Skim Props

September 6, 2016

Hello! Proud to announce we are nearly closed on a fantastic house in Colorado Springs! In the meantime, our stuff is still in Pittsburgh and we’re staying in a hotel in Colorado.. so I am not able to fill orders on custom Fallout props for the next few weeks. Once in our house.. I’ll have an awesome workshop (FINALLY)! So stay tuned for new props, cosplays, and many more awesome things to come once I finally have the space to make them happen! No more power tools in the apartment living room.. I’ll have a 2 car garage for my tools and chemicals, and a full, unfinished basement for my sewing workshop. I also plan to get back to streaming and tutorials! I have had many requests for a Nuka Cap tutorial, and I’m happy to make one! It will be made as soon as I’m in my workshop!

Due to the move, we missed all of our cons this year. Sorry to everyone who hoped to see us at Steel City Con, and I’m sorry if we’ve been elusive and unresponsive to messages over the past couple months. We can promise though that good things are coming. Stay tuned! Once we close and go back and pack up and move.. we’ll be back at work! Thanks for your patience and I’m sincerely sorry to everyone whose orders could not be filled. I’m very excited to get back to work and creating! Keep your custom orders coming.. I’ll be back soon!

Thanks, friends!

Personally, I love tattoos, and I have a small collection on my own skin. Just because you have tattoos doesn’t mean they’re good tattoos; many people somehow don’t understand that. They judge a tattoo based on whether or not they like the concept or content, rather than the quality of the art itself. I’m much more of a quality critiquer – you could have a super well done One Direction tattoo and I can say it looks good without giving a poo about One Direction.. or you could have a totally junk Fallout tattoo and I’ll die a little inside.

That being said, you probably take me for a tattoo snob now, which I guess I can agree with you on. With any tattoo though, what matters is that its owner likes it, not me. Here are some of my favorite Fallout tattoos, again, based on quality rather than whether or not I agree with the stylization. I personally don’t have a Fallout tattoo yet, mainly because I just can’t narrow down exactly what I want yet. But here’s a collection of my favorites from my own research!

My personal favorite was Fallout 3; I enjoyed New Vegas for many reasons but I am a much bigger fan of Fallouts 3 and 4. That being said, this is a killer NCR Ranger tattoo. The hilites and proportions and coloring are all very well done. As someone who can’t even draw stick figures well, I can always appreciate when someone makes 2 dimensional art that appears 3D.

Speaking of 3D Fallout tattoos, I love this Brotherhood of Steel tattoo. The shadowing looks great. Personally, I’m one for bright colorful tattoos, but this one is extremely well done, so props to the artist.

As for brightly colored tattoos, I love this one! It’s a great creative interpretation.

A little more generic and less creative of a Fallout tattoo, but well done! I love the coloring and shading on the mushroom cloud. Besides, if you want something immediately recognizable, there’s nothing wrong with not taking an artistic interpretation of your tattoo’s content.

Fallout bobblehead tattoo!  Again, I love the shading and line work, it looks great. The lettering is a little wonky at the bottom, but it still looks great. I would’ve gone for the explosives or luck bobblehead.. but those are two things I heavily rely on out in the wasteland..

Here’s my favorite. AHHH I told myself I would be nice. I promised myself I wouldn’t do anything nasty but I couldn’t resist. Do your homework when getting a tattoo, kids. If you don’t have a regular artist you go to, then do your research. NEVER go to the lowest bidder.. it’s a pain to get a bad tattoo covered or removed.. just do it right the first time. If someone will do your tattoo for $400, and someone else will do it for $40.. go to the guy for $400. There’s a reason he/she can charge 10x more than their competition and stay in business. If you want something on your for life, don’t skimp out. Don’t get tattooed in someone’s garage or basement.. just.. don’t. Be safe and be smart or you’ll probably regret it. Anyway, let’s end on a positive note..

Ah, this is better.. an artist that can draw a circle. Dammit, I’m being a bitch again. I love this one though. It’s simple and recognizable.. done well. I love the vault door effect on this.

March 17, 2016

I came across these today and had to share! I’m not sure who the artist is, but if you know, please leave it in the comments so I can properly credit them. I (obviously) am a huge Fallout fan, but I also love classic Disney. My sister worked at Disney World for many years, and I have many fond memories of vacationing there with my daughter when she was young. These crossovers are great! I especially love Alice in Wonderland with her Jet, Beauty and the Supermutant, and Snow White with her Wasteland creatures. (I made up those titles, I don’t know what the official titles are)

Enjoy!

