Harley Quinn Mallet Write-Up

So this has been a well over due write up.
Having concluded the build several months ago I think it's time I take time to collect my thoughts and document the process.

The specific Harley Quinn Mallet I was attempting to emulate is the DC Universe Online Statue
references can be seen here: DC Universe Harley Quinn Statue

There's an interesting story behind this one which has allowed me a great learning experience. Originally this was being done as a pro-bono piece.  I know there's a lot of argument that could be had with pro-bono work, but in my early understanding of prop making I figured it would be good to help build the portfolio. (In hindsight it wasn't - more later). I met someone who had done previous cosplays and was interested doing a Harley Quinn, after several emails I suggest a mallet wouldn't be too difficult, again my naivete getting the best of me. A lot of the work was simple work, but work I had never done before. Enough with the negatives - onto the process. Having been such a long time I've lost a lot of my images so I will include what I can find.

The most important part here for me was scale, Harley tends to have over the top large scale props, with bigger props comes the challenge of keeping them lightweight. The first photo positioned above is to showcase the inner structure, which was cut on a laser cutter and utilizes a system of rib and notches to provide rigidity throughout the whole structure. In the same regard I wanted to be able to stabilize the handle portion, but the first challenge came in how to incorporate this into the inner structure as it was rounded.

The second picture, pictured above although similar in nature has the PVC connection more in focus. Having made a couple trips to the local hardware store and pondering often about the best was to do it, I found 2 pieces of PVC pipe that slide together (one inside the other) rather nicely, this would have you do. Still the problem presided with how to locate and mount. I had some Styrofoam left over from a previous project and that was something I could drill holes into as well as shape a rounded edge to. The downside, after doing the work was that it's also incredibly difficult to glue as solvent based glues like contact cement can melt the foam. I believe I ended up using a non solvent based PVC glue to adhere the pipe to the foam and the outer layer of foam.

Again to reiterate the goal of the project was to be lightweight, so having recently purchased the Foam Armorsmithing Vol: 1 - Design, Templating, & Fabrication book from Bill Doran of Punished props, I was inspired to work with EVA and other craft foams. (I purchased my foam tiles from Harbor Freight, roughly $7-12 for 4 tiles depending on sales etc) The foam was cut to the length and width of the inner structure, this was calculated with the circumference and then cut slightly longer. The marks along the seam of the foam were a tip from Evil Ted Smith, who does amazing foam work, to be used as a guide to help line your glue seems up. The foam was contact cemented to both itself and the wood inner structure, after having holes cut out [top and bottom] (forcing a sharpened piece of PVC through the foam) to accept the handle end of the PVC.

The ends of the mallet head being complete circles were also cut from EVA foam using a homemade circle cutting jig for my band-saw (pictured below) From there they were glued the same way with contact cement all around the edges and on the inner wooden structure, for a stronger bond.

 

A note about the jig for those interested. It's relatively simple to make, I made mine from scrap 1/2in MDF I had laying around, and a piece of Poplar for the t-slot rail. (Cut it to fit the size of your bandsaw table, I wanted the ability to do 26 inch circles if need be for the Skyrim wood shield inserts) The way the jig works is by finding half of the diameter you want to cut and marking it along the y axis. You bring the saw blade down from the X axis (this is cut the first time you slide the board through) until you contact at effectively 0,0. From there you slowly rotate your piece, pinned to the board around until a circle is cut, pull the job back and remove the piece. This leaves a small circle in your work, but that's a side effect I'm okay with. I can do a write-up on this in more detail if anyone requests it.

This is where I pretty much stopped taking good pictures (I had a lot of work I needed to do to meet a deadline and was also balancing school and work) I'll do my best to include photos as I go, likely iphone pictures.

The handle was cut from a length of 1in PVC. The exact size escapes my mind, but it needed to protrude from the top of the mallet head about 2 inches (to receive the top end of the (tree branch).
From the bottom down, the tree branch tapers. To achieve this effect, I cut a larger circle more than twice the thickness of the eva foam ensuring it's larger than the PVC pipe too. (I think I went with 3 inches overall)

The Handle was patterned out of Eva foam, cut out to incorporate the taper. Again the same markings were used to line the seems up. This was probably one of the harder things that came about from this project, because EVA foam isn't very flexible, I ended up taking a dremel tool with a grinding wheel to the back of the handle and carving a lot of the excess material out of the back so that it would wrap more easily. It got Contact Cemented together, and all of the foam bits were done.

