Johnny Five Is Alive!

I recently purchased a model kit of the robot from the film short circuit. 

 

 This is how i got the kit from the website : wantedmall

lots of bits an no instructions what so ever. (this photo is from their website.) 

The kit is ok but the molds seem old and a bit tired so there is quite a bit of work involved to get it built and working properly. 

I also made myself a little butterfly for Johnny to look at. 

I dry built the kit (no glue) so i could take it apart for painting and tinkering. 

No Disassemble Johnny Five!  

So after i built him i took him apart again. 

I didnt take him apart fully i left him in as few parts as possible.

I masked off the bits that couldn't deal with paint. (electronics, lights and gears etc.) 

 

It was still quite a lot of bits! 

  

After  masking i painted the whole lot with a primer and then a metallic dark silver paint. i didn't think he should be painted chrome or bright silver so that's why i went with the dark silver.

  Again i rebuilt him into a few bigger parts and masked him off again, this time leaving just the parts that are to be metallic blue uncovered.

Now is the part that where i forgot to take photos..

 

After spraying the blue parts blue, I removed the masking and built johnny fully. 

i then used a few acrylic paints to do the details. black, brass, silver (chrome) and red. 

these details were found by looking at reference pics of the original robot from the films.

Below are some photos of my finished Johnny 5 robot. 

Crystal Chamber Reveal Lightsaber.

I have had a Graflex flash handle replica for well over ten years and back then i made a EL wire lightsaber and recently i dug it out and decided to make a nice crystal chamber reveal. (or at least i would try to do a nice crystal chamber reveal hilt, this is my attempt. )

The internals are made from brass discs, threaded road , brass washers and nuts and various electronics including LEDS and a sound board from etsy. 

Lightsaber with blade attached and the power off. 

Lightsaber with blade attached with the power on. (note the colour is not in anyway purple it is blue, but for some reason on this green background and my cameras oddness it has come out purple.)

Hilt opened and crystal revealed. 

Close up of the crystal. (again blue not purple) 

The crystal is made from a neutral quarts crystal.

Short video showing the operation of the hilt. 

There is a clash sensor in the sound board which causes all the LEDs to flash. 

Harley Quinn's Baseball Bat from Suicide Squad.

Recently my wife purchased a pair of the trainers worn by Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) in Suicide Squad, They are pretty awesome. She jokingly mentioned that I would have to make her the baseball bat that she uses in the film. 

Not to take a challenge lightly I made the baseball bat :) 

 

 I did a little googling and found a few images of the screen used bat. one such image had a full 360degree view of the bat.

 using this image and some others (im pretty sure they are replicas and souvenirs) they helped me work out what to put on the bat and the spacing for the main components.

Once i got a suitable bat that didnt have any markings or branding I measured the length and scaled the images i had to the right size so i could work out the size and position of the 'GOOD NIGHT' text on the front of the bat. 

 I traced out the lettering of 'GOOD NIGHT' and printed them out to the right size to match the bat. cut it up and taped it in position on the bat. this will be my guide for marking the words out on the bat.

Once the template was taped in place i wrapped some tracing paper round the bat and traced the words on the paper while it was all in place on the bat. 

 leaving one side of the tracing paper taped onto the bat so it would be returned into place, i used a soft 7B pencil to colour the back of the letters. 

When the tracing paper is wrapped back round the bat and traced over the lettering again, which transferred the soft pencil onto the bat.  (its like a home made sheet of carbon paper)

I then went over the faint pencil lines with a thin permanent pen.  

I then used a red permanent marker to fill the letters in red. (Im using red markers as it lets the grain of the bat show through and I feel its more like something Harley would do.)

 Using a non-permanent fibre tip pen and a cotton bud i coloured the edges in and blended the black into the letters to give them the airbrushed fade to black look seen in the source images. 

I wrapped some more tracing paper round the bat again, this time the join is over the letters on the front. 

The aim of this is to get a template for where the writing is going to be on the back of the bat. 

I traced round the sides of the letters this was so i could see where they were when i unrolled the paper. This was to allow me to get the spacing correct on the bat.

 

Using the template i wrote out the whole quote once just to get used to writing it and to try and get the spacing correct. 

I then did it with the pens i will finally do the bat with. this matters as the pens are thicker than the pencil i used first.

I wrote the words out a few times in the pen just so i knew i could do it when it came to putting it on the bat. 

I wrapped the tracing paper back onto the bat (using the outlines of the letters to align the paper correctly.) this was to make sure the spacing of my writing was correct and that it all lined up.

Once i felt confident that i could write the quote on the bat correctly I went about slowly writing the quote onto the bat.  

I started with the black and blue lettering, switching between them as i went along. 

The red lettering in the background of the quote was written last to make sure it was in the correct place.

 Using the tracing paper I wrapped the handle of the bat and marked out where the diamonds would be. I used the scaled image to get the dimensions correct. 

I took the paper off and marked out how the diamonds will look. thickening up the lines so they matched the screen used prop. 

Then using the colouring the back of the paper technique again I placed the design onto the handle of the bat. 

I then used some acrylic paint to fill in the lines. I started with white as other colours will go over it better if i make a mistake :)

The blue i originally used was a tad too dark once I painted the other colours so I used a lighter blue and I think it works a lot better. 

Once the paint had dried it was time to seal the bat. 

I took the bat out to the shed and gave it a couple of coats of clear gloss lacquer. This is to protect the paint job on the handle, and also it will make sure the pen wont run or smudge, even though it was done in permanent marker it still might get smudged but with the gloss clear coat over it it will stay fresh.

To put the grip on the bat i purchased some white rubber tennis racquet grip. The one I got was white and i thought (incorrectly) that it was blank. I had to wrap it funny in the middle to cover the dunlop logo as i didnt want it to be visible if the grip got dirty etc. 

I started wrapping at the base of the grip and then worked my way to close to the black lines on the bottom of the diamonds. The grip came with some black logo tape to secure the grip but i didnt like it so i used some white electrical PVC tape. it will age differently to other grip but i think it looks good. To match the top of the grip i wrapped some tape round the bottom as well.

 

Finished bat is all shiny and ready to get some folk for Mr J.

 

 

 Thank you for taking a look at my post about how i made Harley Quinn's bat from Suicide Squad. 

If you have any questions please feel free to ask and i will try my best to answer them. 

If you like Harley Quinn I have another post about how I made her Mallet. see HERE