Drastic times called for drastic actions. We chose the handle from the sword of Chocolate, and the blade from the sword of Ice Cream. Tremble, world, there will never be an iSundae 3 ever because the swords of Ice Cream and Chocolate have been destroyed. They were thrown into the firey Mount Doom known as the craftroom and reborn as this sword. (Please hold applause until the end of the article.)

Not too shabby, eh? Now, granted, it still doesn’t look like something out of Weta, but it does look better than a Halloween prop.

In case any of you want to try this at home, let me give you a quick walkthrough of sword disassembling. First things first, find the little screws hiding in holes all over the handle and start unscrewing. You will need a ridiculously small screwdriver. Every single screw needs to come out. All of them. Otherwise the handle will snap while you’re removing the blade. (Why do you think I know this?) And, while this may sound ridiculous, that was actually the first time I had used a screwdriver for a prop. Big things were afoot in the prop world.

Once you unscrew both handles and carefully pry them apart, they should open up just fine, revealing something rather like this.

For both Ice Cream and Chocolate, the blades were barely glued into place. A quick twist and they were out. (Ugh. Sounds like getting a tooth pulled. Let me try that again.) A light yank and they parted ways with the hilts.

Then the idea was to take the good blade and stick it into the good handle. Easier said than done. I had to snap off the hidden end of the blade to make it fit, which, thankfully, made the “Made In China” nightmare vanish into the depths of the handle, never to be seen on film. (Permit the prop maker a satisfied chuckle.) Then, because one blade was thicker than the other, I had to resort to stuffing bits of cardboard and fake leather (to disguise the cardboard color) down inside the handle before screwing it back together. It was a bit wobbly after that, but sturdy enough for hero shots.

Once that was done, we still had to address the nasty plastic look of the handle. Now, here let me state that I was operating off of an over-arcing principle for all the props and costumes. I had very little detailed visual references, so I applied this simple rule: Tell a story in the item.

Kale’s costume, for example, had specific tears and rips because of what may have happened to her the day before. The mending had various stitches because of what the mender was possibly thinking. You get the idea. With this sword hilt I wanted to tell a story about Dar, the doneel whose sword it is. So, due to the doneel’s furry nature, a metal sword hilt would be rather slippery. I wrapped it completely in black leather. Dar is a rather dressy fellow, but he’s also a good soldier, so I made the leather have a somewhat fancy weave while keeping it fairly serviceable. A good grip, and all that. Copper accents and a jewel for a bit of bling, and there you have it. A Frankenstein of a sword that doesn’t look half bad.

You can insert the usual disclaimers here. Don’t go about snapping plastic blades without adequate eye protection. Refrain from running with the screwdriver, even if you’re excited about using it. Keep your fingers away from the crack between the rapidly tightening handles. Don’t eat any of the fake leather strips. You get the idea.

There are two basic types, though you may find variations.

Soft Plastic

We had three of these for iSundae II, and we discovered a couple facts about them:

They flop when hit too hard. These swords just don’t like to be used. Good for show, but if you’re doing a fight scene, get something a little bit stronger.

Painting them is a bad idea. Rebekah decided to paint all three of our swords with some metallic spray paint, and we discovered very quickly that the paint just flakes off when you fight with the swords. We have several takes of fights with these swords that are ruined by flying paint chips.

So the conclusion on soft plastic swords: Costume prop only, don’t paint them, and definitely don’t fight with them.

Hard Plastic

We were not sure how these would hold up at first, so we bought extras of two swords. Well, the extras are intact, and have survived two movies with fight scenes. Things we discovered about them:

They are almost impossible to bend or flop. However, they tend to break when dropped onto hardwood floors. This is easy to fix, though, because they go back together with hot glue pretty well.

These hurt if somebody gets hit with one. Not as bad as getting sliced by a real sword, but you can be left with a stinging hand if your partner forgets their moves.

Some are better than others. We had two different brands of swords. One brand chipped easily along the edges, while the other brand was a little harder to damage.

Conclusion: Hard plastic swords are good for what you need them for.

Where to Buy Them

Unfortunately, the hard plastic swords are difficult to find in stores. Recently, I’ve only seen soft plastic swords around in places like Wal-Mart and Target. You might think that it gets easier around Halloween, but, alas, no good swords were to be found in my local stores for the last two or three years. (Halloween is a good time for battle axes, and the plastic black ones hold up pretty well in fight scenes.)

We bought our best swords online, I think from Amazon. Check around, they have a pretty good selection.

