RWBY - Ruby Rose - SDCC 2013

I managed to catch the attention of Monty Oum, the creator of RWBY, with the Weiss sword (Myrtenaster). As a result I was approached to make the Crescent Rose for SDCC2013. I told him that I was busy working on the Attack on Titan 3DMG for Crunchyroll's promotion at AX, which would mean I would only have a 10 day window to work with. Despite this constraint I was given the go ahead to take on the project.

It did. 

I got home from Anime Expo, tired and weary and with no time to even unpack. I got to work. Here is the reference I was given to work with.





Full Reference here

Ruby has my favorite weapon, without a doubt, and I like to think that my incessant fanboying over Crescent Rose's design was what landed me the commission.



First order of business was to scale it out correctly. Calculated that for a 5'6" female that Rose would need to stand 88.8" tall. The better part of me said not to go full retard. Scaled it down to 75". Shown is the full scale scythe head pattern and not the one I wound up using.



Started cutting out the scythe from 1/8" PVC foam. This stage I used a box cutter and yard stick to get the straightest lines possible. Decided to mount everything to a piece of .75"x1.5" pine. No plywood this time! Big thanks to Rooster Teeth for giving me a real people budget so I can stop making things like a poor person!



Started cutting out the scythe head and the detailing.





Started gluing it all together using Loctite Professional Liquid Super Glue.



Started wielding the staff and it was REALLY floppy. It might as well have been a flag.


I'm an engineer by trade, not an artist. So I figured that in order to solve this problem all that was needed was to increase stiffness while minimizing load. Stiffness of a beam is proportional to the moment of inertia, therefore as per the equation...

Where: 

I = Moment of Inertia
b= base of cross sectional area
h= height of cross sectional area

If we increase the height of the cross sectional area we will increase the stiffness by a factor of h^3.


In any case this is shown by placing these spines perpendicular to the blade face.





Blade tips and circle were cut from 3mm PVC foam and detailing was cut from 1mm PVC foam.



Blade tips were all beveled using a belt sander and orbital sander. Holes drilled using Forstner bits.



Blade tips attached with super glue.



Rifle section cut from  3mm PVC.



Glued directly to staff section.



PVC was used to surround the entire thing and enclose it like a box.



At this point we were running out of time. Had to toss some details out the window i.e the scope. Scope was added using PVC pipe and sprinkler pipe fittings for the knobs. Dowel drilled into the side and a breach made with acrylic and PVC. Magazine is another PVC foam box.



Bondo auto body filler was used to fill the seams, and then the body was sanded and primed. Then primed and sanded.



Used method of taping off sections and painting layers. Big thanks to Renoke and PHDPepper for taping and painting while I was gone in Los Angeles to take care of some exciting cosplay business! Also shout out  to Killer Tentacle Octopus for painting the red center cyber punk detail thing. Putting my SDCC house guests to work!





Completed Rose, stuffed it into my girlfriend's car and delivered it to SDCC. However... while all this was going on there was a little bit of prop drama developing with yet another RWBY prop that was never supposed to be made in the first place...

Ruby Rose - Aku Sesu