Commission work : BRS katana (Kaito ver)

A commission work for a Singapore doll owner, this prop is modeled after the popular Black Rock Shooter series. However it is not for the usual female character but for the male Kaito variant instead.

Possibly the 1st SD-sized prop I have ever created and having no SD of my own to gauge and measure, a lot of it is done purely on numbers alone. Now... would this give me a perfect excuse to get a SD doll ? Haha.

As this is a commission work, I will not touch much on the WIP process.

Please enjoy the following gallery !

A little WIP section here

The katana (in pieces)

The katana and scabbard before painting

Thank you for viewing !
Feedback and comments welcomed.

Project : Original Variant - Raising Heart Force Halberd form (Further WIP+Mistake)

Everybody has their fair share of hit or miss, in this post I will be showing a mistake I made and how I improvise the prop on the mistake. I will also be touching a bit on how I glue the base shape together.

Here we go !

A simple enough process, I personally find sticking pieces of gunpla strips together is one of the harder things to do. While other mistakes could be easily rectify via sanding or using compound putty to cover over, the mistake of sticking gunpla strips pressured unevenly together and causing it to wrap sideways is almost impossible to recover from. After experimenting with various ways to maintain constant pressure during the process, the above picture is my way of doing it. I'm not sure if it is documented anywhere but hey, if it works I'm going to keep using it till I come across a better way.

The result of oversanding, I had to cut off the entire section and redo the tip. Mistake made but recoverable. One needs to be flexible and creative in recovering from mistakes rather than redoing the entire project and usually there are ways to do so.

A close up shot of the repaired blade tip compared against a traditional shaped katana tip. My tips are usually shaped in the temper patterns of yakitsume or o-maru as they are the easiest ones to reproduce.

A shot of Shia holding the WIP halberd. Not a great shot but demonstrates the prop potential in poses. 

Thank you for viewing !

Project : Original Variant - Raising Heart Force Halberd form (Completed)

The follow-up to the WIP post, this is the gallery post that I showcase the completed prop. In addition, I also did a few shots with the Raising Heart Force Blade form that I have previously posted before. Please enjoy the following series of photos.

Thank you for viewing !

Project : Original Variant - Raising Heart Force Halberd form (WIP)

The completed halberd

Here I am back again with another original variant of the Nanoha series. This time I'm challenging a new kind of weapon, namely the halberd.

Crafting a polearm kind of weapon has always been a problem for me, the selection of a shaft sturdy enough to withstand handling as well as being light and slender to be wielded by a MSD. Various issues of weight balance also comes into play such as the joining of the weapon head (in this instance, it is a blade) to the shaft is just an example of what I faced.

This also marks the first project that I complete the airbrushing by myself without guidance from my mentor. I felt pretty intimidated at first but overall it has been a wonderful experience and I must say I have fallen in love with airbrushing.

I have also taken more of my WIP process, so feel free to leave any comments and questions behind and I will try my best to answer them.

The base blade

Closeup of the blade tip

Finished base design with details

Finished base design with details (Sorry for the blurriness)

Finished design with base coat

Finished design with base coat

The full prop before painting

Thank you for viewing !

Project : Original Variant - Raising Heart Force Blade form (Posing and Weight)

While the buster sword is broad and a bit short, this project experiments with material rigidity. The entire sword is over 30cm long and I want to see how it can hold up. My swords are not of a monolithic design, therefore weight is an issue when joining the hilt to the blade itself.

The blade itself is stiff and does not wrap under its own weight. To achieve this, I used a layered piece instead of a thick piece of pla-plate on its own. I find that a single thick piece has a tendency to be less rigid toward the tip of the blade and is good up to 15cm personally. This holds true only for thickness of 0.5mm and 1mm pla-plates which I commonly uses. Recently I have seen 2mm and 3mm thick pla-plate popping up at the regular store where I get my supplies so I might test them out, time permitting.

I will do up a short post on my material experiments if there is interest.

Shia in an alter Nanoha costume with Raising Heart Force Blade

As we can see from the photo, the blade should be able to be pose regularly in most positions without much of a weight issue.

Competition photo

Last I will leave you with a shot for a photo competition I took part some years back but sadly didn't get into the top 10.

Here we come to the end of this series of posts for this project, thank you for viewing !

Project : Original Variant - Raising Heart Force Blade form (Completed)

This is the gallery post where I put up pictures of the completed project. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Original Variant - Raising Heart Force Blade form ! Feedback and comments are welcomed.

The completed blade

Close up of the blade tip and details

Hilt details

Hilt and grip

Thank you for viewing !

Project : Original Variant - Raising Heart Force Blade form (WIP)

Project : Original Variant - Raising Heart Force Blade form

My doll, Shia, is no stranger to cosplaying and she have a huge wardrobe of cosplay costumes. As for me, I prefer variant over canonical versions and so this project was born. To create an original variant of the female lead Takamichi Nanoha's "intelligent device", Raising Heart from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. The original was a wand but I wanted to do something alternative so I went ahead and designed a melee weapon.

Creating variants, for me personally, is a much more enjoyable process than trying to recreate the original item. It frees me to exercise my creativity rather than nip-pick on details of the original.

Looking back, I realised that I have little to none Work-In-Progress (WIP) records for my Buster Sword project. For this project, I made an effort in recording down work processes whenever possible.

The base form

Hilt details

Blade details

Click here for pictures of the completed sword !

Photoshoot : Fate/Stay Night - Saber Variant

Besides being a weapon fanatic, I am also into creating variants, be it original or otherwise. No doubt it would be more satisfying to portrait a character you fancy onto your doll in all its glory, sometimes don't you wonder if it would be more fun to create a variant instead ?

The character : Saber (Fate/Stay Night)
Saber, of Fate/Stay Night fame, is possibly be one of the most prolific sword wielding character in recent times. Such is her popularity that she is even made into a Dolfie Dream doll. She is a sword user (plus point for me !) and she definitely has a nice dress outside of all her armor (which I am still trying to create).

Love for a character can be expressed in many ways and the way I choose to show it is to create a variant. For this, I had a custom Saber dress tailored for Shia in shades of red and black and with the help of my friend, mori.m, we trekked off to a coastal area to do this shoot. mori.m has been a great friend of mine and my wife and is also the one who manipulated introduced us to the world of dolls. With his experience in doll photography and guidance, this series of photos were born.

Thank you for viewing !
I hope you have enjoyed this gallery !