Edward Scissorhands those are your hands?

logan74k

Well-Known Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
Just throwing out there Work in Progress for my latest project. These aren't the first replica out there, and surely won't be the last! I haven't dared tackle them up to this point for a few reasons, among them a lack of excellent reference and the sheer daunting wall of their complexity and number of parts. So far I count 27 unique pieces with varying complexity, just on one hand! I tip my hat to all the makers I've seen tackle these seriously.

scaling.jpgscan.jpg
A bit of the madness of Photoshop scaling, and my rough scan of screen used gloves.

As of this moment I'm about 13 parts in, and I'm focusing first on the right hand primarily, as it's more complex and has more pieces which need fabricating. That said, I've already finished the spidery bone attachments for both hands as if I'm seeing correctly there are only 3 unique constructs of those, with 8 unique pieces.

bones.jpg
These were intimidating but I think I got them all figured out. The screen used pieces appear to use braided wire cast (or glued) into the ends of each piece to function as joints. The solidity of each termination's mounting to the hands provides the stability to the assembly. 5/8 washers are cast into ends that get screwed down and 3/16 brass rods are cast into the ends of the thin straight 'bones' to mount to posts cast into the scissors or bolts screwed to the cuffs. At first I thought the joints were something very fiddly like miniature machined pieces and pins, but my new best hypothesis is much more likely. I'd really have to handle original pieces to be certain but I'm pretty close.

I also finished (including printing and finishing) the standoffs for the right arm (left arm has none) as well as a boom arm for the long right hand spring. These parts are so small and never seen in detail on screen, so getting quality reference for them was a chore.

standoffs.jpgriser.jpg

The plan is to go full monty on this replica, including all the same bits and bobs used on the film hands. This includes stainless wire, shear springs, Crimp style ring terminals, washers and brass rod cast into the bone attachments, 1/4-20 bolts cast into the hand castings, and a custom steel D ring for the right wrist. The blades will be vacuum metalized for the chrome look just as the film blades were. They will be wearable, but I myself don't have big cosplay plans!

right.jpg
Right gauntlet WIP - still needs final touches here and there. Matching these 100% is quite a project without access to original pieces, as they have a lot of compound curves and subtle surfaces. Even as a huge fan of the movie, seeing them bare looks almost wrong since they're buried in handles and rarely seen up close on screen. Some of you are probably even looking at this and saying to yourselves "THAT's not what the hands look like" I've been studying them for weeks now and discover new subtleties every day. Hard bevels twisting 90 degrees around details and things like that. HMS Mike did a great service to the fans in posting near-orthographic views of a raw casting of these parts, without which it would be nearly impossible to make sense of some of the geometry looking only at images of finished hands. Even with decent photos, all the attachments and blades block a lot of detail. I think I'll suck these in slightly, output and do an oil based clay glaze on them to get the high fidelity 'hammered' homemade look of the actual pieces. The grommets and miniature screw details will be real pieces added to the master before molding, much as I did with my earlier Immortan Joe mask.

I can also say with confidence that these will be exactly the same size as the film used gauntlets and blades. I mean at least within 5% or better. On top of being able to scale consistently off of the common-sized hardware used on the gloves, I was able to build a (very) rough 3d scan of the real thing, as well as careful photoshop study using JD's height cross referenced with a genuine scissorhands moon buckle casting to triple check sizing. FInally, double checking fit compared to my own hand.

The digital buck I'm sculpting over in Zbrush here is actually a 100% scale 3d scan of my hand, which ensures proper anatomical proportions. I actually started with a 3d model of a hand I had laying around and quickly found it unconvincing, even though it looked like a pretty decent model. In hindsight I'm super glad I did the scan as it highlighted the inherent strange angle between a hand bent in that position and the forearm, which isn't immediately obvious. It helped make sense of the strap loop at the back jutting off to the side like it does.

Thanks for looking! And anyone out there is truly comfortable with leather work I'm on the lookout for somebody to help me realize the leather cuffs properly. I'm mulling a very limited run to make the cost of metalizing worthwhile.
 
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Thanks man!

right2.jpg
Caught a few major issues, did some further refining on Gauntlet 1. It's really a pretty elegant form. Finally getting close to the stage where I place hardware divots for drilling into the print.

