Discover Top Posts Tagged with #harrison krix

Hey, Red. #gaming #games

#Featurama #Originals #Darren Korb #Harrison Krix #propmaking

Fishbones en la vida real... \O¬O/ Lo quiero @volpinprops

#fishbones #lol #jinx #harrison krix #awesome

Epic Feats Of Nerdery: Harrison Krix's Holophonor Replica Wins All Of Our Hearts

Harrison Krix, of Volpin Props fame, has created a visually perfect replica of Fry’s Holophonor from Futurama. Although it’s sadly silent, it looks amazing – and aren’t Holophonors all about the looks anyway? The icing on the cake for me is the stand, which consists of the Robot Devil’s hands.

Hit the jump to see Krix’s masterpiece.

Reblog: Shield of Whiterun, Skyrim

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 all sort of amazing and intricate shields in Skyrim, but unfortunately I only had about three days to make mine… so I chose something a bit simpler. While a Whiterun Shield isn't really something you'd carry around in game unless you wanted to show off the fact that you randomly killed some town guards, I had an affinity for Whiterun due to spending so much time there. Also, the celtic knots on the horse and the yellow color seemed to work well with the rest of the warmer earth tones in the armor. I started out with some simple illustrator blueprints. There are a lot of good references for these shields on the Elder Scrolls wiki, though for some reason the shields all seem a bit oval shaped in a model viewer. For the sake of symmetry, I decided to make mine round, and 24" in diameter. I wanted to use real wood that could take stain, but the piece also had to be as light as possible for costuming purposes. My plan was to sandwich a piece of polystyrene foam with a few sheets of luan board, then stain the wood the appropriate color. I started out by telling my shop monkey assistant to trace the blueprints I made onto wood panels. She did one and I did the second, and man was this mind numbing. After the patterns were transferred, I cut out the wood "slats" on my scroll saw. The edges were then beveled with my dremel tool to better simulate the look of separate boards that were fitted together. The natural woodgrain of the luan is very subtle, since it's just sheet plywood. The actual shield looks like a much deeper grain that has been accentuated with age and inclement weather. I needed a way to carve a lot of very exaggerated wood grain texture into some thin wood paneling for a shield I'm working on. After trying out a couple methods with a router, hand files, and an engraving tool, it was looking like this segment of the project was going to take forever. I figured what I needed was something like my scrollsaw, except with a dremel wheel attached to it. I pulled the blade from the saw, rigged my rotary tool with a clamp and a zip tie, and set up a few pieces of scrap board to set the table to the right height for the paneling. The patterns in this shot only took about 5 minutes, and I had the whole thing carved in a little over an hour. After a little while the cutting wheel built up some dust and started leaving a burned edge behind it as it cut the patterns, but with the heavy stain the wood was going to get, this wasn't too problematic. For stain, I bought some dark Minwax and brushed on two thick coats, wiping off excess while it cured to let a little more of the natural wood texture through. This isn't high end furniture work, but I think it turned out alright. In order to make the shield thicker than the combined .25" thickness of the luan panels, I cut out a 24" circular disc of polystyrene foam to mount the pieces to. Each board was dampened with water, spread with gorilla glue and placed on top of the foam. I piled everything heavy from my shop on top of it to keep the boards in place while they cured overnight. I call this "Adequate Clamping Pressure" Four T-nuts were embedded into the back of the shield to hold the arm strap and handle in place. These only anchor into the wooden boards, and in retrospect it may have been a bit more structurally sound to adhere these two boards to one another as well. No failures yet, but I tend to over-enginner things for peace of mind. The inner lip on the the shield was made with Apoxie Sculpt. As an added feature I hadn't counted on, this actually made the shield far stronger. than just the boards glued to a foam disc. The remainder of the lip was built with bondo. Mostly this was a cost cutting measure since skinning the the entire outer edge in Apoxie Sculpt would cost an arm and a leg. I left some of the pits and gouges in the bondo when it was sanded to give the perimeter of the shield a bit more of a rougher edges like quickly banded metal. These are supposed to be utilitarian pieces made en masse for city guards, not museum pieces. After taping off the wooden parts, the shield rim got a cot of primer and a few passes of hammered silver. Onto painting! All of the work on the front of the shield was done with acrylics. The first pass was way, way too bright but I managed to pull it back down a bit more neutral later with some weathering and light yellow washes. I will freely admit to being a bit spoiled by my laser cutting machine, and this was no exception. Painting the horse freehand would have been a disaster for me, so I made a set of paint masks, laser cut onto some stencil paper. Each quarter was laid down separately, then sponged over lightly to give me an outline of where to paint later. Here's the finished sponged pass. I didn't want to go too heavy here and risk later layers of paint looking uneven. After a lot of filling in and close attention to staying inside the lines (thanks, kindergarden art class!) I had a finished horsey. I don't think the Whiterun guards call him that, but I was kind of tired and loopy at this point so his name became "Horsey". The shield still needed some weathering since the paint and horse were too vibrant, so I did a few layers of a more bleached out yellow, applied in streaks to give the paint a more uneven and randomly worn effect. This photo is an iPhone shot and it blows the colors out a bit, but the contrast helps call out the lighter areas somewhat better. The finished shield! It only weighs about 2.5lbs, not bad for something this large. Admittedly, the strap and handle aren't the most impressive things in the world. My leather skills have a long way to go. After the convention was finished, I needed somewhere to put this thing. Unfortunately, there isn't much space on my walls for a 2-foot-large disc… but there's plenty of room on the floor! I keep all my replicas in my game room, so I decided to make a little end table out of this guy. I already had an end table in my gaming room, but it was a thrift store find leftover from my college days - water ring stains on unfinished wood and a wobbly frame. Still, it had parts I could pirate for this project. I yanked off the legs and stripped the old finish with my orbital sander. The legs turned out to be red oak, so I picked up a couple matching boards at Home Depot and built a simple box frame. The center running board holds the shield in place, anchoring to the two T-nuts used to secure the arm strap. Each corner has a small nylon furniture foot on it that keeps the frame from scuffing up the under/backside of the shield. After sourcing a 24" sheet of glass for the top (thanks, Mom!) I now had a much more impressive side table for my game room than my leftover college thrift store find. Obviously, it's not always this clean. Here it is in a more natural scenario… Thanks for reading! from Volpin Props http://bit.ly/Uj9C8u

