Indiana Jones Bag

I recently added another piece to my Indiana Jones prop collection as part of a trade.  It’s a replica Mark VII gas mask bag from WWII, other wise known as Indiana Jones’ bag.  Or, if you want to be facetious (and I know you do), his murse.  Mine is one of the better made replicas from Indy Magnoli, a well-known Indiana Jones replica maker with some excellent crafting skills.  The strap is from Risu, a member of the RPF.

If you’ve ever seen an Indiana Jones film, you’ll know about the bag.  It’s part of his standard adventuring gear, same as his hat, gun and whip.  It featured prominently in two parts of the series, once in Temple of Doom on the fight over the river where it held the sacred Sankara Stones and once when it got caught on the side of a tank in the Last Crusade.   Strangely the bag shown in the Temple of Doom fight is a totally different bag, modified to fit pyrotechnics so that it could be burned up as part of the story of the stones.  You can read more about the different bags at the IndyGear.com website, if you’re interested, as well as a ton of information on other Indiana Jones props.

Raiders of the Lost Ark	Replica Bag
Interior	Strap Detail

LEGO™ Men!

When I was a kid, I used to play with Lego all the time.  I would spread it out all over the floor and build a lot of the usual stuff, picking through the blocks, building and rebuilding loads of awesome things.  At one point, I was given an old wooden briefcase in which to keep the blocks, and it was great.  My parents hated it, of course.  They’d constantly be stepping on sharp bits or stepping over the sprawling castle I’d build right in front of the tv.  Best of all, the rattle of my sorting through the blocks looking for the right part would drive them nuts.

Well, I’m older now and haven’t played with Lego in years.  I still have the briefcase filled with the stuff in the bottom of my wardrobe, but it has sat there for a long time without being opened.

I do, however, play computer games and I am also a fan of Star Wars and Indiana Jones.  You’d know this if you’ve read any of my previous posts.

Both of those titles have been represented in Lego before and I’ve played (and enjoyed) the computer games of both Indy and Star Wars.  You might think they’re for kids, and you’re probably right, but they’re still mad fun and I enjoyed every last minute.  They also got me thinking about Lego again, after all these years.

While poking around various shops, I was seeing boxes of Star Wars Lego and Indiana Jones sets, but they were all had pretty high prices and I didn’t take the bait.  I really only wanted to pick up a little figure or something to stick up on the top of the computer.  I wasn’t going to buy a $40 dollar set to get just the one item, so I let it lie for a while.

Then one day I discovered a website called Bricklink.  They’re an online community of Lego enthusiasts who also trade in single pieces.  I held off for a while, thinking it was pretty stupid and childish for me to go and buy some Lego at my age.  But screw it.  I broke.

I blame Stig.

If you don’t know, the Stig is the tame racing driver from tv’s Top Gear.  Clad in a white racing suit and white helmet, he test drives all the cars they review on the show.  He also never speaks.  Needless to say, he’s utterly cool and has a fan following all of his own.

Anyway, to me, putting Stig in Lego made obvious sense, and since I was going to plunge back into my childhood in a big way, I’d have to go overboard.

I also picked out the parts for the Indiana Jones figure I’d been playing with in the computer game, and added a familiar pair of TV characters.  Because I was going overboard, I also added the Ghost Busters and in my warped mind, making a badass war hero out of Lego was just hilarious, I also picked parts for Lego Rambo.

Using Brinklink to pick out the parts was a much bigger process than I had first anticipated.  Brinklink is made up of many, many stores all over the world, and none of them have every single part.  I spent hours browsing through plastic faces and body parts to find just the right ones for the characters I was making and laid each brick out in a spreadsheet.

Then I went through the stores and totaled up the stores with most parts, for least amount of purchases and price.  Even though it took a long time, it was fun to do.  In the end I think I got about 9 different packets through the post over a course of two weeks.  Some parts came from Hong Kong and some from France, the USA and the UK.  I later added a set of black flat plates I could stick to the top of my monitor as a stand.

Once the parts were here, and after many strange looks from my Postie, I put the characters together.  Stig is my favourite for sure, followed by Rambo.

Digging through the old suitcase full of Lego I also salvaged parts for Captain Kirk.  I prefer the new style flesh coloured faces rather than the old school yellow, but you take what you get.  There’s something to be said for old school. I made the uniform by printing it onto some mailing labels, carefully cutting it out and sticking it on.  If you look closely you can see it’s a sticker, but that’s how they did it in the old days.  Old School!

I’ve pretty much kicked the Lego habit now, and did what I set out to do. The old wooden box is back in the cupboard again where it will likely stay for another few decades.  Although… A Lego Jack Bauer might be on the cards.  Maybe.

