Gorehowl Prop - World of Warcraft
We knew, when we started building props, that we had to build something that a lot of people knew. We also knew that we wanted to do something up front that we enjoyed, and since we're all players of World of Warcraft, we settled on the screaming axe of Grommash and Garrosh Hellscream: Gorehowl.
There are several different versions of Gorehowl out there, the old game model, the new game model, the 6.0 game model, and several artistic variations, as well as the one used in the newest cinematic to kill Mannoroth. The last is the one we chose as inspiration.
The first step was taking extruded polystyrene foam -- yes, the stuff used as insulation -- and getting our basic shape. We knew the axe would be big, because it belonged to an Orc, but we also wanted to tone it down to a more manageable human size, while still conveying it's obvious harsh-toned awesomeness.
After getting an appropriate taper to the edges, all the way around, by using just a regular sander, we got ready to coat the bad boy for strengthening and body modeling.
Here, black acrylic paint acts as a sealing agent to keep the harsh chemicals of the body filler from eating away at the extruded foam base. That has a short dry time, even though the application is relatively thick. This was done only once, and you can notice quite a few imperfections still, as the detail will come with the Rage Gold applied to the top coat.
Rage Gold is a body filler, much like Bondo, except that to me it sands much easier, and much finer, and with a longer pot time than Bondo. To me, it's just the better option.
Multiple layers were added as detail was needed and added into the mix.
Rage Gold doesn't make an easily accessible glazing putty, and as we were familiar with Bondo's, we used it. The whole item was coated in glazing putty, and sanded. During this stage, we also added the external physical damage seen on the axe in the images. We wanted the axe to look like it had seen battle and had been forged at the hand of an Orc, so we thought that these were necessary, though not always seen in all the imagery.
We skipped a few steps to get to this point, and many different mediums were used to achieve this product. The teeth, seen on the back side of the axe, were all 3d printed on our makerbot. The same goes for the skull. The major detail points, seen on the side of the axe were handcut from worbla, as was the top portions.
A second layer of Rage Gold was applied to give the allusion of the wrapped leather back side, and added depth to the top design. It was also coated in a layer of epoxy for strength and smoothing (the epoxy self-levels so it results in a smooth top surface.)
This is the semi-final primed version of Gorehowl, right before casting. We left rough spots around the teeth and skull to give the illusion that it was jutting through the leather wrap. The primer also allowed us to see what imperfections remained in the master.
To our luck, there were few that couldn't also be intentional in design.
The beautiful hand model you see in the back ground is Scout Sierra, or Kenny.
All in all the project took a pretty big chunk of time to get out, but it's been worth it. Now we're waiting on the molds to take form so that we can get a cold-cast out.
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