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Arcane Patches

March 21, 2014, 3:00 am
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Michael Shreeves cooked up this clever idea for creating arcane uniform patches.

I came across a minor trick while making a boy scout uniform from Welcome to Night Vale, after the creators released several scout patches.

I wanted some kind of runes or impenetrable arcane script because I didn't want to rely on real scout iconography or troop numbers. There are patches out there with runes, Celtic iconography, or pentagrams, but they're pricey and not very impressive.

I was wandering around Hobby Lobby looking for ideas, and I found a rack of iron-on embroidered cursive letters for $1.29 each. They weren't very legible to begin with. Rotate them a bit, and voila! Arcane sigils.
This would be perfect for any kind of organized military force that combats supernatural threats.  The Hellboy universe comes immediately to mind, as does the Delta Green take on the Mythos. 



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Rlyeh Runes Version 1

March 22, 2014, 3:00 am
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I've finished up the first draft of the Rlyeh Runes font.  It's very basic at this point.  The font only includes capital letters, uses mirroring to fill out the letters set, and the layout is raw.  That said, it's handy for when you need a glyph for padding out a scroll or illustration.  Here's a "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" sampler.



You can download the TTF font from Google Docs.  If you have any issues, just drop me a line.

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Crass Commercialism

March 23, 2014, 3:00 am
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I've recently been getting a lot of emails asking for direct links to Etsy listings or Ebay auctions.

In general I don't like doing that because, lets be honest, it's just an advertisement.  And, you know, I sell advertising here.  At quite reasonable rates, I might add. 

That said, I do make occasional exceptions for artists that I like.  Someone who's been featured here a few times gets a bit of leeway, while an artist who's posted in-depth build logs or tutorials gets a whole lot of credit on my end.  In either case I have no qualms about linking to pages that show off their work and just happen to have a link from there to a sales site.  I want to promote artists that make cool stuff, but I don't want to become one of those sites that exists solely to hawk stuff.

On the other end of the spectrum there are a few artists, three at last count, that are forever banned from having any of their work appear here.  All three of them made legal threats, something I take very seriously.  All three were upset about things that "looked like" or was "similar" to their work.  In all three cases I provided multiple examples of the same thing pre-dating their efforts by years, if not centuries.  When that failed to soothe them I provided the address of my lawyer.  Amazingly, he's still waiting for those legal papers to arrive.

One last thing.  I'm an Amazon affiliate and occasionally recommend products.  That means I get a cut of your purchase price, at no cost to you, whenever you buy through a link I provide.  Sadly, at least from the standpoint of greed, most of the products I've linked to are less than $10, and less than $1 for the out-of-print books.  I really do need to start cultivating more expensive, and marketable, tastes.

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The Umber Arcana

March 24, 2014, 3:00 am
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AnnEnchanted brings us the Umber Arcana.  What's cool about this is that all of the details are painted on the canvas cover.  This would be a great approach for producing a nice looking prop on a minimal budget.



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The Legacy of Prof. Icarus DeBenedettis

March 25, 2014, 3:00 am
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Dwarven Bow

March 26, 2014, 3:00 am
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Arcangelo Ambrosi brings us this detailed recreation of Kili's bow from the film version of "The Hobbit".   It's a shame that such beautiful production design is stuck in such a mediocre adaptation.  When the trilogy is completed I hope someone can go back and re-edit all the goofy fanfic touches Jackson and company added to the story.


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Steel Greatsword

March 27, 2014, 3:00 am
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The Apple of Eden

March 28, 2014, 3:00 am
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Ben and Eva Hollis are huge fans of the Assassin's Creed series.  That helps explain the amount of effort they put into creating a bronze casting of the Apple of Eden from the game.

The first task was to actually design the Apple. We knew it needed to be a sphere, and from game screenshots we figured out a rough size based on how it looked in characters' hands. More troublesome was the pattern on the surface of the sphere, which was hard to pick out from screenshots, and which was not consistent from shot to shot. We ended up designing our own pattern of channels inspired by the common patterns from screenshots and fan art.



