Blog

Have you played Horizon: Zero Dawn yet? At the time of this writing the game had just passed its one year anniversary. It is absolutely one of the best games...

Entry number 2 in the Great Transistor Saga! Picking up from part 1, all of the construction had been completed. Parts were molded, vacuumformed, dyed and cast, leaving me with...

Want to skip to the payoff? Check out my shipping crate calculator over here! The blog post below will detail how to construct the parts into a complete shipping crate....

Alternate title: 3D printing for a vacuum former. For New Years Eve 2016, our local gaming bar Battle and Brew threw a Rapture-themed party. Maybe not the best theme considering...

As part of a Kickstarter reward, the guys at Pixel Titans asked me to re-create one of the weapons from their throwback shooter STRAFE®. The community would vote on one...

Riot Games sent me an email in March. They had a new collegiate-level competition for their game League of Legends, and they were looking for a huge trophy for the...

Having completed the Cael Hammer for the guys at Supergiant Games (which went over great at PAX East!) I was asked to recreate the Transistor from the similarly named game...

In part 1, each of the components had been constructed and were awaiting moldmaking. There are several very large pieces to this bow, and each had to be molded and...

In terms of scale, Garuda’s Spine is the largest prop I’ve built to date. The weapon itself is everything that epitomizes the world of JRPG excess: a seven-foot tall bow...

I was very giddy on the day I got an email from the Art Director at Supergiant Games. Both Bastion and Transistor are personal favorites of mine and I jumped...

For part 1 of this project, click here. At the end of part 1, the main sculpt of the dragon was finished, clearcoated and ready for molding. The finished castings...

Curse Gaming approached me in late 2014 with a project: an award for employees who have been working for the company for 5 years or more. The idea was that...

You gotta love anime. If nothing else, it’s creative. The Scissor Blade is one half of an enormous pair of scissors, used like a sword by the main protagonist of...

It’s been a while since I made a staff, and the last iteration was from a fairly low resolution MMO that debuted back in 2002. A cosplayer attending DragonCon 2014...

Back in June I got an invite from my buddy Frank Ippolito to fly out to LA and visit E3. As I’m someone who has a passing interest in video...

You’re never too old for a go-kart. When I was growing up, there were two things with which my mother forbade me ownership: BB guns and a go-kart. At some...

This has to be one of my favorite weapon designs of all time. When Jinx was announced for League of Legends, the shark cannon in her reveal video grabbed my...

At the end of part 1, the Planet Express ship was earning its name in shape only; I had a Futurama ship, but it needed a coat of electric mucus...

This is going to be a 2-parter, since the total mass of the entire build log would be enough to crush most RSS readers. I’ve been told I can be...

I recently spent the winter months moving into a new workspace. For the entirety of my career building props, I’ve made do in the less-used rooms of my house as...

As a partner to the completed Elk Shield, I was asked to build a copy of Sophitia’s blade from Soul Calibur IV. The Omega Sword is actually quite similar to...

I decided to build a weapon as a companion piece to the Ancient Nord armor built for DragonCon 2013. There’s no shortage of cool things to make from Skyrim, but...

The HALO Needler has been on my personal list of stuff I really want to make since I first played HALO: Combat Evolved back in college. The design has undergone...

It should come as absolutely no surprise that I’m a pretty big Skyrim fan. For DragonCon 2012 I made a set of Banded Iron armor for myself to go along...

At the beginning of the year I put a post up on my facebook page listing off some various replicas I wanted to make in the hopes that some people...

Back in January I got an email from one of the PR reps at CD Projekt RED about a potential replica to showcase a new game from a familiar franchise....

I suppose it’s no secret that I’m a pretty big Bioshock fan. Infinite is just around the corner and I’m really looking forward to all the props that game will...

I’m a bit behind on updates – there are still two full armor costumes from 2012 that I haven’t written up yet! That said, here’s a more recent project with...

Since I made a set of Banded Iron Armor for my Dragon*Con 2012 costume, I decided I wanted to build a shield to go with the matched set. There are...

I was commissioned recently to make a replica of the Terrible Shotgun (aesthetically identical to the Combat Shotgun) from Fallout 3 and New Vegas. If you’ve seen my previous AER-9...

Continuing with the Skyrim trend, but not a helmet this time! There are all sorts of intricate and complicated weapons in Skyrim, but the Steel weapons – low level though...

So I’ve been on a bit of a Skyrim kick recently. I’ve completed several projects from the world of Tamriel which will be popping up on this blog in the...

About three years ago when I was first getting started in the whole propmaking thing, the guys from Destructoid.com asked me to make a big mascot head for them to...

Several months ago I got an email from a my friend Art Andrews asking if I would be interested in taking part in a very, very cool project. At Star...

About a month ago I was wrapping up my Skyrim Female Ancient Nord/Draugr Helmet project, and posted some of the progress over at my facebook page. One of the people...

Quite a bit ago I was able to get my first vacuum forming machine up and running, using not much more than an old toaster oven, a shop vac, and...

Like everyone else who had a passing fancy with gaming, I recently fell very deeply into Bethesda’s most recent Elder Scrolls offering: Skyrim. For anyone who hasn’t played the game,...

If you’re a fan of the series (like me) and you’ve been drooling over every trailer that’s been coming out recently (like me) you may have seen the latest live...

As part of another joint costume adventure between myself and my friend Cathy over at God Save the Queen Fashions (some readers may recall her work on the Daft Punk...