February 16, 2016

I have been working on several different Fallout Cosplays, concurrently, for the past year. In that time, I have had to seek out source material, references, and ideas from fellow cosplayers who have tackled similar projects. I am a firm believer in learning from the mistakes of others prior to attempting something new, so I have spent many hours searching forums and groups for tips and inspiration that would help me on my Fallout cosplays. I wanted to share a few places I found especially helpful; places I would recommend starting for the best information up front. Many of these references will allow you to interact with and ask questions of other Fallout cosplayers, as well as permit you to share photos of your work in progress and showcase your finished costume. Hope these linked resources help! Feel free to share additional helpful links in the comments.

Facebook Groups

Connect with your fellow Fallout Cosplayers.

Facebook groups are an excellent place to connect with other Fallout cosplayers because people are very willing to answer any questions you have. You can get ideas of how to build things by looking at other cosplayer’s work in progress pictures, and people are willing to share and like, therefore promoting, your cosplay pictures. I have found the majority of these groups to be friendly and welcoming. While there are many great ones, my personal favorites are: The Replica Prop Forum. This group includes a lot more than just Fallout cosplayers, but the community here is great. It’s a large group with very active members, so you’ll get quick (and good) responses. I haven’t seen any trouble here with negativity or unrelated stuff, so the admins must stay on top of it. Fallout Cosplayers. This page is dedicated to just cosplayers working on Fallout. I find this to be a wonderful resource due to the file sharing that occurs. This group has Pepakura pre-scaled and free to download. They also have mesh files and other elements that cosplayers have extracted from the game; just join the group and download any files you need to help complete your cosplay. This group is very friendly and supportive.

Papercraft/Pepakura Resources

Find Patterns and Templates for Hard-to-Design Pieces.

Cosplay building doesn’t get much more tedious than Pepakura, but it results in fantastically accurate cosplay elements. It can be risky to just Google search for the Pepakura you’re looking for, and will probably end up downloading a zip file from someone’s DeviantArt page, and your computer may warn you not to open it. I have had good luck with Paper Craft Square. I’m not sure how closely monitored the content is, always use precautions when downloading files from the internet, but the few files I have used from this site were safe and well made. It’s a good place to find pre-made templates for Fallout cosplay elements. It’s also not terribly difficult to design your own Pepakura templates; we could create a tutorial on this if anyone would find it helpful.

Wasteland Inspiration

Nuclear Snail Studios is my Personal Favorite Wasteland Fashion Designer.

Say you want to cosplay just a general Fallout-y NPC or wastelander, rather than building a suit of power armor or a vault suit. There are some great cosplayers out there who nail post-apocalyptic fashion, without the Fallout brand. My personal favorite is Nuclear Snail Studios. This guy makes some truly awesome wasteland gear and blogs the details on a lot of his pieces. He also talks about inspiration for them, and how to make and authentically weather them. Another great place to check for inspiration is Wasteland Weekend. This place has been on my bucket list for years. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a retreat in California’s Death Valley where you can go and live in the post-apocalypse for a weekend. It looks pretty hard core.. but one of these years I’m going to make it out there! They have a dress code and a costume contest, so check out their website and social media pages for ideas of how to create your own wasteland get-up out of stuff you might already have in your closet.

A Wasteland Weekend Costume Contest.

We survived our first-ever con booth at Steel City con this previous weekend, and as crazy as it was, we decided to renew our booth and be back again in April 2016!

We set up a table selling our Fallout props and some guns, as well as some guns made by our friends at Wulfgar Weapons. It was great to get to network and chat with some other die-hard Fallout fanatics! We had a great time meeting everyone. Unfortunately, we were not adequately prepared for the experience, and were pretty much perpetually out of our most popular Fallout props. I made more and ran them into the con most of the day on Saturday, but we could not keep up with demand. But fear not, fellow wastelanders, I still got your back! I am currently filling the wave of orders we are receiving, and I will have them to you within a week. Also, we ship EVERYWHERE.. so if your cousin in New Zealand wants a Nuka Cola for Christmas, you can order it here and I’ll ship it halfway around the world. Additionally, all orders will come with my own wasteland-ish gift wrapping and no packing receipt, so use your STEELCITY10 code for 10% off and send your friends and family some sweet Fallout props this Christmas! We also take requests and do custom orders, so reach out if you’d like me to make something for you!

So, what’s new around here on TheSkim? I have lots of stuff in the works. We did move our website, and all previous blogs, tutorials, and all of our albums of cosplays are MIA.. so I’m starting over. Our video tutorials are still on Youtube, at www.youtube.com/c/theSkimNet. I have lots of new Fallout props I am working on that will end up being one-of-a-kind. My idea for the one-of-a-kind props that I won’t be mass producing is to make a tutorial video and/or out of each one, so that you can see how to make your own. I’ll post pictures of the finished product, and host a little mini-auction, rather than just listing it in the shop. I’m not sure it I’d do it like Ebay, where you can see the current bid and raise it, or if it would be more desireable to make a silent auction, where people can enter the max they would want to spend, and it goes to the highest bidder. Thoughts on the idea? Let me know what you think!