LEGO™ Stig	LEGO™ Indiana Jones
LEGO™ Rambo	LEGO™ Captain Kirk
LEGO™ Mythbusters	LEGO™ Ghost Busters

Crystal Skull

The latest prop acquisition is perhaps the most stupid I’ve bought, because I don’t really have anywhere to put it, and I didn’t really like the movie it was from anyway.  Yeah ok… It’s still pretty cool.  It’s a crystal skull from the latest Raiders movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  It’s made from clear resin and is really big and heavy.  While not nearly as huge as the one in the film, it’s plenty big enough for me, coming close to 40cm long and maybe 17cm wide and tall.  It’s hollow underneath, which is fine because I bought a really nice LED light I can put under it to make it glow in an eerie fashion.  I probably wouldn’t have worried about it if it were just featured in the movie, but I’ve long been interested in the real crystal skulls found around the world and said to be made by various cultures.  Like most things mystical and strange, there’s a lot of untruths out there, but it makes for some interesting reading.

Crystal Skull

Computer, Idol Map & Tolkien Hobbit Map

Finally, I’ve got the new computer and can get on with finishing some of my projects.  The computer arrived in two huge boxes, and actually didn’t take  very long to set up.  Windows was already installed so I simply had to register it and begin the tedious process of installing all of my own programs, games and so forth.  It took a while because I like things set up in a particular way, and I tend to save a lot of things both on the desktop and in the Documents folder.  Both of those live on the C: drive, but because I bought an SSD (Solid State Drive) for the main disk, I was worrried I’d fill it up pretty quickly.

To that end, I moved my Documents and Desktop locations to one of the three 1TB drives I have inside.  Only the core OS will stay on the SSD to keep it as tidy as possible.  After that I installed a few games and my essential programs and began to tinker with everything else.

A great choice I made when I bought the PC was to pick up a Vantec SATA/IDE to USB adapter.  This little gizmo plugs into a hard disk and allows you to plug it into a USB port.  I used it to copy all my old hard disk files to the new 1TB disks so I’d have some access to my old files.  It’s only USB2.0 so the transfer takes a while, but it’s so handy to be able to do that without having to install them inside the case.

Vantec USB Adapter

I’m also really impressed with the case.  The amount of airflow is ridiculous.  It’s got all the cable tied up against the back wall and if you look in the front vent you can see right through the computer out the back vents.  It stays so cool too. I’m really happy with it.  The one annoying thing is the amount of lights.  They don’t need all those damned lights.

Epson is my printer manufacturer of choice, and I bought an x710W photo printer.  It was pretty cheap considering all the different stuff it can do. It’s also getting really hard to find a printer than prints on CD/DVD. I’m really happy with it.

Having the printer set up allowed me to finally frame up the maps I’ve talked about in earlier entries.  The frames only cost me $19 each but they’re really big and decent quality.  I picked up some coloured and black card from the newsagent for a backing and printed out labels to describe each map.  I still need to work out what I’m going to do with the huge Middle Earth map but I’m happy with the results of the other two.

Finally there’s the pepakura or papercraft models.  I’ve only done a K-9 model from Dr Who and it turned out ok. I’m not 100% happy with it though so I’m not posting it here.  I’m not really happy with my folding ability yet.  That sounds kind of stupid, but getting crisp lines and neat edges so you can’t tell it’s paper is really hard.  More practice I suppose.  Cutting out the shapes is tedious so I tend to work slowly.  Impatience is usually how I mess things up so I must force myself to go slowly.

See you next time.

Raiders Temple Map

Thror's Map

Getting Crafty

If you’ve read the previous entries to this blog, you’ll know I’ve been getting into movie props and the like, particularly maps.   I’ve found some nice frames that don’t cost the earth, and I’ve been working on some other things as well.

First is one I didn’t make.  Hell, I wish I could.  I’ve had possession of the Gold Idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark for many years now, and at the time my friend bought a replica of the Headpiece to the Staff of Ra at the same time.  The Staff of Ra is used by Indiana Jones to find the location of the Ark of the Covenant, and before that it’s carried on a chain by Indy’s ex flame Marion Ravenwood.  The Headpiece plays a large part in the movie, much larger than the Gold Idol and I finally got a hold of one that was within my price range.  When I got it, it was a bright shiny gold, and since the original prop isn’t bright gold, and actually made of brass,  I carefully used some brown and black paint to age it.  I’m really happy with how it turned out.