It's been a winding journey gathering reference for these, and I've found a few interesting tales along the way. Scissorhand tidbit time:

-Michael Jackson owned an original pair of Scissorhands from the film (Incidentally these are one of two authentic sets I've seen go up for auction)

-At some point extra castings were either pulled or rejects/extras from filming used to build an unknown number of 'new' sets of "original" scissorhands. I'm hesitant to say these were Winston employees but who knows. These have surfaced occasionally and are almost always being sold as 'screen used'. For example:

Profiles-in-History-Hollywood-Auction-40-High-Resolution-Photo-Prop-Costume-Movie-TV-Preview-043.jpg
They are easily discerned from actual screen used pieces on account the leather cuffs are simplfiied and "new" looking, much of the hardware is missing, and everything is simply painted silver and weathered with a black wash. It's clear they were assembled by somebody who didn't know what goes where. Compare it to Jackson's authentic set for contrast:

Actions-MJ-HQ-michael-jackson-16230376-1940-2560.jpg

Original gloves have chrome/vacuum metalized blades, a subtle weathered paint job with blues and copper tones, and a sniktload of hardware bits and bobs.

- Finally, the set that just sold in London had a bunch of issues the purchaser (130K) probably doesn't know about. It's such a busy piece it's very easy to overlook big issues. He didn't even have his main belt - the moon buckle was mounted to one of his chest belts. Right foot has a broken off toe rand. His shoulder brooch assembly, cleverly sussed out previously online, is gone. One of his neck buckles is a replacement, strangely mirrored from what it should be. There are more, but among the issues with the hands:

- Mangled blade bases, where the fingers enter the plastic is very thin and broken away in a lot of places. Possibly brittle from age and years of forcing them on stiff mannequin fingers did no favors.
- Missing right palm, the palms seem to be separate pieces glued in place... his left was generally intact but the right was missing completely. The thumb pads were deteriorated and partially restored with new-looking leather pieces.
- Replacement hardware, the original gloves look to have a mix of wingnut types, where these were all newer style and at least one of the standoff screws was incorrect. I'm less sure of this one as the exact arrangement could have changed during the course of filming but I know there should be some old mickey mouse style wingnuts somewhere on there, and there aren't.
- Assembled wrong, sometimes very wrong - this wouldn't be a big deal except one of the spidery bone joints is epoxied to a random part of the right gauntlet. I guess they thought, "this could go... here!" and got to gluing. Sadly, the piece they epoxied on doesn't even belong on that hand.

Welp, that's about all I've got for tonight, hope that was a worthy diversion. More progress as I make it! Next up... probably a blade or two.
 
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Just throwing out there Work in Progress for my latest project. These aren't the first replica out there, and surely won't be the last! I haven't dared tackle them up to this point for a few reasons, among them a lack of excellent reference and the sheer daunting wall of their complexity and number of parts. So far I count 27 unique pieces with varying complexity, just on one hand! I tip my hat to all the makers I've seen tackle these seriously.

View attachment 848853View attachment 848854
A bit of the madness of Photoshop scaling, and my rough scan of screen used gloves.

As of this moment I'm about 13 parts in, and I'm focusing first on the right hand primarily, as it's more complex and has more pieces which need fabricating. That said, I've already finished the spidery bone attachments for both hands as if I'm seeing correctly there are only 3 unique constructs of those, with 8 unique pieces.

View attachment 848852
These were intimidating but I think I got them all figured out. The screen used pieces appear to use braided wire cast (or glued) into the ends of each piece to function as joints. The solidity of each termination's mounting to the hands provides the stability to the assembly. 5/8 washers are cast into ends that get screwed down and 3/16 brass rods are cast into the ends of the thin straight 'bones' to mount to posts cast into the scissors or bolts screwed to the cuffs. At first I thought the joints were something very fiddly like miniature machined pieces and pins, but my new best hypothesis is much more likely. I'd really have to handle original pieces to be certain but I'm pretty close.

I also finished (including printing and finishing) the standoffs for the right arm (left arm has none) as well as a boom arm for the long right hand spring. These parts are so small and never seen in detail on screen, so getting quality reference for them was a chore.

View attachment 848855View attachment 848863

The plan is to go full monty on this replica,Torrentin cluding all the same bits and bobs used on the film hands.TurboTax This includes stainless wire, shear springs, Crimp style ring terminals, Gogoanime washers and brass rod cast into the bone attachments, 1/4-20 bolts cast into the hand castings, and a custom steel D ring for the right wrist. The blades will be vacuum metalized for the chrome look just as the film blades were. They will be wearable, but I myself don't have big cosplay plans!

