Perhaps you've seen the quote attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that states "Art is never finished, only abandoned."
I've abandoned quite a few prop projects over the years, and while I have revisited a couple here and there (only to abandon them again, usually), I think I can call this one done. Maybe not *done* as I might have originally intended - pretty sure this will be a one-off... while a younger, more ambitious me might have done a run of them.
This will be going to a good friend, who has been persistent is his pestering of me throughout the years to finish the damned thing. Hopefully he will be happy with it. (as much as I will be happy with him not pestering me about it anymore
)
Anyway, here's where I started with this project, all of 11 years ago (yep, I checked the dates on the pics, and that's how long it's been!) Even earlier than that by a few years, I used to offer castings with a lineage back to a Crysknife from the production of the film.
I can't remember if it was me or this particular friend (it was probably him) who proposed a "what if..." challenge, wherein I would re-create a Crysknife sheath that was in a deleted scene from the film. It was wielded in the scene by Shadout Mapes - played by Linda Hunt - and my only real reference was a photo in a book and a few blurry screen-caps...
So I set about sculpting a rough shape in clay on top of one of my Crysknife castings...
Which I then made a quick waste mold of, to cast a hard copy that I could refine even further...
When I was done with the hard copy I re-molded that, and that mold allowed me to slush cast a final hollow version of the sheath.
The next challenge was to alter the shape of the Crysknife slightly, so that it would actually fit inside the sheath nicely. The main problem was the "hump" present in the original Crysknife just forward of the metal collar separating the blade from the grip - that hump had to go, otherwise the sheath would have to be paper-thin in that spot.
My goal in doing the sheath was to make it in a way that would create a single continous contour, as it transitioned from sheath to knife, much like the original concept drawing:
With a casting of the Crysknife altered to fit the sheath, I re-molded that to cast the final version... which didn't really fit all that great.
Besides the obvious less-than-perfect alignment of the collars on the sheath and knife, there was also the conundrum of getting the sheath to stay on the knife. I didn't want to rely on a friction fit, at the risk of ruining the painted metallic finish that the collar on the knife would eventually have. I tinkered with some very thin rare earth magnets embedded in both knife and sheath, and while they did provide *some* holding power, I wasn't exactly wowed by the solution. And it was at around that point that I abandoned the project...
But now it's finished. I punched in a couple more magnets, and grafted a small piece onto the collar of the sheath to make it line up a little better with the collar on the knife. Yeah, it's not 100% perfect, but I'm happy enough with it.
And this piece of art is finished. Up yours, Leonardo!
I've abandoned quite a few prop projects over the years, and while I have revisited a couple here and there (only to abandon them again, usually), I think I can call this one done. Maybe not *done* as I might have originally intended - pretty sure this will be a one-off... while a younger, more ambitious me might have done a run of them.
This will be going to a good friend, who has been persistent is his pestering of me throughout the years to finish the damned thing. Hopefully he will be happy with it. (as much as I will be happy with him not pestering me about it anymore
)Anyway, here's where I started with this project, all of 11 years ago
(yep, I checked the dates on the pics, and that's how long it's been!) Even earlier than that by a few years, I used to offer castings with a lineage back to a Crysknife from the production of the film.I can't remember if it was me or this particular friend (it was probably him) who proposed a "what if..." challenge, wherein I would re-create a Crysknife sheath that was in a deleted scene from the film. It was wielded in the scene by Shadout Mapes - played by Linda Hunt - and my only real reference was a photo in a book and a few blurry screen-caps...
So I set about sculpting a rough shape in clay on top of one of my Crysknife castings...
Which I then made a quick waste mold of, to cast a hard copy that I could refine even further...
When I was done with the hard copy I re-molded that, and that mold allowed me to slush cast a final hollow version of the sheath.
The next challenge was to alter the shape of the Crysknife slightly, so that it would actually fit inside the sheath nicely. The main problem was the "hump" present in the original Crysknife just forward of the metal collar separating the blade from the grip - that hump had to go, otherwise the sheath would have to be paper-thin in that spot.
My goal in doing the sheath was to make it in a way that would create a single continous contour, as it transitioned from sheath to knife, much like the original concept drawing:
With a casting of the Crysknife altered to fit the sheath, I re-molded that to cast the final version... which didn't really fit all that great.
Besides the obvious less-than-perfect alignment of the collars on the sheath and knife, there was also the conundrum of getting the sheath to stay on the knife. I didn't want to rely on a friction fit, at the risk of ruining the painted metallic finish that the collar on the knife would eventually have. I tinkered with some very thin rare earth magnets embedded in both knife and sheath, and while they did provide *some* holding power, I wasn't exactly wowed by the solution. And it was at around that point that I abandoned the project...
But now it's finished. I punched in a couple more magnets, and grafted a small piece onto the collar of the sheath to make it line up a little better with the collar on the knife. Yeah, it's not 100% perfect, but I'm happy enough with it.
And this piece of art is finished. Up yours, Leonardo!
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