One feature I was particularly excited about was lighting. The Apple glows along its surface channels, and I planned on using EL wire to provide this effect. EL wire glows uniformly along its length, uses very little power, and looks very bright in low light. First, Eva polished the inside of the channels with a wire brush to provide a bright reflection of the wire. Then, I worked out how to take the EL wire I had bought and work it into all the channels in a single continuous line with a minimum of overlap.



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Set Us Up the Bomb

March 29, 2014, 3:00 am
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It's a scene familiar from a thousand action movies.  A countdown clock steadily ticking down to the detonation of a weapon of mass destruction.  Unless our intrepid heroes are able to disarm it in time they, and everyone around them, will suffer the consequences.

It's hard to beat that setup for generating tension.  Thanks to Nootropic Design it's one you can recreate thanks to their Defusable Clock kit.
The Defusable Clock is a fully-functional alarm clock just like you’d expect (a normal beeping alarm, snooze alarm, etc.). But at any time you can press the big red button to start a scary countdown sequence exactly like bombs in Hollywood movies. There are 4 wires across the top of the clock. You have 10 seconds to choose the correct wire to cut: one wire stops the countdown and saves the day, two have no effect, and one will “detonate” the device immediately. These role of each wire is randomly assigned when the detonate button is pressed, so it’s a new challenge every time.


Check out their gallery of completed projects to see dozens of very cool devices made from their electronics.  It's packed with prop porn of the most glorious sort, from simple dynamite bombs to incredibly sophisticated terrorist bioweapons. 


 

It should go without saying that this particular type of prop comes with a "Don't be an idiot" disclaimer.  

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Bushcraft LARP

March 29, 2014, 3:30 am
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This is just a shot in the dark, but is anyone aware of any LARP groups that have an emphasis on bushcraft?  By that I mean a fantasy-style live action game that embraces the use of low technology camping and trekking techniques.

Here in the US there's a huge community of historical re-enactors doing everything from the Revolutionary War era to early modern Nessmuk-style camping, not to mention the denizens of the Society for Creative Anachronism.  In most cases they emphasize period bushcrafting skills and gear.  That includes everything from flint-and-steel firestarting to camp crafting and fireside cooking. 

There doesn't seem to be any overlap between those groups and fantasy LARP players.  That seems odd considering how many fantasy epics (Lord of the Rings, Shannara, Wheel of Time, The Black Company, etc.) are all about long overland journeys in primitive conditions.  The concept is so prevalent that the skilled fantasy woodsman has become it's own trope. 

Sadly, my google-fu hasn't uncovered anything along those lines.  I'd appreciate any help you might be able to provide.
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Cthulhu Fhtagn! Locascio Edition.

March 31, 2014, 3:00 am
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Michael Locascio brings us this beautifully sculpted Cthulhu statuette.  I'm not normally a fan of anthropomorphic depictions like this, but the anatomy and skin detail is exquisite. 




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Cthulhu Fhtagn! Wills-Starin Edition.

April 1, 2014, 3:00 am
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 Some things were meant to be together.  Apples and cinnamon.  Politicians and corruption.  Peanut butter and chocolate.  The latter despite the disapproving clucks of our overseas cousins at the American love for the goober.

Kimberly Wills-Starin brings us this amazing Cthulhu figure that takes that theme one step further.  Start with "My Little Pony" Cthulhu, one of the eternal stars of the Etsy-verse.  Then add the mind-blasting magic of cuddly plush Cthulhu.  Mix thoroughly and you get Plush My Little Pony Cthulhu!  This is the kind of creativity I'd like to see a lot more of.  If there's one thing the Mythos community needs it's more humorous takes on Cthulhu. 



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DIY Stone Tablets

April 2, 2014, 3:00 am
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Why use faux materials when crafting an actual stone tablet is relatively easy?

Andrew Wishart brings us the results of his stone carving efforts.  You can't get much more realistic than actually scribing a design into real stone.  Slate is relatively soft and, as he points out, takes well to both manual and rotary carving.
So, the first actual stone item I've made -  done just before the Elder Sign below, since this one didn't actually need the dremel given how soft slate is.  Softer than I remembered actually, I knew you could leave white lines on it easily, didn't realise how easy it was to properly carve into it though.  Neat.  That said the dremel came in useful for the writing/markings on the reverse because the sheer number would have taken much longer than the few minutes it did. 

