Building a Foam Prop: A Step-by-Step Guide

The art of building foam props is a fascinating world that combines creativity, skill, and patience. In this article, we will delve into the process of creating a foam prop shield for He-Man fans. The author of this article shares their experience and expertise in foam fabrication, providing valuable insights and tips along the way.

The author began by designing the shield's shape and size, ensuring it would fit comfortably on his arm. They used computer-aided design (CAD) software to create a 3D model, which they then printed out using a 3D printer. The resulting template was used as a guide for cutting out the foam pieces using a jigsaw.

The next step involved adding additional details to the shield's shape and size. The author used a heat gun to bubble up the primer, which caused some issues with adhesion. To solve this problem, they applied a thin layer of wood glue to seal the seams on the outside of where these three pieces connected. They also added more battle damage by creating notches in the foam and using a Dremel to smooth out the edges.

To add metallic paint to the shield's surface, the author used a silver-colored paint that they applied multiple thin coats to achieve an even finish. The resulting paint job is super shiny but can be dulled down with fine steel wool for a more weathered look. The author experimented with using bright red acrylic paints to fill in four sections on the front of the shield, which added a pop of color and texture.

The next step was to start weathering the shield, which involves adding scratches and textures to give it a worn, battle-worn appearance. The author used sandpaper to scratch the surface of the shield, followed by model paints that they applied using a wiping technique to create rough, uneven colors. This process can be repeated multiple times to achieve the desired level of weathering.

To add handles to the back of the shield, the author used plastic pipe strapping, which is a common material for prop-making. They cut the strapping to length and drilled out holes that fit snugly over the bolts. The author then attached the straps using nuts, creating two handles: one large enough for easy arm movement and another smaller handle closer to the shield.

The weathering process can be time-consuming, but it's worth the effort to achieve a convincing battle-worn look. As the author notes, there's no right or wrong way to do it, and you can keep experimenting until you're happy with the result.

The final step involved finishing the prop and making any necessary adjustments. The author was pleased with how the shield turned out, despite some minor issues with bubbles in the paint. When held up against a background, these imperfections become less noticeable.

Building foam props is a skill that can be learned with practice and patience. The author's friend, Builder in Punished Props, has been an invaluable resource for learning about foam fabrication techniques. With affordable materials like foam and plastic panel costing just $10 and $5 respectively, anyone can create their own prop-making projects without breaking the bank.

The author is grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from Builder in Punished Props, who also shares his expertise through YouTube videos and books on using foam for costumes and space guns. If you're interested in learning more about foam fabrication or want to support the author's content creation, be sure to check out their Patreon page and social media links.

