Yamuraiha - Magi - ALA 2013

A gnarled wood style staff is something I have always wanted to try making, and with Yamuraiha's staff I finally got my wish. Out of all the Magi weapons I made (dagger, sword and staff) this one took the longest, granted it was only 3 working days, but for the simplicity of the staff I thought it would go by a bit quicker to be honest. Well first off here is the reference.





If you have been reading my other builds long enough you will start to see the pattern and that the first step is to ALWAYS bust out some cardstock and plan it all out. This is when I realized that Yamu's staff looked like a big sperm.

I never unsaw it.



The sphere at in the middle of the staff had to be tough, so I was a bit reluctant to buy a 24" shatterproof Christmas ornament. My doubts were completely shelved when I bounced it around like a basketball and it didn't even dent. Color me surprised.



From the cardstock pattern I cut the wood base, then on this base I applied expanding foam and carved it to a rough shape. The ball was socketed in the staff and held in place by simple hot glue and the expanding foam's adhesive properties. Then since I had it lying around I put duct tape on the entire thing.



You can see the multiple layers here.



So here is the part where the time just flew. I wound up covering the ENTIRE thing in apoxie sculpt. In my brain I thought it would take be one evening... NOPE. Took me an entire day to knock it out. Was one of the most tedious things I've done, and I've done a lot of tedious things... like pepakura.

I won't bother posting the 2 pictures but once I applied the apoxie sculpt I did a bunch of sanding with an orbital sander. You can't see the difference in any of the pictures I took unfortunately. but it was VERY necessary.



I actually documented my paint method again! So happy! Hit the thing with a bright pink, then hit the orb with a much lighter pink.



Small thing that some people forget, and that I had to be reminded about. You can use plastic bags on large surfaces instead of wasting your blue tape.



Once it was painted something seemed...off...it just looked like a sperm still.



I figured it out and I decided to weather the "socket" between the sphere and the staff. It added that much needed layer of depth.



I also painted the shells... that took me about 5 minutes to do, but little did I know that they would dominate pictures instead of the staff I worked so hard on T_T.



Hope people find this useful! Questions, comments, concerns? Give me a shout in the comments, Facebook or dA!







NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE STAFF!!!! ALL ABOUT THE BEWBS!!! FOREVER SAD!!!