- Product Designer for playful and educational experiences

Tag: Props

The Heart, She Holler – Branding Iron, Typewriter Puppet, etc.

Posted: October 30, 2013-Likes: 1-Comments: 0-Categories: Propmaking, The Heart She Holler-Tags: led, Props, heartshe

Glowing Branding Iron I also made this branding iron (and a larger pile of artificial coals.) The branding iron was made by using a very powerful flashlight as the handle to light a heat-formed flourescent plastic iron. Artificial Glowing Embers Figuring out how to make artificially glowing coals and a branding iron was tricky, but [...]

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The Heart, She Holler – David Cross ate my hand

Posted: October 29, 2013-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Propmaking, The Heart She Holler-Tags: heartshe, blood, guts

Edible cold-cut hand I made lots of body parts of all sorts for the second season of The Heart, She Holler, but the biggest challenge was making an edible hand that David Cross’s character needed to run through a deli-slicer – and then eat the slices. I started by fashioning a plastic cap that would [...]

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The Heart, She Holler – Tumor Time!

Posted: October 29, 2013-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Propmaking, The Heart She Holler-Tags: Props, heartshe, blood

Cigarette-smoking Tumor One of the most fun props I've ever made was a basketball-sized tumor that  needed to smoke a cigarette while on camera - making the end of the cigarette ember glow red and then puff out a plume of smoke. I did this by first getting an old basketball and using some fittings [...]

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The Heart, She Holler – Blood-n-Guts

Posted: October 29, 2013-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Propmaking, The Heart She Holler-Tags: blood, guts, Props

Exploding Pies It seems like the second season at The Heart, She Holler involved lots of blood and guts. Gallons and gallons of blood and heaping armloads of guts. I worked with Courtland Premo when we were tasked with making pies erupt with blood and guts, eventually settling on pressurized tanks that forced fake blood [...]

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Art Supplies – Sesame Street Season 43

Posted: September 8, 2013-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Sesame Street, Propmaking-Tags: Props, sesame street, sesame

One of the main concentrations of this past season at Sesame Street was Art, so I had quite a bit of art supplies to create!   Grouchy Art Supplies Oscar the Grouch wanted to paint himself a big gloppy painting, so I made some fake paint squeeze bottles for Oscar and the other puppets - [...]

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False-Bottomed Wheelchair – Inside Amy Schumer

Posted: September 4, 2013-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Propmaking, Inside Amy Schumer-Tags: foam, Props

I modified a wheelchair for a skit on Amy Schumer’s show. The actress needed to fit her legs into a box below the seat and have false skinny legs hinged onto her lap. The box below the seat is made from painted plywood and padding, and the legs are latex-skinned foam with “bones” made from [...]

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Padded Columns for L’Oréal

Posted: January 13, 2013-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Museum/Exhibit Design, Abunch LLC-Tags: Props, willkrause, foam

I made these padded columns for a L'Oréal event so that they would fit around existing columns at the event site. Jessie Voris and I worked together on the upholstery - there were 200 buttons to sew!

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Hamish and Andy – Giant Baby Carriage

Posted: January 30, 2012-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Propmaking, Hamish and Andy-Tags: willkrause, Hamish and Andy, Props

I made this giant baby carriage so that a grownup could fit inside. It uses heavyweight plywood, BMX wheels, and welded steel to support a big person. Katie Akana and Jessie Voris handled the fabric and upholstery, And Katie also served as test pilot for a race down the hallway of the woodshop. This prop [...]

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Kikkerland Trade Show Counters

Posted: January 25, 2012-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Museum/Exhibit Design, Abunch LLC-Tags: Props, willkrause, Furniture

I fabricated these two counters for Kikkerland's 2012 trade shows. They both have lightbox faces made out of acrylic covered with adhesive vinyl. The client wanted the acrylic to go all the way to the edge of the counter, so the plastic was applied before the laminate, and then the laminate was applied over the [...]

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Sesame Street Florist Logo

Posted: November 21, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Sesame Street, Propmaking-Tags: sesame, drawings, critters

The florist's storefront on Sesame Street needed some dressin' up, so I made this sticker for their window, along with some stickers for non-existent credit cards.