#Shield of Whiterun #Skyrim #Harrison Krix

How to make a Daft Punk helmet in 17 months Take a look at this amazing video showcasing the skills of propmaker Harrison Krix. In this video, Krix creates one of the helmets of DJ duo Daft Punk, a process that took over 17 months to make. As well as manufacturing the helmet itself, Krix adds the flashing light system, re-creating one of Daft Punk's most impressive helmets.

#Harrison Krix #Helmet #Daft punk #Daft Punk Helmet #Volpin Props #Props #Propmaker #Robot Rock #Tron #One More Time

Reblog: Protoform Vacuum Forming Machine

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 my parents' old telephone table from their kitchen (with, I should add, their permission to do so!) Anyone interested in that project can take a look at the build log here. Its been a great tool to have and has been very useful for the past few years its been in service.

This budget-miniformer has worked wonderfully considering the cost and time it took to produce, but as I've been getting more and more complex projects recently, I've been needing a machine capable of pulling larger pieces of plastic as well as thicker and more detailed pulls. I had done a lot of research in the past when planning my mini-former project, and had run across the Protoformer Vacuum Forming machine plans over at www.build-stuff.com more than a couple of times. The plans are $65, and worth every penny. I highly suggest anyone interested in making a large professional level machine look into purchasing either these, or some of the other smaller format machine plans available on the Build-Stuff website. The end result (after a lot of effort and a fair bit of cost, its worth mentioning) is a hugely capable and very professional looking tool. My personal build did not follow these directions exactly; I made modifications to the plans in certain key areas which other people who have built these instructions will recognize right off. These were not improvements, but rather implemented as a result of budget concerns, personal limitations (I don't have access to welding equipment) and the types of jobs the machine will see. I'll explain these when they pop up in the project log. First off, I started by building the frame table. This is a bit smaller than the ones laid out in the instructions as my shop is pretty cramped these days and I needed something with a smaller footprint. Also, I had plans to change the lift rails and oven supports, and I needed a narrower chassis to do so. These are just 2x4 framing studs, glued and screwed together. The vacuum itself would be provided by a 3cfm air pump I purchased at Harbor Freight. The 11 gallon surge tank that holds the vacuum was also from HB. To pull thicker materials like Acrylic, I may have to add another tank in the future, but for the styrene and PET plastic I'm working with now, these two will work fine. A shelf was added to the bottom of the cart, made from 3/4" plywood. The upper table area was cut from 1/2" MDF. Both were sealed with shellac before mounting onto the machine. After mounting points were drilled, the frame was painted with flat gray house paint left over from my laser cutter cabinet project.