The article concludes with a message from the author, thanking viewers for watching and inviting them to share their own prop-making experiences in the comments section.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today we're going to make the shield from he-man I started out with a pack of Eevee a floor mats that I get at the hardware store these are really cheap about 24 inches square I needed to make circles so I took a scrap piece of wood and screw it on a foot to the end of it I pushed this panel along the fence barely into the blade of the bandsaw and from that cut I drew a diagonal at no particular angle Hydra marks every inch along that line to tell me how big of a circle I was going to be able to cut each of these can act as the center point I made a mark roughly in the center of a piece of foam and then drove in a wood screw that screw also got driven into the mark on my line according to the radius the circle that I wanted I put the whole sled onto the bandsaw and clamped it to the fence then I could turn the foam to get a circle cut did the same thing for a second piece to have two pieces cut to the same size the third circle I did was a little bit smaller and it was out of this corrugated plastic this is stuff you would make a sign out of typically and you can get it at just about any Home Center this piece will go in between the foam pieces to give the shield some rigidity I used two barge contact cement to stick all of these pieces together all of the surfaces need to be coated all the way to the edge it needs to dry for about five minutes on both surfaces before you stick them together once they're a little bit dry they will bond once they touch so I did the back of one piece of foam and the other side of plastic let them dry set them together and then moved on to the other piece of foam this takes a little while to do and it smells very bad make sure you wear a respirator you don't want to be breathing this stuff in for a long period of time finally I got everything covered and all stuck together and I added some weight because it bows a little bit once you get the contact cement on there even with that weight there was still a gap because of the plastic in the middle so went back and added a lot of clamps all the way around the shield to hold it together the unfortunate thing here is that the clamps left a mark that never seemed to come out of the phone the good thing is it's only on the back because the front gets covered with another piece of film I cut another big circle of foam and then used a piece of PVC pipe to make a circle right in the center I held a marker along the edge and spun the piece to get an outer circle from the center point and the circle I started making some lines to draw the design of the shield this was kind of guesswork and the proportions aren't exactly correct but it's from a cartoon that was really badly drawn so I wasn't that worried about it once I got some reference marks then I've kind of free handed the shapes that needed to be there going from the outer circle to the inner circle it took a few tries but once I finally figured out the shape that I wanted I went over it with the black sharpie so that I wouldn't get confused when I want to cut it out to cut the straight lines I used a straight edge in a box cutter I free-handed some of the curves and they came out okay but a big thing here is trying to keep the blade perpendicular to the material if it bends at all then you have a curve on the inside that you have to go back and sand down unless that's what you're looking for I used two dremel with a sanding drum to clean up the insides of these cuts it worked pretty well but it was kind of floppy so I put it in the vise and used it kind of like a spindle sander this actually worked out really well I had a lot more control and was able to get nice curves on the inside or straight lines if I wanted to once it was shaped I laid it on the shield and traced those cutouts this is mainly for reference when gluing up later but also I laid my hand in place and figured out four points to make straps I drilled through this all the way and then drove in a bolt from the top side that reached out the back side I went ahead and put some nuts on these to hold them in place flipped it back over to the top and added more Barge cement to the top surface and the back of this new piece I pressed it on and it held right in place no clamps needed I took it back to the bandsaw and use the circle jig to trim all three of these pieces even so I had a nice flush outside I got ahead of myself and went ahead and covered this with a primer I should have just waited till later but while it was drawing I cut another piece down to a rough circle and heated it with the heat gun the front and the back I pressed it into a cereal bowl and let it cool in the shape then I had a dome I used a belt sander to flatten out the bottom edge and then fit it onto the shield I made marks where it intersected the top piece of the foam and then cut those out with a utility knife I tried to only cut out a little bit at a time so I wouldn't have any gaps but I ended up with a few gaps it wasn't a huge deal once I was pretty happy with the fit I use some more barge on both of these pieces and stuck them together pressing this down to let the barge set up helps remove some of those gaps as well I prime this as well but really I just should have waited till all the foam fabrication was finished and primed at once I used a caulking tube and sharpened up the opening in the bottom with the utility knife this basically makes a circular blade so I could cut out circles of the foam this was actually quite a bit of work but they turned out pretty good cut one and then had to keep sharpening it so that I could cut out eleven more I use the belt sander to clean up the outer edge and the bottom surface and then gave all of these a coat of primer to add some battle damage to the shield I used a straight edge and a blade to cut some lines as if it have been hit by a sword cool thing about this foam is when you have a cut like that and you heat it with a heat gun it separates so it makes those cuts a little bit deeper and a little bit wider the bad thing is that the heat gun also bubbled up the primer I use the Dremel to add some more battle-damaged of a different type more of a notch and then use some wood glue to seal up some of the seams on the outside of where these three pieces connected I laid out my circles try to get them as even as possible and then held them in place with some CA glue I used a metallic paint that's basically just silver to cover the entire shield front and back I tried to do several light coats so I didn't get any runs and it actually worked out pretty well it's super shiny looks super fake and so running over it with a really fine steel wool takes off some of that shine makes it look a little dull and used and it was just kind of experimentation to get it to look like metal I had some really bright red acrylic paints from my model-making days and so I used that to