Bionic arm for B., for his character in Death Unto Darkness, a Warhammer 40k LARP, after his hand got blown off by a daemonhost.
Card pattern, faced in copper foil; aluminium insulation tape over foam for the edging; millput statuary. Whole thing mounted on a glove with latexed/foam bones. Armour template by David Guyton, skull template by Wintercroft, rest by me.
So - some context as to why this character has a small reliquary instead of a hand. In March 2018, I ran a small event for a 40k LARP set at a spiritual retreat, where one of the rooms was set up as a small museum of devotional artefacts. Among these was a preserved hand of a saint, pride of place among the reliquaries. B. took rather a shine to one of the Sorors running the retreat, and impressed her with his devotion; as such, when his character lost his hand, he put in a request to bear the relic of the saint in its place. Naturally, I jumped at the chance, and set to work making it!
This came together like a dream. The slightly rippling from the copper gives a rather beautiful liquid appearance, and the statuary (angels weeping! tearing off their faces! panels full of bones) came out really nicely. I also find this sort of style of fingers - foam on a regular glove liner, linked together with ‘wires’ (Tulip Metallic fabric paint) - looks really pretty, especially in motion. Also, the patterns really worked well on this (scaling down the Wintercroft mask went really well!). All in all - as an object, as a collection of different craft techniques, as a set of materials, as a hefty bionic arm that looks more like a holy artefact than a machine - I’m really happy with this. May be one of my favourite projects ever.
