Shield from Alice in Wonderland

[Valor]

I'm just beginning the process of creating the silver shield carried by Alice in Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland. There's not much in terms of resources out there. A few screen grabs and photos of the shield on display a few years ago

This is my first shield (well, outside of Captain America). Because the shield has such a hand-made organic look I plan on sculpting the shield out of clay and doing a mold and cast.

I've ball-parked the size to around 34" tall. Alice is smaller than me, but this feel like a good scale.

Instead of a round curvature, the shield has a sharp bend at its midpoint. To do that I created a angled surface to model the shield on top of. Once my box of Monster Clay arrives

 

[Valor]

I was commissioned to build this, but never saw the film myself. Last night I did some screen grabs to confirm the scale and angle I'm using. I'm feeling really good about both.

When I mentioned to a friend that I had never seen the film, despite being a Burton fan his reply was "It's definitely Tim Burton at his most Tim Burtony" ... I have to agree

 

[Valor]

This doesn't look like much but getting clay to be flat and level is a pain. It's a start

 

[Valor]

Chipping away at this everyday. I'm finding this is less subtractive sculpting and more additive. Most of the details are achieved by rolling clay out to a specified thickness and cutting a shape out with an X-Acto blade, then applying it to the surface. I'm using Monster Clay Medium which is just perfect. I warm it up in a small crock pot until it's soft. Once it cools it nice and firm for more detailed sculpting.

 

[Valor]

The main sculpting is complete. I have some clear-up and smoothing to do. But one of the cool things about this prop is it is very "imperfect". It's not perfectly symmetrical. The details have a handmade feel. There's dings and nicks. I want to maintain that. Also, I have no idea why this clay looks gray in close ups and more red from far away.

 

[Valor]

First coat of silicon. Hope to be casting shields by the weekend.

 

[Valor]

Second coat, third coat, fourth coat, and the mold jacket. Tomorrow ... opening this all up!

 

[Valor]

I opened up the mold jacket today (Live on Facebook, because why not?) and found a GREAT mold to work with.

"Unboxing" the mold for my Alice Shield

Also, I'm casting my first shield tonight. I stared with several light coats of Smooth-on Onxy to get a good print layer. Then I'm building up the thickness of the shield with more Smooth-on Free Form Air (What can't you do with this stuff?). I attached some Threaded T-nuts to the resin before I coated with the Free Form Air. This will give me a place to attach straps when I'm done.

 

[13doctorwho]

Looks great!!

 

[Valor]

Thanks. I wrapped this up tonight. Because the cast was black resin I simply used silver Rub-n-buff for the metallic effects front and back. It really brought out all the irregularities in the sculpt. Again, I was going for a hand-made, worn finish, similar to the screen-used shield. There wasn't decent shots of the back, but I presumed some simple leather handles we in order.