View attachment 848856
Right gauntlet WIP - still needs final touches here and there. Matching these 100% is quite a project without access to original pieces, as they have a lot of compound curves and subtle surfaces. Even as a huge fan of the movie, seeing them bare looks almost wrong since they're buried in handles and rarely seen up close on screen. Some of you are probably even looking at this and saying to yourselves "THAT's not what the hands look like" I've been studying them for weeks now and discover new subtleties every day. Hard bevels twisting 90 degrees around details and things like that. HMS Mike did a great service to the fans in posting near-orthographic views of a raw casting of these parts, without which it would be nearly impossible to make sense of some of the geometry looking only at images of finished hands. Even with decent photos, all the attachments and blades block a lot of detail. I think I'll suck these in slightly, output and do an oil based clay glaze on them to get the high fidelity 'hammered' homemade look of the actual pieces. The grommets and miniature screw details will be real pieces added to the master before molding, much as I did with my earlier Immortan Joe mask.

I can also say with confidence that these will be exactly the same size as the film used gauntlets and blades. I mean at least within 5% or better. On top of being able to scale consistently off of the common-sized hardware used on the gloves, I was able to build a (very) rough 3d scan of the real thing, as well as careful photoshop study using JD's height cross referenced with a genuine scissorhands moon buckle casting to triple check sizing. FInally, double checking fit compared to my own hand.

The digital buck I'm sculpting over in Zbrush here is actually a 100% scale 3d scan of my hand, which ensures proper anatomical proportions. I actually started with a 3d model of a hand I had laying around and quickly found it unconvincing, even though it looked like a pretty decent model. In hindsight I'm super glad I did the scan as it highlighted the inherent strange angle between a hand bent in that position and the forearm, which isn't immediately obvious. It helped make sense of the strap loop at the back jutting off to the side like it does.

Thanks for looking! And anyone out there is truly comfortable with leather work I'm on the lookout for somebody to help me realize the leather cuffs properly. I'm mulling a very limited run to make the cost of metalizing worthwhile.
Wooow awesome i love that
 
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Thanks Nick - Well, I've got to do better than an update a week! The last round of inspections caught some fresh inaccuracies which I believe are about all sorted with the right hand now. On top of that, 2 blades down, 9 to go. This first blade was extra tricky because out of all of them, its the only one with geometry that relates to the glove itself as well as the blade next to it. It also has perhaps the least wiggle room for a finger, coming down to near zero thickness on the sides at the tip of the pointer.

One of the big questions for me is the best way to carve out finger space in these fingers - I'd be very curious to see how Winston did it. I'm assuming they built the fingers on a cast of Depp's hand. Trying to make mine slightly more universal, I'd like the finger holes to be slightly larger than my own fingers, but doing so basically means scaling up the width of every blade to make space. I'll probably inflate and smooth my hand scan slightly for the remaining fingers to create a good universal buck to boolean out of the blade sculpts. This first pointer was brutal though, even scaled up slightly in width there's just no left/right wiggle room. Depp must have smallish hands. Will confirm next time I'm at Grauman's.

Anyway looking forward to the next blade and its giant scissor handle, I understand how naked the hands look without a dozen blades sticking out!
 
So yeah it's been a minute, but I've found a little bit of spare time recently due to ...well, you know.
Long overdue progress on some gloves. Funny what 10 weeks of quarantine can do.

All parts are printed, all fingers are assembled and bodyshopped, gauntlets are in final finishing and the spiders and leather cuffs are up next.

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"I'm not finished!"

If anybody has a good reference for leather work, I'd love to hear about it. Shoot me a PM. I have patterns made and searching for a talented leatherworker to do prototypes and, maybe, a limited run. Cheers guys!
 
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Thanks guys. Finally finished a prototype of these hands. Worked up a short list of refinements and notes for a final version... Need a better flexible metallic paint for one. Final blades will be cast in task 8, heat cured and vacuum metalized. At long last a final version is just around the corner! Still looking for a reliable leatherworker for final cuffs.
 

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I don’t know what I’m more impressed with...your hands or your face! Your makeup job looks amazing!
 
Thanks a lot fellas! I'm excited to get some final images soon. I'd pick the hands Funky they took literally 1000x longer :unsure: :lol:
 
Hey Sapper - thanks - stay tuned for future location work! We are out of Chicago but made a quick trip last summer. We did check out both, the second photo is from the driveway of Jim's house. We also had the good fortune to check out the Bogg's house. Pretty neat!
 

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