fill in these four sections on the front of the shield I actually just barely had enough of this red paint so it's a lot thinner in some areas than I would like it to be but I had just enough to get it done then it was time to start the weathering I used some sandpaper to actually give it some scratches everywhere and take off the shine of the red and then pull out my old model paints and just took whatever colors I had on hand wipe them on made the grossest looking colors I can think of and then wipe the majority of it off the paint that gets left behind just gives it texture and depth and makes it look used there's tons of good resources on YouTube about weathering Adam Savage has a nice one and there's a huge prop community that has tons of resources about this as well good thing is there's no right or wrong way to do it and you can keep going as long as you want to to make the handles on the back I use some plastic pipe strapping I didn't have any leather or anything on hand and this is the same stuff I used for my water balloon cannon I cut a couple of pieces down to length and made sure that they would fit over my arm and then drilled out the holes so they were big enough to go over the bolts then I put them on the bolts and then just put on the nuts really simple here I made one big enough so my arm could come in and out easily and the other one a little bit closer to the shield so we've act as a handle here it is actually turned out way better than I thought it would and it's super light super durable the weathering process can go on and on if you let it so eventually I had to make myself stop and just say this is finished up close there are a few problems you can see some bubbles in the paint but if you scoot back a couple of feet it looks pretty good and I'm really happy with this especially because this is only the second foam prop of ever made the first one was this knife and I did this live on my twitch stream over a couple of different streams that was really happy with how this turned out as well eventually I'd like to make the he-man sword that goes with this shield and no I'm not going to be cause playing his he-man that would be awful I would just like to have the shield and the sword hanging up on the wall now all the stuff I learned about foam fabrication all came from my buddy builder in and punished props I'll link him down in the description you should definitely go check him out he has wonderful YouTube videos that teach all sorts of stuff and he has two books on using foam one is about costumes one is about space guns be sure to go check him out I'm really enjoying working with him for a lot of reasons but one of them is because it's really inexpensive I got all the foam I needed for this project and had some leftover for $10 the plastic panel that went on the inside of this was maybe five dollars at Home Depot so the materials really don't cost very much and if you don't have a bandsaw or any of the other power tools that I used really all you need is a sharp knife it takes a little bit longer to make all these cuts with a knife but you can definitely do it that's it I hope you enjoyed this build as much as I did let me know what you think in the comments down below or my website I like to make stuff calm if you want to support these videos be sure to go check out my patreon page I'll have it linked in the description along with all my social links if you want to follow me on any of the networks I've got a couple of other things here for you to check out in case you're interested that's it for this one guys thanks for watching I'll see you next timehey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today we're going to make the shield from he-man I started out with a pack of Eevee a floor mats that I get at the hardware store these are really cheap about 24 inches square I needed to make circles so I took a scrap piece of wood and screw it on a foot to the end of it I pushed this panel along the fence barely into the blade of the bandsaw and from that cut I drew a diagonal at no particular angle Hydra marks every inch along that line to tell me how big of a circle I was going to be able to cut each of these can act as the center point I made a mark roughly in the center of a piece of foam and then drove in a wood screw that screw also got driven into the mark on my line according to the radius the circle that I wanted I put the whole sled onto the bandsaw and clamped it to the fence then I could turn the foam to get a circle cut did the same thing for a second piece to have two pieces cut to the same size the third circle I did was a little bit smaller and it was out of this corrugated plastic this is stuff you would make a sign out of typically and you can get it at just about any Home Center this piece will go in between the foam pieces to give the shield some rigidity I used two barge contact cement to stick all of these pieces together all of the surfaces need to be coated all the way to the edge it needs to dry for about five minutes on both surfaces before you stick them together once they're a little bit dry they will bond once they touch so I did the back of one piece of foam and the other side of plastic let them dry set them together and then moved on to the other piece of foam this takes a little while to do and it smells very bad make sure you wear a respirator you don't want to be breathing this stuff in for a long period of time finally I got everything covered and all stuck together and I added some weight because it bows a little bit once you get the contact cement on there even with that weight there was still a gap because of the plastic in the middle so went back and added a lot of clamps all the way around the shield to hold it together the unfortunate thing here is that the clamps left a mark that never seemed to come out of the phone the good thing is it's only on the back because the front gets covered with another piece of film I cut another big circle of foam and then used a piece of PVC pipe to make a circle right in the center I held a marker along the edge and spun the piece to get an outer circle from the center point and the circle I started making some lines to draw the design of the shield this was kind of guesswork and the proportions aren't exactly correct but it's from a cartoon that was really badly drawn so I wasn't that worried about it once I got some reference marks then I've kind of free handed the shapes that needed to be there going from the outer circle to the inner circle it took a few tries but once I finally figured out the shape that I wanted I went over it with the black sharpie so that I wouldn't get confused when I want to cut it out to cut the straight lines I used a straight edge in a box cutter I free-handed some of the curves and they came out okay but a big thing here is trying to keep the blade perpendicular to the material if it bends at all then you have a curve on the inside that you have to go back and sand down unless that's what you're looking for I used two dremel with a sanding drum to clean