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Cthulhu Fhtagn! Brian Edition.

April 3, 2014, 3:00 am
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The Idol of Shub-Niggurath

April 4, 2014, 3:00 am
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Jason McKittrick returns with an idol of Shub-Niggurath inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls".   I really like the way he's applied a Mythos veneer to traditional fertility idols.  The piece is available for a limited time from the Cryptocurium website.

“An idol of Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young once belonging to the De La Poer Family of Exham, England. According to local legend it was found in a deep subterranean cavern beneath the family’s ancestral home, Exham Priory. Idol was donated to the Miskatonic University Special Collections Department by an unnamed member of the De La Poer family in 1923.”


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Making Monsters

April 5, 2014, 3:00 am
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Dan Baines is no stranger to these pages. His Whitby Vampire is something I absolutely adore, a gaff that combines wonderful craftsmanship with an appreciation for the power of a theatrical backstory. And it's just one piece of his extensive portfolio.

His Derbyshire Fairy turned into a classic flim-flam, gaining widespread media attention thanks to it's enigmatic presentation. Now he's launched an unusual Kickstarter project so that anyone can recreate that bit of gaff-making magic.  The project features a kit for crafting your own mummified fairy as well as an instructional DVD explaining the techniques used.


This is something long overdue. Gaff-making is an increasingly popular hobby, but it suffers from a lack of documentation. Almost everyone who gets into it has to re-invent the entire process, climbing a pretty steep learning curve in the process. I and others have worked to flatten out that grade a bit, but having someone like Mr. Baines share his experience is going to be an incredible resource.
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In Search of Mokele-Mbembe

April 6, 2014, 3:00 am
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For centuries natives have told stories of Mokele-Mbembe, a massive river creature that dwelled deep in the jungles of Africa.  Many thought it was just a fairy tale, an old superstition that kept children away from the dangerous creatures to be found in the great waters.  A few believed the stories had a basis in fact and were evidence of a surviving colony of sauropods.

Now we know the truth.

Camille Renversade brings us the fruits of the forgotten 1938 expedition to Cameroon. Given the clear photographic and physical evidence is it any wonder that the expedition's very existence has been suppressed all these years?

An English translation of the original French page is available here. Browse around and you'll find some equally interesting examples of cryptozoological discovery.


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Christie's Vampire Killing Kit

April 7, 2014, 3:00 am
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Christie's recently sold a vampire hunting kit.  Nothing unusual there, but the "probably late 19th century" description is a nice bit of plausible denial.  Note, if you will, that the kit once again has stakes and implements made from re-profiled furniture legs.  That's something that's only started to show up in the last few years.  I suspect a single artist or group is producing all of these and using a cooperative dealer to front them to auction  houses.

When anyone claims that a vampire kit is an actual antique, rather than an entertaining example of contemporary assemblage art, they're being dishonest.  If they push the point simply ask for documentation of a single period example.


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Amulet of Talos

April 8, 2014, 3:00 am
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The Mummified Fairy Kit and DVD Workshop

April 8, 2014, 3:30 am
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On Saturday I featured Dan Baines' project on Kickstarter.  I'm happy to announce that he's now an official Propnomicon sponsor.

The funding drive for "The Derbyshire Mummified Fairy OOAK Kit & DVD Workshop" has already met it's base goal.  Now it's looking to hit some very nice stretch goals.  In addition to the physical kit bits they include some cool variations on the basic mummified fae theme.

As I said before, this is something I'm very supportive of.  Mr. Baines has an impeccable record for delivering on his projects.  More importantly, he's documenting something that hasn't received nearly enough exposure, forcing hobbyists to essentially re-invent the entire process over and over.   To be honest, I have a personal interest in the project's success.  Not only do I want to see this video, but I'd like to see followups tackling other creatures and specimens. 







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