Gotham By Gaslight Project: Part one-Camera

I was approached by a film maker to design and make both Props and costume pieces for a student film, the project was loosely based on Gotham by Gaslight, a graphic novel set in the Victorian era in which Batman tracks down and apprehends Jack the Ripper. I had read the novel before and was a fan of the concept so this was a really fun project to work on. 

The first piece I began to build was my design for a camera used by batman in a murder investigation scene. My Prop concepts were based around the idea that Batman would have had to make these items himself by adapting existing objects.  

Therefore I decided to build this prop by 'kitbashing' pieces together. I bought an old antique autographic kodak folding camera, It had the same shape as my design and was close to the time frame the film is set so made a good period accurate base to start with. 

To create the flash bulb I bought an oven bulb of a similar shape and size to my design and used an old brass nut as a bulb fitting. A hole was drilled through the top panel of the camera and the nut was bolted to the panel.

The bulb matched the thread of the nut which was a lucky coincidence for found parts, however the head of the bolt took up a lot of the space that the bulb needed to be able to sit in the nut. The bulb was ground down to fit in the smaller space, the bulb was never going to be a working piece so this didn't matter, the flash would be added in post production. The bulb no longer had enough thread to sit securely in the nut so it was epoxied into place to make sure it didn't unscrew and fall out when being handled.

 To make the metal loops to hold the wiring on the top of the camera I used small pieces of thick copper wire, these were bent into loops with a pair of pliers and cut to the same size as each other. 

To attach them to the top plate of the camera I used  blobs of hot glue, the pieces were then removed from the camera plate and painted to look like solder. 

 I then used super glue to reattach them to the camera.

The next pieces to be added to the top of the camera were the sockets that the wiring would be attached to. I found some small brass Meccano pieces that were a good size for the space I had to work with. However the pieces I bought were brand new and extremely shiny which didn't match the grubby worn look of the rest of the camera. There are a number of ways to age brass however most use harsh chemicals such as ammonia and peroxide, I found a few techniques that used vinegar so I gave those a try instead. The first technique was to mix two table spoons of salt with a jar of vinegar and leave the brass pieces to sit in the mixture for a few minutes. The pieces were then taken out of the solution, gently dried off and placed in the oven at 230 degrees and baked for 5 minutes. This method however did nothing to the pieces. 

The next I tried was to heat the brass pieces with a heat gun and then spray layers of vinegar onto the hot pieces. Again this yielded no result. I should mention at this point that the pieces were scrubbed in acetone beforehand to remove any clear lacquer or protective finish that may stop the process from working. 

The third method I tried was to suspend the pieces in a jar of vinegar and then seal the jar, allowing the fumes from the vinegar to age the surface. This was left overnight and in the morning...

Success!

The pieces were now a close match to the old brass nut and were epoxied in place.

I found replica Victorian braided cable online which was perfect for what I needed, the wiring was threaded through the copper loops and then epoxied into place in the two brass collar pieces. I had a machined steel dial that was originally a spare part for a metal compass I have, fit perfect!

The next piece I worked on was the camera face plate, I needed to make the recess around the lens flush with the rest of the metal plate. This was to make a nice flat surface to attach the new lens details to. I first had to cut away the metal ring around the lens and filed it flush with the brass plate it was attached to.

The faceplate was then reattached and filler was added to the recessed area. 

The centre was bevelled to match the concave shape around the original camera lens.

The face plate was painted gloss black again and weathered around the edges using 1200 grit sandpaper to give it more of a softly worn look rather than scraped against a brick wall.

I found a steampunk gadget ring online that was perfect for the magnifying lenses on the front of the camera design, the compass was painted over to look more like a bolt head.

The bottom of the gadget ring has the all too familiar made in china text stamped across it and this panel faces the front when the piece is folded up so it needed covering. A simple leather panel was glued to the metal plate which tied the piece in better with the leather grip on the casing.

Four small brackets were made to fit over the fake bolts that are moulded into the frame of the lens, they were filled in the back and sanded flush to increase the surface area on the back of the frame to give me more material to epoxy together.

Masking tape was used to mark out the centre of the faceplate and then the magnifier was epoxied into place.

The outer metal casing of the camera was going to be wrapped in leather, but first the detail pieces attached to the back of the casing were removed to give the back a flush surface. The circular detail on the back had a patent number and year stamped into it which was later than the film is set, so to reuse the piece I filled all of the the lettering with spot putty and sanded it flush.

The casing was wrapped in a thin leatherette as all of the real leather pieces I had were too thick, but this material had a fairly realistic finish so I opted to use it anyway. The back detail piece was painted and then worn around the edges using 1200 grit sandpaper to give it a used look to match the rest of the camera.

To finish the back I epoxied a small brass bat motif over the rivets and recessed area on the circular piece.

All the finished piece were slotted back together and screwed into place, all finished and ready to go!

