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









35 comments:

  1. Interesting choice in materials. I'll have to look into that for my next project.

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    1. I too need to think this one over for my next Halloween costume the online prices are ridicules for the weapon $200-$600 that's as much as I make in a year.

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  2. The nerd moment with the math was my favorite part. You did a great job doing this.

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  3. Looks great! I was wondering what kind of primer was used?

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    1. Awesome, thank you very much, im guessing you can get it at most hardware stores?

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  4. Where can you get the pvc foam or can you only get it offline?

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    1. I link my source in the build as well as materials section. GL!

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  5. Do you remember how many sheets of the 1/8 foam you went through? The size per sheet is mentioned on the website but I'm still not sure how many I should buy to make this. I'm only 5"1 so it would be smaller for me

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    1. I actually only had to use 1 sheet! Super cool right? I even had leftover to make most of Ember Celica with!

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    2. Dang that's pretty sweet. Thanks for this tutorial it's super helpful

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  6. This was a brilliant tutorial and the end result looks great! Thank you very much for sharing it with us. I was wondering though, how many sheets of the foam did you end up using? Thanks!

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    1. I think I only used 1 (8'x4') sheet of the 3mm thick PVC foam. GL!

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  7. This is a wonderful walk through. You said you scaled down the height to 75", I was wondering, what did you scale the scythe head pattern down to?

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    1. I just printed out the entire scythe for a total height of 75". The head got scaled down with it as a result allowing me to not have to do any calculations on the x-axis. Granted if you wanted you could scale Ruby's height to the scythe head's width. GL!

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  8. How did you calculate the scaling? I don't quite understand. I would like to make my own at a scale of 89.5" tall. Could you please help?

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    1. Scaling is only necessary to generate the height or width that you want. If you already know the height you want it just print out your pattern to that height. Hope that helps!

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  9. I love this tutorial as it is I'll be cos-playing her in 2015 so finding this scythe tutorial was a godsend thank you for taking the time to post this!

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  10. Where would one print this to scale? I am tring to figure out how I can print templates in the proper size

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    1. I just printed it using my printer and MS paint. Nothing special. GL!

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. Wow!!! So impressive!!!^^
    I'm curious how can you do the weapon so meticulous??

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    1. I just take my time and try to take every detail 1 step at a time. All about patience.

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  13. Very impressive! Can you please clarify or just explain in better detail when you said "PVC was used to surround the entire thing and enclose it like a box." Just trying to fully comprehend how you finished it.

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  14. Well done! I hope mine turns out as good. Is the template you used the same as the flat image in your full reference link? If not where can I find the template that you used. Luckily I am the same height that you scaled to. =) Again great tutorial thanks for sharing!

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  15. How was the base of the scythe made? And how did you prevent it from bending?

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    1. I used wood an it is detailed a little in the build. I also detail the moment of inertia equation in the build to add stiffness with the perpendicular spines installed on the scythe head.

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  16. How would you recommend getting access to tools such as a belt sander and orbital sander?

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    1. I'd buy them from Harbor Freight. They're pretty inexpensive and get the job done.

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  17. Hi there! I'm in the planning stages for making my own Crescent Rose and I've been looking into materials I could use. I'm trying to keep the true scaling as I'm the same height as Ruby (and I'm giving myself a year to work on it) but I need to keep it under 40 pounds, IDEALLY under 30. The PVC foam seems pretty legit. How much did the final prop weight, approximately?

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  18. is this sturdy? I want to make it but I dont want to break it at con if I kinda twirl it around and use it to pose! :)

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  19. Hello, I'm a cosplay lover but quite amateur. This blog is very interesting and good for the beginners, I wanna know if I can translate this article into Spanish and reblog it in the official blog of cosplaysky.es , now I'm trying to making cosplay costumes ;)

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  20. I have a question on Crescent Rose. I want to make one myself, but I had an idea to use pvc pipes and make it like a Telescopic pole where it extends and locks in place when the button snap clips into the hole. that would be for the pole and two or so parts for the scythe part to snap into place and still be released to carrying position. The second part would be a spring mechanism that i can push that will push/snap the pipes into place like how hers does in the video. Any idea on the wording i could use to find for the button snap clip and spring? I couldnt find the button snap clip thing at all on homedepot or lowes. lol. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you ( ps please dont take my idea unless you can help me with mine or even mention it was my idea XD not sure if anyone else thought of it though > > )

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  21. I have a question on Crescent Rose. I want to make one myself, but I had an idea to use pvc pipes and make it like a Telescopic pole where it extends and locks in place when the button snap clips into the hole. that would be for the pole and two or so parts for the scythe part to snap into place and still be released to carrying position. The second part would be a spring mechanism that i can push that will push/snap the pipes into place like how hers does in the video. Any idea on the wording i could use to find for the button snap clip and spring? I couldnt find the button snap clip thing at all on homedepot or lowes. lol. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you ( ps please dont take my idea unless you can help me with mine or even mention it was my idea XD not sure if anyone else thought of it though > > )

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