The second item is a Space Marine purity seal from the Warhammer 40,000 universe.  The Space Marines are super soldiers living in a future universe in a constant battle against the forces of Chaos, the scheming Eldar and the Ork hordes. The Space Marines wear huge power armour and follow in the footsteps of the mighty God-Emperor of Mankind.   Each Chapter, or battle-group of Space Marines have their own unique characteristics and each fan will have their own favourites.  Originally starting as a series of board and table top games by Games Workshop, the 40K universe has since expanded into books, multiple game forms including PC and Console and soon it will hit the screens as a motion picture.

Space Marines are very devout and the technology they use is a mix of magic and machine with heavy splashes of religion.  Because it’s a little out of my league to build a full set of Space Marine armour, I decided to try making a purity seal.  These seals are worn on the armour or weapon of a Space Marine and are covered in prayers and litanies to help protect them in battle.  There are various designs and prayers, all of which do certain tasks.  To be given a purity seal is a great honour.   To make it, I used a blob of DAS modelling clay, flattened out a ball and sculpted the skull with various sculpting tools.  I think the originals are some sort of wax, or at least that’s the impression I get.   To that end I tried to make mine look a bit blobby and ‘pressed in’ like a seal should be.  I never was much of a sculptor, but it looks ok to me.  Once dry I painted it up with acrylic paints and highlighted the high parts and washed the low parts to give it a more 3d and wax look.  Once that dried I hit it with a coat of clear spray to protect it.

The parchment is just a litany I found on the web and positioned in Publisher.  I printed it out and trimmed the edges and aged it with my trusty coffee.

Finally I’ve been working on yet another map, this one is Thror’s map to the Lonely Mountain from the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  There are a bunch of versions of this map around, and the one in the Lord of the Rings movie is different to the one shown in the original book.  To that end, I decided to go with the one in the book as I think it looks more hand-made.  I tidied it up and changed the red parts to red in Photoshop, added the border and faded out the runes.  The runes are only meant to show up in moonlight or something.  On my print-out they’re still visible, but only if you look really hard.   I took it off to Officeworks to get it printed, as my computer still has no printer set up.  I think the ink will run anyway.

So, once printed I soaked it in coffee, just one application this time as it’s not as worn as the other maps, and tore up the edges and made the folds.  I used much the same technique as suggested by Jheilman of the RPF forum, but modified it a little to suit myself.  His map looks great, but it’s the one from the movie which I really didn’t want.   Once trimmed up I put it in one of the frames I bought.  No pictures yet because I haven’t make the little plaque for it yet since I have no printer.  I have some test plaques done, but I’m not 100% sure what I’ll go with. I need to see them printed and in the frame first.

I’ll show you once I’m finished.  Here’s some pics-

Sallah examines the Headpiece	My Headpiece Prop
Purity Seal	Space Marine Miniature
Thror's Map (Partially Aged)	Plaque

See you next time!

Idol Map

A few posts ago I told you about the Raiders of the Lost Ark map I picked up from the net which I intended to age.  I have since done so, using the coffee and tearing methods I’ve talked about previously.

The map is from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the opening scene, where Indiana Jones travels through the jungles of Peru with his treacherous companions in search of the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol.  While the map is never seen from the front, I think I’d done some decent work with the tears so that it looks genuine enough.  The drawing of the map was done by a fellow named Pat Riley.

I’ve found the best way to tear edges, which I was having trouble with, is to do it first.  Roll the paper and press one of the top ‘tube’ ends together, then make a tear.    Repeat for the other end and then re-roll it the other way, so that the un-torn edges become the tube ends.   Tear those.    You should end up with decent edge rips on all four sides of the paper.

To darken it, and on all my map attempts I’ve wanted them really dark, use REALLY strong coffee mixture.  I think it the past I’ve been using too little or too thinned coffee, which required too many applications.  The more applications or coats, the more tearing and sticking you’re going to get and it will end up screwing up your paper.   So for heavy darkness, few coats, but really thick.

Also sun drying really helps.  Don’t bother trying it on a cool or cloudy day as the results aren’t the same.  Full sun and fast drying seems to work the best.  I guess you could oven bake it, but I’ve never bothered.   Here is the frame with the finished map, less cardboard backing and plaque.  Sorry once again for the shit pictures. I really need to do this in daylight.

Map to the Temple of the Chachapoyan Idol

Anyway, my Raider’s Idol map is complete and just how I want it, and I picked up a frame today that fits pretty well.   When my new printer is installed (when the new PC arrives!) I may create a little plaque to go in a corner which will explain the map’s history or something.  That isn’t written in stone yet.   I need to get some backing card for the frame. I’m thinking a really dark crimson or maybe black.   I’ll try both and see which looks the best.