Baldur's Gate sketchbook

Here's another sketchbook tutorial! No Necronomicon this time, I have already made enough of those. This time, it will be video game/RPG themed. I don't play video games anymore, simply because I don't have time for that, but in the past I was into RPG's big time. My favourite game of all time is and always will be Baldur's Gate, so I decided to make a Baldur's Gate themed sketchbook.

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Roadblocks, part 2

Here's the waaay overdue second part of my roadblocks tutorial! Halloween was over a month ago and I still haven't gotten to it, shame on me! There are reasons for my lateness. First of all, I'm very busy, and second, I'm lazy as fuck when it comes to writing. The second part of this tutorial won't be too long or complicated, because it's just about two barriers and a sign.

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Quick and easy plutonium rods

Our Halloween was nuclear themed, so if there's one thing that needs to be there, it's glowing plutonium rods! Never mind that plutonium, or any nuclear fuel, doesn't really look like that, it's how everyone pictures them. This is a very easy prop, and I feel almost stupid for posting this, but I really like how they turned out.

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Radioactive barrels

No nuclear meltdown scene is complete without barrels full of radioactive goo! Here's how I made mine.

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Roadblocks, part 1

Allright, here's the first entry in this year's batch of Halloween props! Like last year, we're part of the haunt in the local zoo. Last year we did a graveyard, this year is going to be something completely different. I'm not gonna tell what, though!
Here are some things I learned last year:

• Styrofoam and monster mud are great for static props, but not for stuff that will be transported. It's too fragile for that.
• Unless you're good at acting and improvising, don't count on visitor participation.

The first thing I'm going to build is a set of roadblocks, wich will be placed at the start of our spot. The roadblock will consist of a raised boom barrier with a stop sign, and two portable barriers. This post will be about the boom gate. There will also be a some sort of sign next to it, but I'm not gonna build that yet, mainly because it would give away our theme...

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Reverse bear trap mask

This is gonna be a long post! For Elf Fantasy Fair in September, my girlfriend and I were thinking about costumes based on the Saw-movies. My girlfriend will go dressed as Billy (the creepy puppet). We tried to find a tricycle, but an adult sized one is expensive as hell. I decided to build one of the traps. My first idea was the Venus flytrap mask from the second movie, but that would turn out to be too cumbersome. So I went for perhaps the most iconic trap of the entire franchise: the reversed bear trap!
The trap will be built mostly from sheet plastic. Concern number one is trying to keep the weight down a bit, because I will be wearing it one my head most of the time. The second one is making sure it stays on without wobbling too much.
The pictures aren't taken in chronological order, so you'll see pictures of painted parts before I'm talking about painting. 

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Lovecraftian coasters

A while ago, I made a silicone mold of the Sigil of the Gateway. I used it to make a medallion, as part of my costume for Fantasy Fair, but I didn't write a blog post about it. I still have the mold, and silicone resin is a bit too expensive to use just once. So I decided to use it to make something that's actually useful: a set of coasters!

Materials

• Cardboard (3mm thick and 1 mm thick)
• Oil-based modelling clay
• Silicone resin
• Acrylic resin
• Paint

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LED spot light, part 2

In my previous post, I explained how to make a circuit board. Now we're gonna fill it with components and create an LED spot light!
A word about buying components first. If there's only one place you should shop for components, it's Ebay. Seriously, there are lots of Ebay stores that sell electronic components at unbeatable prices! Most of them even ship them for free. You'll have to wait a few days, but it's definitely worth it.

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LED spot light circuit board

If you follow my Facebook page, you might have noticed I announced a technical project. Well, here it is! I'm gonna make a small LED spot light. Last Halloween, we had a big lack of proper light. We wanted to use candles and lanterns, but the flames kept going out. So no more candles this time! And since I like to tinker with electronics, I wanted to make something myself.
The light will be a green LED spot light, powered by 24 high powered green LED's. Of course, you can use other colors, I'll explain later on how to do that. But first, we're gonna make a circuit board, and that's what this post will be all about. The simplest option when building a circuit is using prototyping board. This is a circuit board with copper strips and holes already in place. You have to use wires to build the proper connections. Cheap and easy, but also messy, and in this case, the placement of the components was pretty important, so I had no other choice than to make a real circuit board.

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Warlock Staff

During the Easter weekend, Elf Fantasy Fair takes place in Haarzuilen, The Netherlands. I will go dressed as a warlock. I already had a costume that will do fine (a black hooded monk robe I bought for Halloween), but a warlock needs an evil looking staff! I already made a dragon skull a while ago, this will go on top of the staff. The staff itself will have screaming faces embedded in it (captured souls!), eyes and evil runes. Let's get started!

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Coptic sketchbook

A while ago, I made a Necronomicon-style sketchbook. It was a pretty easy project, because I used a store bought blank sketchbook, all I did was modify the cover. Now I'm taking it a step further by creating a sketchbook from scratch! This will be my first attempt at actual bookbinding, all my previous projects focused on custom covers, and not the book itself. My biggest inspiration for this project was "It's a little like magic", wich features lots of cool tutorials and build logs. The technique I used for binding, the so-called Coptic stitch, is explained in detail in this video. I'm not gonna explain it myself in this tutorial, because the video does a much better job than I could ever do.

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Necronomicon Sketchbook

Here's another project I intend to sell. A while ago, I sold my handbound copy of The Whisperer In Darkness on Ebay. For this project, I tried something different. I used a regular, store-bought sketchbook and modified the original cover instead of removing it and making a new one. And I decided to use the Lovecraft-theme again!
It will be a classical Necronomicon-style book: a face protruding from the cover. Could it BE any more cliché (read this in Matthew Perry's voice)? Probably not, but I'm still a complete noob at this and I need simple projects to build up experience. So here we go!

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Creating a dragon skull

A while ago, I stumbled upon this thread on Haunt Forum, on how to make a dragon skull from a plastic bottle. I wanted to make one for Halloween, but I didn't have any time left. In April, there's another edition of Fantasy Fair in Holland, and my costume will include a skull-topped staff. More on the staff later, now I'm gonna make me a dragon skull!

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Creating a shrunken head, part 1

Something I have been planning to try for a long time is creating a shrunken head. When I first heard about these, I assumed it was just an urban legend, but later I found out these things are actually real. In the past, I have tried making them with paper maché and yarn, but these looked plain and simply ridiculous. But when I discovered this tutorial a while ago, I decided to give that a try.

The procedure is quite simple, actually. First, you create a head using oil based clay. Next, you create a plaster mold. The mold is filled with liquid latex and then emptied again, so the inside is covered by a thin skin of latex. This is repeated several times until the skin is thick enough. It is then removed from the mold and painted. This is, in fact, the same method that's also used to create latex masks!

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Pacman's evil twin brother

One of my stupid new years resolutions: draw more this year! I already got started last december, so I thought I would show off the result a bit. I wanted to start with something simple: Pacman's evil twin brother! The idea behind this is a version of Pacman with large fangs, and hooks that pull his lips back. No complicated shapes, and quite symmetrical.
I started out with a 2H mechanical pencil on bristol paper. I chose this kind of paper because I wanted to ink the drawing, and it's very smooth, perfect for pens. After the first sketch, I drew the final shapes with a 2B pencil. Here's what it looked like at that stage:

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