Current projects: filling orders, first and foremost. I also have some raider armor in the works, and hope to break ground soon on some power armor. Our Smite cosplays haven’t been touched, but Hannah’s pint-sized slasher will hopefully be done soon. I had a request for a Quantum 6-pack, which I am way excited to start on. Terrill also extracted all of the elements from Fallout 4, and we are going to start modifying our props and labels to match the new Fallout. New props, Holotapes, Jet, Stimpacks, lunchboxes, guns, grenades, and more to follow! Just today in the mail I received a loyal (and very trusting) customer’s Pip Boy, which I will distress for him! Very eager to start that (tutorial video guaranteed). Our 3D-printer upgrade is complete, but not quite up to par yet. Terrill is swamped with school, so he’s getting to it as he can (I’m helpless when it comes to calibrating that beast).

So I know I have been off the grid a bit, staying busy and not making new videos or tutorials.. but chatting with everyone at Steel City con made me miss interacting with other cosplayers and gamers. I am excited to show you all my new projects and start making tutorials again. What would you like to see me make? What are your thoughts on holding a mini-auction every other week or so, accompanied by a how-to on a prop that I won’t be adding to the shop? I also quit streaming, and have had some requests to start up again.. we’ll see about that..

It’s been a minute since I updated anything on here, but that’s because since Bethesda’s E3 announcement of Fallout 4, I have been geeking out making Fallout cosplay props/collectible display pieces. The response to my Fallout items has been overwhelming.. they are selling off the Etsy shop as fast as I can make them, and the feedback on them has been incredible.  I am very thankful for all the support and enthusiastic feedback I have gotten.

Fallout props is something I have been interested in making for a long time, and something I have experimented with before. I feel like I finally have the formula down and have figured out how to create authentically grungy props that look and feel real, without being unrecognizably gross. Fallout 3 is my favorite game of all time, so I take my time perfecting each item I make (I take my Fallout fandom wayyy too seriously). I also offer purchasers the opportunity to have me distress items more or less, so that our products match the level of distress of their Fallout cosplay or other Fallout collectables. Some of my items are pictured below, tell me what you think!

In this tutorial we show you have to take a unreal engine game and take the characters out of them and bring them into a system (blender) where you can use them as a reference. We also show you how to use tools to measure your cosplay accurately.

The Steam summer sale is coming and we here at SkimProps.com are excited. Rumors had been floating around for awhile about the Steam Summer Sale starting on May 26th. It was even toted around as truth through a few forums, but, alas, it ended up being a lie. These sorts of rumors always pop up around the Steam sales each year. In all honesty, most times the rumors end up being correct.

Here at SkimProps.com though, we are 99% sure what date the Steam Summer sale of 2015 will be. From researching past dates of the summer and spring sales and gauging the gravitational pull of the moon on the earth and the alignment of the stars, we can confidently say that The Steam Summer Sale 2015 is going to start on June 1st.

If you look at the previous Steam Summer and Steam Spring sales you can see that they usually happen within a week of each other. Over the years, they tend to move forward in when they happen. Last year, the Steam Summer sale 2014 happened on June 1st. Seeing as this is the first day of the month, Valve could not really move the date any further without moving into May. Humans have a problem with crossing thresholds so I doubt they will move the day more then 1 day prior to July 1st. It is possible since there is so much hype about the Steam Summer sale being on May 26th, that Valve will take advantage of it and release the Steam Summer Sale a day early.

Very excited to announce we’ve finally started making significant progress on our next cosplays. We wanted to go big.. with larger than life characters and props, so we were originally thinking Big Hero 6 would be fun.  It’s a cute movie and all, but none of us really felt any connection to the characters we we talked about cosplaying.. which to me, defeats the purpose.  We have been playing a ton of Smite lately (I decided to start streaming, so if you haven’t heard of Smite, check out our YouTube for some game hilights). Smite is crazy addictive, and I’ve become super attached to some of the characters.  I originally told Terrill I really wanted to build Bellona because of her awesome sword and shield, but we decided that if we were going for big, impressive weapons, I should cosplay Nemisis instead.  Her original skin is white, pink, and blue, and as much as that appeals, I find her second skin much more striking.  So my next cosplay will be Nemisis in her “No Mercy” skin.

This scares the hell out of me because I have seriously let myself get out of shape over the last year, and especially the last semester.  I am very uncomfortable with too much skin exposed, so this will be a little out of my comfort zone, but I am going to push myself.  I honestly think that having my head and face covered will make it a little easier.. but frankly my Athena cosplay is ridiculously hot; with summer approaching, there will be no more scarf and full armor wearing.  Plus, I am ready for something new.  The part I am most excited about with Nemisis is the part we already started: the sword!