As part of another joint costume adventure between myself and my friend Cathy over at God Save the Queen Fashions (some readers may recall her work on the Daft Punk...

Last month I posted some pretty pictures of the finished Gravity Gun, taken by my good friend Dan Almasy. At that time, the gun was newly finished and on its...

Last year, I got it in my head to put together a Portal Gun for the Penny Arcade Child’s Play annual charity dinner in Seattle. Child’s Play is an awesome...

A friend of mine who takes costume commissions (Check out her work at God Save The Queen Fashions!) sent me an inquiry a few months ago asking if I had...

Its been a long road, but not nearly as long as my Guy Manuel project. I learned a lot from Guy, most notably what NOT to do, which allowed me...

If you’re just arriving on this page, please be sure to visit parts one  two and three of this build, which showcase the sculpting  moldmaking and electronics aspects of the...

Its been roughly a year since I worked on anything from the Mass Effect universe, but E3 2011 was ripe with news from the third installment of the franchise, due...

Ah, where were we? Right. I had a nice shiny master sculpt ready for molding. This entry will provide some details on the molding process and start laying out the...

This was a fun project, done as a small add-on to the third (and final!) Portal Gun commissioned by the guys at VALVe Software in Seattle. While the additional potato-GLaDOS...

Yes, MORE SoulCalibur love! Having already created Cassandra’s Nemea Shield and Pauldrons, I rounded out the set with her Digamma shortsword. Its a bit of an odd piece – the...

I suppose it was an inevitability. Just like you can’t have Link without Zelda, Big Daddies without Little Sisters, and Master Chief without Cortana (well, except for that stretch in...

A continuation on a theme, as it were. I’m kind of backlogged with a few entries I need to write; this project was actually finished in September 2010. As I...

The SoulCalibur series has been one of my favorite gaming franchises for a long time. Since SC2, my go-to character has been Cassandra, as much for her fighting style as...

On January 20, 2009 I took a photograph of a project. At the beginning, the intent had been to get it done in time for Halloween 2008, but that deadline...

It just makes sense, really. If you have the helmet then you’re going to need the gloves to go with it. You might recall my vacuumformer build from a few...

I got an email a couple of weeks ago, followed by a phone call. You’ll forgive me if the exact details are a bit fuzzy, but the conversation involved an...

Alternate title: How to make your very own Foamshep. So, Dragon*Con 2010  (shameless link to an awesome recap video by my friends over at JumpKickPunch.com) loomed in the horizon and...

It feels good to be able to build some stuff for myself again! The Daft Punk helmet was my last active commission for a little while, and for the next...

Its been a long road. Seventeen months, countless hours, multiple dead ends, hundreds of lessons learned, and one helmet made. In the past two installments I’ve discussed sculpting, resin casting,...

I have long wanted a vacuum-forming machine of my own, and after scouring tons of resources online, I finally decided to try my hand at it. My former is a...

I was commissioned to make the Light Staff (Apollo’s Staff to those who only want the +1!) from Final Fantasy XI. FFXI came out in 2004, and the graphics aren’t...

Any outdoorsman will tell you the most frustrating part of hunting is when a deer simply falls down when shot, and doesn’t fly backward into the forest. Those days are...

If you’re familiar with my last AER9, you’ll recall that the project was completed in only 4 days. I recently had a chance to take another whack at it with...

We did it! After two months of back-and-forth with the PR reps at the Georgia Aquarium, we were allowed to bring Big Daddy in for a photoshoot! This was a...

EDIT: For information regarding replicas of this prop, please see THIS POST In the last post I had about this build, I ended with the finished master, ready for molding:...

EDIT: I’m currently working on a bit of a redesign here. Apologies of the site looks like crap for a little while. A commission came to me very, very last...

I finally lost my mind enough to try to tackle one of these big guys. For those unfamiliar, Big Daddys are the protectors of the Little Sisters in Rapture, an...

EDIT: For information regarding replicas of this prop, please see THIS POST Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo is one-half of the french techno group Daft Punk. I was commissioned to make a...

Normally I don’t think I’d make a post about reproducing the same prop I’ve already shown, but I REALLY liked the weathering on this one, so I decided I’d share....

I was commissioned to make 2 replicas of the daggers that Hei uses in the anime series Darker than Black Since I was making 2 of these and they’re symmetrical,...

The Kraken Club is a rather imposing club weapon in Final Fantasy XI. They’re most noted for their desirability and very high cost in-game. Also, they look damn cool. I...

Yanier (Niero), the founder of Destructoid.com, commissioned me to replicate his mascot “Mr. Destructoid” for their website’s three-year anniversary. Their original mascot had served faithfully for years, but Yanier wanted...

The Little Sisters from Bioshock are among the creepiest characters I’ve ever seen in a videogame. Their syringes, used for extracting ADAM are even moreso, with vials of genetic material...

So, one day I decided to make a Portal gun. It turns out the internet really likes Portal, and also really likes my gun. UPDATE: I have a new entry...

I had planned on going to a convention here in Atlanta in September, but didn’t really think of the fact that most conventions don’t really like you huffing around a...

Midna is an interesting character. You don’t want to like her, but as the game progresses, you can’t help but find yourself drawn to the little imp. Her helm is...

Link’s Hylean shield. Much like the sword I built, this was done in a week and mostly just “eyeballed” with regards to sizing and dimensions. I cleaned up a lot...