Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Let your chaos flag fly Part 1 (plague banner)!!!!

Hello guys and gals!!
Sorry for the long break in post been a busy few weeks with Trek Trax Atlanta winding down (pictures for all to see) and a wedding coming this weekend busy, busy, busy.  Thought I would share with you guys the 99% complete plague banner and how it was built. So here is the completed banner:
Banner outside home
So this banner started off with humble beginnings:
  • 2 pieces of PVC pipe ($2.25 at Home Depot)
  • 1 L-joint ($.50 at Home Depot)
  • 3 wiffle balls ($1.00 at dollar store)
  • 1 yard of duck cloth canvas ($7.99 at walmart)
  • 2 lengths of plastic chains from Halloween
  • 1 Skeleton in cage ($1.00 at Dollar store)
  • 1/2 cube of Sculpy clay
  • Skull beads
  • push pin backs
  • 1 can textured paint (stone)
  • 1 can beaten copper paint (krylon fusion)
  • few handfuls of "dirt mixture" (see past article)
  • assorted paints
  • 1 box teabags ($1.00 at dollar store)
  • 1 Awesome printer gal at Kinkos/Fed-Ex
The 2 biggest things with this banner was trying to figure out the symbol for it and also the material of the banner. The symbol was not very hard since there are really to main symbols for nurgle in the 40K universe The fly symbol and the triple circle symbols"

triple circle
Fly
The material for the banner was a different story. We looked at a few material before we decided to use the canvas material so it wouldn't flap around as much.

After decideing on the material and symbol I took a JPEG file of the fly symbol to my local Kinnko's/fed ex store and had them enlarge it and print i out for me on standard paper, all said and done cost me $3.25 for it. I took the enlarged picture home and cut it out to make a stencil to lay on top of the banner:
I actually used a crap load of pins to stick it to the cloth so that it would not move while i painted it on with black Fabric paint, I also put a layer of plastic under it so that the paint would not bleed thru:
painting
Let the paint dry for a few hours before I removed the stencil and touched up the edges:
After the paint dried so that I could touch it I took the circles i cut from the patterne on the wings and used them to trace circles back on the wings and painted them with a rotten flesh paint I have used on a good bit of this project
Now I know some people are prolly saying "well i see some mistakes here and there" or "oh i see paint smears"  Yes those were all mistakes but added to the banner cause well its a banner to the plague god and nasty is good!!

 Now what banner to a chaos god would not be complete without some mystical looking writing and symbols:

All the symbols and such were either made up or mixed and matched from other symbol groups. They were all traced in pencil then gone over with black fabric paint.

During this time A few freinds were talking to me about dyeing the canvas a color to get away from the bright white color it was, so after talking to a few people I attempted the method where you dye cloth with tea:
As you can see BIG difference! so after much worrying about paint peeling an such I brewed up 2 gallons of tea and dumped it in a big tupperware box and dropped the banner in and soaked it for a few hours and this is what i ended up with:
so after seeing how well this worked a took the extra material I had and soaked all of it in Tea and let it dry. I then decided a needed a few dedication papers for the banner so off I went back to the symbol writing board, Again all the symbols were drawn out in pencil and traced in black or red fabric paint:

The one in the middle was actually soaked in mustard and green paint for a few moments to see the effect.

After the banner was finished everyone  told me I need to "stress" it out a bit aka mess it up sooooo back out side I went, I used a charcoal lighter, a bowl of water and paper towels to ft the burns on the cloth. They were made by ripping the cloth and then setting it on fire and letting it smolder anf then smothering it with wet paper towels before it burst into flames. The rips on the bottom were made by making a small cut and ripping the cloth by hand. The stains on the cloth were made by a small amount of paint and water in a cup and then slung on to the banner with a foam brush:
Well ladies and gent this is finishing part one of the banner!!! tomorrow part two is gonna give you the hints i used to make the banner pole and all the extras for the banner, until then thanks for reading and sharing!!!