MK Legacy Part 5-Menpo Mask

The Menpo worn by Scorpion in season 2 is a completely different mask than the one used in the first season, the mask used in the first season was a metal Menpo created by This Company, I took a few screen caps form Scorpions episodes and used them as the basis for my blueprints I created in Illustrator.

These were scaled to fit my face were then turned into pattern pieces to be cut out of 2mm Sintra.

Everything was slotted together to give me a 3D guide for the main face shapes. The negative spaces were then filled with Bondo and sanded back to the guides.

I prefer using sintra for this process as it is easier to sand flush with filler than denser materials such as MDF.

The mouth was cut out at this stage and the top lip was blended back to the face plate.

The next area to block in was the nose, this was done using the sintra framework method like the rest of the mask.

To block out the shape of the nostrils I used masking tape to sketch out the size of the nostril both height and width. I then covered the masking tape with release agent and blocked out the shape with filler.

The teeth were made using strips of sintra with the lines being engraved with diamond files. The rest of the cheek area was also blocked in.

After being sanded, wet-sanded, primered, and wet sanded again the surface was ready for paint. The mask had 5 coats of brown paint and then was top-coated with  6 layers of gold paint. Once the paint had been left to harden for 2 days the gold was wet-sanded to reveal the brown paint underneath to weather the surface. I then made the mask ties and attached them behind the cheek plates.

MK Legacy Scorpion Part 4-Tabard

I'm not sure what the correct term is for this costume piece so throughout these posts I'll just refer to it as a Tabard haha. I began the pattern for the Tabard by modifying a T-shirt pattern block I already had, from there I measured the small of my back and after narrowing the bottom of the block to this measurement I drew a straight line from the arm scye (The arm hole seam) down to the waist to give me the basic shape of the back. This was then extended down further as the back of the actual Tabard covers the wearers butt. 

The front was simply a long straight strip with an angled end, the top had the same shoulder seam angle as the back so that they matched up correctly. I toiled my patterns in Calico first, this let me see how the piece actually laid on a person, Toiling is always important to do before committing to your chosen fabric because if something doesn't fit right and you've already sewn it in your chosen material it will just be a waste of  material, money and time. After checking the fit on myself I found I needed to lengthen the front and widen the shoulders slightly as the actual costume piece juts out past the shoulders.

Once these adjustment were added to the paper patterns I then lifted a copy of them onto a fresh sheet of paper. The costume piece has a pleated look to it and I planned to make each pleat as a separate piece, a 1cm seam allowance was added to all of these pieces, plus an extra cm on the sides of each of the pleat section so there was space to overlap each piece onto the next, to make the item look like one large pleated piece and not lots of separate smaller pieces stitched together.

I decided to use Douppion silk for the Tabard as it has a similar finish to it as the actual costume, I ended up with about 10 samples of silk, I didn't realize how many shades of gold there were haha. 

Once the basic pieces were cut out and sewn together the pleats were pressed into the front and back.

Once the pleats were pressed in I ran a stitch along the pleats to prevent them from unfolding and giving me accordion shoulders.

Once I had reached this stage it was time to singe the fabric, this is done before adding the lining so that once the lining is attached you won't be able to see the clothing underneath through the holes in the tabard.

Lining attached and a quick test fit. Next step was to distress and weather the Tabard and Gi uniform underneath. 

To give the costume pieces a ragged edge and distressed appearance I first unpicked the hem of the uniform, next using a craft knife I hacked at the bottom edge to chop little segment out so it was uneven, as well as a few larger chunks to add variation. I also slashed small star shapes into the fabric in random places to make small holes, all of this was then feathered out and torn to look more realistic using a rasp. I then grabbed random clumps of fabric and balled it up like a small cushion and grated it against the rasp, this help create a rough texture over large sections quickly. This was repeated all over the bottom of the garment from the bottom edge up to the waist as well as around the elbows.

To achieve the dusty look the bottom of the piece has I ground up some white chalk and sprinkled along the bottom and around any holes. I tried to add variations in the thickness of the line to make it appear more natural. This was ground in using my fingers and then I rubbed the fabric against itself to help ingrain the dust even further and feather it out a little more.

I used the rasp again to weather the bottom edges of the Tabard although this wasn't quite as extreme as the black uniform. 

I tried 2 different dye methods on some scrap silk to see if I could get a nice grubby shade, the first was a bath of black acrylic, boiling water and a teabag, the second attempt was a small amount of black acrylic diluted in boiling water and left to soak for an hour which gave me a pretty close match to what I was going for.

I made a large dye Bath in this method and left the costume to soak in the bath for an hour. After rinsing the excess dye out of the fabric the Tabard was left to air dry, once it was almost dry I used a spray bottle full of the dye I made and added another layer to the bottom of the Tabard as it dried, this was repeated a few times as it dried to give a gradiated and well worn look. The edges of the pleats were dampened with a brush and then using another brush a watered down mix of black acrylic was lightly brushed along the edge and rubbed in with my finger to give a feathered and natural looking grubby effect. (the bottom of the Tabard is still wet in this photo, the bottom is a little lighter and blended much more smoothly into the rest when it dried)