Terrill scaled her sword to me and construction of a 6 foot long sword has begun.  We are using a 5′ PVC pipe as the central support to keep it sturdy and light.  Terrill extracted the models from the game and we were able to print out the exact outline of the sword (on a ton of pieces of paper) and tape them together.  Look at this thing.. it’s gonna be great!!

Terrill’s character has an even more impressive weapon.  He wants to be Tyr because Tyr has an oversized, light up sword that switches from red to blue.  So much for comfort in the heat of summer; Terrill is going to die in this thing:

Again, the larger than life weapons and armor is what is really intriguing us here.  After we finish Nemisis’ sword, I will start on sewing while Terrill devises a plan to create that beast of a sword.  Previously, on Athena’s light-up sword, we used plexiglass and roughed it up with sandpaper so the light diffused through it.. but plexiglass is expensive, and for this, we need something a little more translucent, rather than transparent.  We are brainstorming materials.  Ps.. I will be super sad to shave the sides of Terrill’s head for this.. I love his hair :/ Hannah and I won’t need wigs this time, out natural hair will be perfect for our characters!!

Speaking of Hannah, no, she doesn’t Smite, but she does like to watch.  She is very excited to get to cosplay Scylla.. an ornery little ginger girl with a temper and a pack of dogs.  Not even really that much of a stretch, is it??

Scylla’s hair goes clear down to her butt; so does Hannah’s hair, so no need to do much there.  Scylla’s dress will take a lot of time, but I have many costume patterns for little girls’ dresses; I’m sure I can create this.  Still brainstorming what to do for the dogs.. there’s a lot going on with these cosplays.

We have many new supplies we’ve gotten to try out: we made some silicone molds and bought some resin, we got modge podge, plastidip, a few Worbla sheets.. I’m drawing a blank on what else, but we’ve gotten some new supplies I can’t wait to dig into.  I have several props, weapons, and items up for sale on the website and Etsy to fund our new projects; I am so thankful and overwhelmed by the response we’ve gotten: We sold 6 items out of the shop in the first week, and a couple more on Etsy. We also got a repeat customer and custom order that was a ton of fun. It’s incredible, really; thank you all for your support!  Hopefully the new props will sell quick and I’ll be off to the fabric store to start on these new costumes!  Please contact us if you have a custom 3D print order or cosplay piece you’d like us to create for you!

Anyway, just updating because I am so excited that we finally started building our new cosplays; there is a 6′ cardboard sword propped up in the corner of my living room We’re filming the whole process of course.  Go check out the new video streams, and if you want to play Smite with us one night, add us!  Look us up on TwitchTV (our name is pinktrashx, of course) here: http://www.twitch.tv/pinktrashx if you follow us, it will tell you when we’re playing online, and you can play with us!

In this video we show you how to make the spinning blades for Athena, The Gladiator, from Borderlands the pre-sequels’s Aspis. This includes prototyping and how to make your own technical decisions on how to make spinning blades. This could be used to make spinning blades for anything, but in this video we use it to make the spinning blades for Athena’s Aspis. The blades are made out of cardboard and the whole build was done for roughly under $20. The supplies used for the video are linked below. skateboard bearing used for athena shield: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BBGTK6/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002BBGTK6&linkCode=as2&tag=theskim-20&linkId=I4GMVBWQX3N2FGO7 Motor/Engine used for athena shield : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B1KZ8UU/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00B1KZ8UU&linkCode=as2&tag=gamesandalcoh-20&linkId=I7V7XMLULR4TXMKM

Special attention was paid to every detail of customizing this prop to make it the perfect piece to accent any steampunk or sci-fi cosplay or larp.

I bought this pistol at a thrift store; I saw some potential in it and decided to repurpose it. All lettering and stamps in the plastic were ground down with a sanding bit using a Dremel tool. Next, the entire piece was sanded and rubbed down with acetone to ensure the paint would adhere. It was then primed and painted.

I painted the majority of this weapon with Krylon Plastic Fusion spray paint. The metallic bronze and silver are both spray paint. I then hand painted the red ball with 3 coats of glossy acrylic paint. I used matte black paint to fill in all the low spots so that the weapon looks authentically grungy and aged. I also used brown acrylic on the pistol grip and in other areas to add definition. I then finished it with 2 coats of clear, matte finish Krylon spray paint. I didn’t want it too look too dull, so I lightly gave it a third finishing coat of glossy.

The pistol lights up and makes blaster noises when the trigger is pulled; which adds a little something. I thought way too much lit up.. so I painted it so that the red LEDs only show through the tip of the barrel and the tip of the sight. I taped these areas off while painting, and removed the tape before the finishing coats. When the trigger is pulled, the blaster noises will occur and the red LED can be seen flickering just at the barrel and sight.