Let's talk about how I got the wood grain into this piece. If you've had a look at the aforementioned reference images, those were the same images that I used in creating this. The weird thing about the mallet head is that it has a grain, it's not just bark, I couldn't just throw one of those images into Illustrator and vector trace to get the right lines. Instead I spent sometime looking in my every day to day life trying to find something that would emulate the grain I was looking for. Weirdly enough this came in the form of a fake wood grained Security Door on the second floor of where I work. I took a high quality picture with a nice DSLR and live traced it in Illustrator. Printed it out to scale roughly 6 sheets of 8.5x11 and lined up the seems (taping the back to prep them for wrapping around the mallet head). the wrap only needed to be temporary as I was going to effectively trace the lines I had given myself in the printed template, this was accomplished using a re-positionable spray adhesive. Below is a shot of the head of the mallet wrapped with the template.

The following picture is the head of the mallet with all of the groves cut into it. I did this with a standard exacto blade, and steady even pressure probably over the course of 20-30 minutes.  You'll notice that it's not very easy to see the seams, that's because its not finished yet. A tip I picked up from Will Morgan, and I intended to do with this piece is to apply heat to the seams (using a heat gun). This effectively shrinks the edges back and reveals the seams you just cut in.

Once heat gunning has been done, it's starting to look a lot better, huh?
And below is a shot of everything together before going into paint. The same cutting and heat gun techniques were used for the cap (not pictured) the front and back of the mallet head and the end of the handle.

Something I won't go into discussing a lot is the way I mended the seams, the contact cement really wasn't enough to hold the pieces together well. For a long time I debated, read articles, and went back and forth on a proper way to resolve this issue. ApoxieSculpt was my original idea and what I should have went with, instead I used a smooth-on product called FreeForm Habitat. I wasn't really happy with the process for mixing this stuff in small batches if I had needed a lot it would have been better. In the same regard spreading it evenly over the seams was a bit challenging (maybe lack of experience). But most importantly, it just might not have been the right tool for the job, the putty dried to a very hard consistency that I had to dremel sand it down, this resulted in several cases where the EVA foam was significantly softer and would be sanded before I got the putty to where I wanted it.  (in reference to sanding etc). It's still by no means perfect, but I got it to the best that I was able to within my means.

The paint is where I believe myself to be the weakest. Weathering, and emulating the different tonalities of wood is rather difficult in my eyes, especially in the case of the original mallet design very dark and neutral pallet.Everything got a coat of Kyrlon Fusion Brown. From there I mixed up a litle brown and brushed it/washed it over the cuts (grain pattern) it the head and handle. The following pictures shows the detail from it being not darkened, to having the black acrylics wash. In my opinion it definitely helps with popping the wood grain.

The only other things that were left to do were the 'metal' bandings. This I also did with foam, a thin craft foam (not 1/4 inch) purchased from Michaels in a large roll. I measured the size, cut and painted it with a metallic spray paint (same I was using for the destiny hunter knifes). They got super glued to the piece, and viola it was finished. Like I said I wanted to add more weathering but wasn't comfortable with the pallet, maybe it's something I will address in the future. 

If you read this far, you're probably still wondering why this piece has such a negative connotation too it. Well you probably could have guessed it, but the person who I was doing this work for, and mind you it took me a decent amount of hours and a bit of money to produce, bailed. I told them the piece was finished (over the course of the build we had been in communication) but once that final email was sent, nothing. Pretty fucked up, but shame on me for thinking the world is the great place I want to believe it to be. Fortunately, It's a piece I can add to my portfolio, and once I know someone (personally) who may want to cosplay that era Harley, I will definitely let them use it, so I can get some good photos.

I will post the finished photos in a separate post, as this one has surely gone on for far to long.

As always if you have any questions, comments, concerns, ideas, etc please feel free to comment, or send me an email.

Cheers,
Kevin