up the insides of these cuts it worked pretty well but it was kind of floppy so I put it in the vise and used it kind of like a spindle sander this actually worked out really well I had a lot more control and was able to get nice curves on the inside or straight lines if I wanted to once it was shaped I laid it on the shield and traced those cutouts this is mainly for reference when gluing up later but also I laid my hand in place and figured out four points to make straps I drilled through this all the way and then drove in a bolt from the top side that reached out the back side I went ahead and put some nuts on these to hold them in place flipped it back over to the top and added more Barge cement to the top surface and the back of this new piece I pressed it on and it held right in place no clamps needed I took it back to the bandsaw and use the circle jig to trim all three of these pieces even so I had a nice flush outside I got ahead of myself and went ahead and covered this with a primer I should have just waited till later but while it was drawing I cut another piece down to a rough circle and heated it with the heat gun the front and the back I pressed it into a cereal bowl and let it cool in the shape then I had a dome I used a belt sander to flatten out the bottom edge and then fit it onto the shield I made marks where it intersected the top piece of the foam and then cut those out with a utility knife I tried to only cut out a little bit at a time so I wouldn't have any gaps but I ended up with a few gaps it wasn't a huge deal once I was pretty happy with the fit I use some more barge on both of these pieces and stuck them together pressing this down to let the barge set up helps remove some of those gaps as well I prime this as well but really I just should have waited till all the foam fabrication was finished and primed at once I used a caulking tube and sharpened up the opening in the bottom with the utility knife this basically makes a circular blade so I could cut out circles of the foam this was actually quite a bit of work but they turned out pretty good cut one and then had to keep sharpening it so that I could cut out eleven more I use the belt sander to clean up the outer edge and the bottom surface and then gave all of these a coat of primer to add some battle damage to the shield I used a straight edge and a blade to cut some lines as if it have been hit by a sword cool thing about this foam is when you have a cut like that and you heat it with a heat gun it separates so it makes those cuts a little bit deeper and a little bit wider the bad thing is that the heat gun also bubbled up the primer I use the Dremel to add some more battle-damaged of a different type more of a notch and then use some wood glue to seal up some of the seams on the outside of where these three pieces connected I laid out my circles try to get them as even as possible and then held them in place with some CA glue I used a metallic paint that's basically just silver to cover the entire shield front and back I tried to do several light coats so I didn't get any runs and it actually worked out pretty well it's super shiny looks super fake and so running over it with a really fine steel wool takes off some of that shine makes it look a little dull and used and it was just kind of experimentation to get it to look like metal I had some really bright red acrylic paints from my model-making days and so I used that to fill in these four sections on the front of the shield I actually just barely had enough of this red paint so it's a lot thinner in some areas than I would like it to be but I had just enough to get it done then it was time to start the weathering I used some sandpaper to actually give it some scratches everywhere and take off the shine of the red and then pull out my old model paints and just took whatever colors I had on hand wipe them on made the grossest looking colors I can think of and then wipe the majority of it off the paint that gets left behind just gives it texture and depth and makes it look used there's tons of good resources on YouTube about weathering Adam Savage has a nice one and there's a huge prop community that has tons of resources about this as well good thing is there's no right or wrong way to do it and you can keep going as long as you want to to make the handles on the back I use some plastic pipe strapping I didn't have any leather or anything on hand and this is the same stuff I used for my water balloon cannon I cut a couple of pieces down to length and made sure that they would fit over my arm and then drilled out the holes so they were big enough to go over the bolts then I put them on the bolts and then just put on the nuts really simple here I made one big enough so my arm could come in and out easily and the other one a little bit closer to the shield so we've act as a handle here it is actually turned out way better than I thought it would and it's super light super durable the weathering process can go on and on if you let it so eventually I had to make myself stop and just say this is finished up close there are a few problems you can see some bubbles in the paint but if you scoot back a couple of feet it looks pretty good and I'm really happy with this especially because this is only the second foam prop of ever made the first one was this knife and I did this live on my twitch stream over a couple of different streams that was really happy with how this turned out as well eventually I'd like to make the he-man sword that goes with this shield and no I'm not going to be cause playing his he-man that would be awful I would just like to have the shield and the sword hanging up on the wall now all the stuff I learned about foam fabrication all came from my buddy builder in and punished props I'll link him down in the description you should definitely go check him out he has wonderful YouTube videos that teach all sorts of stuff and he has two books on using foam one is about costumes one is about space guns be sure to go check him out I'm really enjoying working with him for a lot of reasons but one of them is because it's really inexpensive I got all the foam I needed for this project and had some leftover for $10 the plastic panel that went on the inside of this was maybe five dollars at Home Depot so the materials really don't cost very much and if you don't have a bandsaw or any of the other power tools that I used really all you need is a sharp knife it takes a little bit longer to make all these cuts with a knife but you can definitely do it that's it I hope you enjoyed this build as much as I did let me know what you think in the comments down below or my website I like to make stuff calm if you want to support these videos be sure to go check out my patreon page I'll have it linked in the description along with all my social links if you want to follow me on any of the networks I've got a couple of other things here for you to check out in case you're interested that's it for this one guys thanks for watching I'll see you next time\n"