer war belt buckles to give the design a functional and period accurate design. The idea behind the detailing is that this piece is a found item that has been adapted for the main characters use. The piece has been detailed to look like a police officers belt which also links to the characters sense of justice and order.

I used multiple photographs of actual Boer War buckles photographed on top of a ruler to create 1:1 scale technical drawings in Illustrator.

I separated each piece into a separate drawing and imported them from Illustrator into Solidworks. Each piece was extruded and detailed with textures and filleted edges.

A quick render of the grubby brass finish I will try to create with the finished pieces. I originally wanted to have these pieces 3D printed in actual brass because it would be much stronger than plastic and would have a much more realistic finish. However after receiving a quote back I found this wasn't a cost effective option so I will instead be printing the buckle in plastic and painting it to look like dirty brass.

I received my 3D printed parts, unlike the last time I  had something 3D printed I opted to have the item "polished" so that it would be smoother, even though it was slightly smoother there was still an obvious texture to the piece so I took to smoothing the surface with spot filler and various grades of sandpaper.

 The pieces were given their usual coats of primer and wet-sanded from 600 grit upping grits  to 1200.

But then disaster hit when my nicely smoothed surfaces became a mottled brass mess. My test piece with the brass paint had come out nice and smooth but for unknown reasons this time it did not react well, this brand was a recommendation I found online but I did have a similar colour I had used before. So after waiting patiently for the paint to cure I stripped it all back down and repainted.

Much nicer!

After a few layers of acrylic wash to give it a bit of grime the buckle was given two coats of lacquer and it was done!

Gotham By Gaslight Project: Part two-Throwing Knives

One of the simpler pieces for this project were the throwing knives, these were needed to go onto Batman's utility belt and to be used as set dressing for other scenes. I decided to make these from Sintra since it is lightweight and has some flex.

The throwing knives were drawn out using a template made in Illustrator and cut out using a craft knife. My first plan was to have these knives cut out using a laser cutter, but after a little research online I found that foam PVC didn't agree with laser cutting so I cut them out as symmetrically as I could by hand.

Each knife was primed and given a little spot filler to smooth out the slightly textured surface of sintra.

To create the bevel I cut away the outer edge of the blade and then remade the tip from 0.5mm styrene. This acted as a guide so that I could fill the step between the sintra and styrene with filler to give me a quick and clean bevelled edge.

Each knife was then given its six coats of primer and wet-sanded ready for painting.

 

The Blades were painted flat black

The blades were dry-brushed with acrylic, starting with grey and working up to a bright silver. After these layers had dried fully they were given two coats of lacquer to protect the metal effect. The last layer was another thin coat of flat black, this was lightly worn away around the edges with some 1500 grit sandpaper and the knives were finished!