Sound Effects

Obviously, if you use plastic swords, they won’t sound right at all. It’s a little tedious to add a metal sword sound for every little clash in the movie, but in my opinion, dubbing sword sounds is a lot better than getting sliced by real ones.

To fix this problem, I dug around in the garage and found some old pieces of metal. Time to have some fun doing foley work!

Foley is the art of creating sound effects with real props. However, the props sometimes are not anything like the item being represented. For more on foley, check out the DVD extras on animated movies (Monsters, Inc. is particularly good!). They usually show how they did lots of different sound effects.

Anyway, here are some photos of me creating some sounds.

We had thirty-plus costumes to make and about one week to do it in. So, in order to give you the feel of the frenzied rush, I’m going to be as brief as possible, without being too laconic.

The Three Wielders

I wanted to upgrade Ben’s costume from last year, so we replaced the vest with a jacket made of green suede and brown corduroy.

Kyle got a completely new outfit. Black sweatpants and a black top (and I don’t mean asphalt). Actually, the cool shirt was once a sleeveless dress. We whacked off the bottom, made sleeves, and sewed them to the sleeve holes. It was pre-lined and everything!

Emcracy stayed the same, with a new pleated belt to replace last year’s. That poor thing was so warped and stretched out of shape I had no choice but to retire it.

Plus, all the wielders got real belts for their swords. Goodbye breaking sword belt outtakes! Oh, Kyle and Ben’s boots are fake leather pieces hot glued on de-thonged flip flops.

The Badguy

Fonsuger had to be sinister. So obviously, I needed to put as much oomph into his costumes as I could. We figured Fonsuger had come from the mountainous north, so his first costume featured a fur cape. Well, almost fur. A fleece blanket and a bath towel look great when you use them right.

His second costume also had a cape, this time crushed velvet with a fake leather top. We also broke down and got a store-bought clasp instead of making one out of cardboard.

The party outfit was fun to make. Purpley velvet and some old drapes. With the addition of a cone medallion (cardboard).

Fonsuger’s duel outfit is my personal favorite of his. Black jersey material with hand-stitched embroidery and beading on the collar and cuffs.

Gwenanda

Two words. Big. Green. That’s a lot of velvet there. The belt is cardboard, the wig isn’t, and Ruth did a wonderful job on the cape. Oh, and the hat is made from cape remnants.

The Badgal

The “Becca Badguy” as we call her, turned out a little differently than I expected, but I like the results. Black fabric with staggered pieces of orange velvet around the bottom. Ruth put eyelets in the vest and arm guards. And no, she’s not part of a motorcycle gang.

Wow, I got through that faster than I thought. I’ll save the Cone wielders, General Public, Lydia, etc. for other posts. In the meantime, remember — keep your safety pins closed, your scissors sheathed, and your hot glue guns holstered.

I used painted muslin for my main material. It’s actually quite easy to make. You take the muslin piece, tape it down to thick cardboard (so the paint won’t soak through), get it wet (somewhere between damp and dripping), and start rubbing the acrylic paints in.

I put all the paint colors I would need on a paper plate, in Caramel’s case, shades of brown and a little metallic gold. I started out with a large paintbrush, but I’ve also used hunks of paper towel when needed.

Slap the paint on there and start blending. Then all you have to do is stop when it looks the way you want it to. Let it dry overnight, then de-tape it and peel it off the cardboard. Or pry it off, depending on its mood.

I had the sword handy, so I used it for measurements. Once I had the main scabbard, I made the decorative piece at the top. I also added a thin strip of cardboard on the back of the inside of the sheath, so it would be easier to slide the sword in. Then I painted on the decorations and hot glued the gems on. I put enough hot glue on that when I pushed the gem down, it bubbled up around the gem, creating a sort of holder, which I painted brown.

Ice Cream’s sheath (the white one) was easier. I just glued on a string of pre-threaded pearls and added the gems and fringe, which was cut fabric.

The sheath of Chocolate I really like. (Mainly because it was mine in the movie.) I used crinkled aluminum foil, shiny side out, for the designs.

Pizza’s sheath is simpler, but really cool looking. I used black felt instead of painted muslin, and used black paper with gold watercolor on it for the designs.

These sheaths served us well, which is more than I can say for the belts. Aside from an occasional malfunction, they did their job in classic style. The thought just occurred to me that a sock might make a good sheath for a dagger…

Anyway, use your imagination and the supplies you have. It’s hard to use something if you don’t have it.