The original plans call for the oven support arms to be a set of 4 uprights welded to a steel box that will sit on the chassis. I chose to drill holes through the side of the uprights and bolt them directly to the chassis sides. This saved me some money in box steel as well as saved the complexity and time of cutting parts to length and welding them together. I also substituted 1" steel box stock for the 1.5" outlined in the instructions. My machine will see occasional use every few weeks and I didn't think the added beefy steel was necessary. The oven frame box was built next. This is a proprietary design and made to specifically hold the heating elements sold by Build-Stuff.com. I chose to leave all the parts of the machine related to the heating and electrical system as close to the instructions as possible. The outside of the box is made from poplar, and the inside metal grid secures to the outside box with a series of screws. I used 2 pieces of 1" angle steel to hold the oven box in place. These are bolted to the uprights and pull double duty; they keep the uprights a set width apart and keep the oven box level and above the platen. The platen was also modified, though again for budget reasons. I chose to repeat the design from my first vacformer, but incorporate cues from the Protoform design as well. 2 pieces of 1/2" MDF sandwich a 1/4" piece to create the inner cavity. A steel mesh frame is mounted in between the open sections to make sure the cavity doesn't crush inward under the pressure of the vacuum. A 1" threaded PVC insert was cut from the bottom center section and sealed with RTV silicone. The hose from the dump valve to the air tank will mount here later. The upper section was routed to have a round corner, then the assembly was glued, clamped, and sealed with shellac. Unfortunately, a test pull once the machine was finished showed that the plastic got hot enough to pull the shellac back out of the wood. I added a thin aluminum plate with matching drill holes, and the problem was solved! The air system I showed earlier came next. The pump evacuates an air tank, and the amount of vacuum in the tank is shown on the gauge at the front of the machine. When the plastic is lowered to the platen, the valve is opened, allowing vacuum to be pulled though the platen and into the forming area. The pump and tank were screwed to the base shelf, then I assembled a menagerie of plumbing fittings and adapters to connect all the parts. On the front of the machine, there are two switches that control the air pump and heating coils, as well as the vacuum indicator gauge and the vacuum release valve. Mounting points for these were trimmed out of an aluminum plate. With these parts assembled, I now had the vacuum half of the forming machine finished! The oven support rails came next, and were bolted to the side of the machine. The oven box was then lifted up and mounted to the angle steel bars. As my dimensions were changed somewhat from the original Protoform plans, the lift arm mechanisms in the instructions would no longer work for my machine. I employed a very similar system as shown in the diagrams, though the lift arms I built are made from red oak. This, again, was a budget and capabilities issue since I don't own a welder and buying another 8 or so feet of box steel would seriously anger my bank account. The lift arms work quite well, though the wood does flex more than steel would. You need to lift the arms by the sides of the center handle using two hands, whereas I imagine a steel assembly could be lifted using only one. These lift arms attach to two 10" long sections of box steel which ride between them. These center rails are then bolted to the plastic carrying frame, which moves the material up to the oven and back down to the platen. I couldn't get away from welding forever, so after cutting all of the parts for the plastic carrying frame, I asked my uncle James for a few evenings worth of his free time to weld up the frames for me. James has plenty of fancy welding projects under his belt (race car roll cages being chief among them!) and the results were perfect. I stained the wood on the lift arms, painted the frames and bolted everything together for a test run. The lift bar clears the oven by the tiniest margin and I have to stand on my toes to reach it, but it works wonderfully! I'd like to explain the heating elements and electrical wiring in detail, because I try to share as much experience and knowledge as I have for other people to learn from and try out themselves. Unfortunately, this time I'll need to be a bit more reserved about distributing this information. This machine runs 220V power, is built with its own sub breaker box, and is tied into a 50A breaker in my house. This is easily one of the most dangerous projects I've ever constructed, and the simple fact is that if you want to build your own, you should go to www.build-stuff.com and buy the Protoform plans. I should note I have no stake in that company, but the instructions are comprehensive, and detailed and far better than what I can summarize here. $65 is a bargain for the amount of information contained in the PDF you get! My garage used to run off a single 15A 110V breaker, but this has increased exponentially in order to run this one tool. I had an electrician install a new 220V 50A breaker for this machine alone, and also install a new 20A 110V breaker just for the rest of my shop. I can finally turn on the bandsaw without killing my stereo or having to turn off my space heater! The heating elements are another kit offered by Build-Stuff, and the kits scale depending on what kind of machine you're building. I ordered these, as there's no need to reinvent the wheel, and the kits came quickly with clear and precise instructions. Assembling everything took about half a day. These things get HOT, and in a hurry too. Full working temp is reached in about 2 minutes. The nichrome wire is a bit intimidating to work with at first, but it becomes easier the more you install. The last thing I needed was a vent cover to protect the heating element wiring from any overhead junk. This was made out of leftover bits of poplar and a large air conditioning vent. With the oven complete, I just needed to do some test pulls. I'm in the middle of remaking the Mr. Destructoid helmet (another old project from back in 2009) for the guys over at Destructoid.com, and all of the parts will be vacformed plastic. A few of the bucks were finished enough to pull a test piece, shown in the video below.

This new vacformer ran easily 10 times the cost of my first vacformer project, but the results are worth it. I'm actually considering updating the little one with its own pump and vacuum tank in the future to improve its performance as well. Thanks for reading! More pics of this project (and a bit more explanation of some of the components) are available on my Flickr account.

from Volpin Props http://bit.ly/JXuT3g

#Protoform Vacuum Forming Machine #Harrison Krix