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Silent Library – Nipple Robot

Posted: September 19, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Propmaking, Silent Library-Tags: willkrause, robots, silent library

Someday many years from now, my grandkids will ask me "Grandpa, were you ever a television robot star?" And I will be able to honestly tell them "Yes children, I was an EVIL television robot star. I built this robot out of all sorts of odds-and-ends. A funnel, bucket, two mini plasma spheres to make [...]

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Silent Library – Toe Snap

Posted: September 17, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Propmaking, Silent Library-Tags: Props, willkrause, silent library

I built this machine to sequentially shoot a contestant in the toes with rubber bands. The mechanism works with screws which are placed around the barrel of a crank-operated winch every few degrees. As the crank is turned, the rubber bands fire off one-by-one.

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Silent Library – Pedal Pop

Posted: September 16, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Propmaking, Silent Library-Tags: silent library, bike, Props

I built this five-passenger bike by cutting apart and welding together the parts from three tandem bikes, and adding a bit of black gas piping where I needed straight tubing. It actually worked too, and I was able to take it for some wobbly rides in the studio! (Though the rear seat was responsible for [...]

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Silent Library – Rear Squeeze

Posted: May 2, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Silent Library-Tags: Props, willkrause, silent library

I welded together a pair of steel hands to squeeze contestants' behinds. The hands were pulled shut by bicycle brake cables which were tightened by spinning a crank. I covered the hands with liquid latex coated foam. The arms wear sleeves stitched together by Jessie Voris, and the lower support was re-used from a catapult [...]

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Silent Library – Spanking Chair

Posted: April 28, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 2-Categories: Silent Library-Tags: willkrause, foam, silent library

This one was fun to make! I traced my hand, scaled it up 200% and then made a foam hand with acrylic nails from the pattern. The arm is made out of 2x4's glued together and swung with the aid of pneumatics. I scaled up a normal wooden chair 150% and built it out of [...]

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Silent Library – Creature in a Jar

Posted: April 27, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 2-Categories: Silent Library-Tags: willkrause, critters, foam

This one was a challenge! I made this creature out of all sorts of materials: lobster claws, doll parts, shells from the beach, latex gloves, ping-pong balls, dust masks, shark jaws, lots of latex, and a toy octopus... a real potpourri of stuff. Katie Akana thought of the pneumatic mechanism to suddenly open the creatures' [...]

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Fake Pies for Sesame Street

Posted: April 26, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Sesame Street-Tags: Props, sesame street, willkrause

I made these two pies for a cooking segment on Sesame Street. One pie needed to be made out of eight complete baked apples, and the other out of eight sliced apples, with a pair of eyeglasses hidden inside. I made the crusts out of sculpey, and the apples were standard fake styrofoam fruit... I [...]

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Junk Mail for Big Bird

Posted: April 25, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 3-Categories: Sesame Street-Tags: sesame street, willkrause, sesame

I needed to make a few junk mail flyers that were going to arrive in Big Bird's mailbox. I stayed late one day to make sure that the "birds in slacks" flyer was done in time.

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Candy Television

Posted: March 28, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 0-Categories: Silent Library-Tags: Props, willkrause, candyland

At first I tried making this breakaway glass TV screen out of expensive plastic casting materials, but to keep things within our budget I switched to a sugar-glass recipe. I made a silicone rubber mold of the actual TV screen, so that the mold could be carefully flexed away from the screen without cracking. The [...]

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Greeking Garbage for Grouches

Posted: March 9, 2011-Likes: 0-Comments: 2-Categories: Sesame Street, Propmaking-Tags: willkrause, sesame, Props

"Greeking" is when logos are obscured, or fake product names are made for labels that will appear on television. These are some cans I made for Oscar the Grouch. I used globs of hot glue to simulate goop on the cans... the best part of making things for the grouch is that it is okay [...]

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Sesame Street – Dollar Bill

Posted: September 20, 2010-Likes: 1-Comments: 0-Categories: Sesame Street, Propmaking-Tags: Props, sesame street, sesame

I designed this dollar bill for a Sesame Street episode about finance. It needed to be easy for children to find the numeral "1" in the design, and look familiar as a banknote, but not so close to the design of the US dollar bill to get us into legal trouble. The original drawing of [...]

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Posters for The Michael Showalter Showalter

Posted: August 25, 2010-Likes: 0-Comments: 7-Categories: Illustration, The Showalter Showalter-Tags: posters, Showalter, Props

I made these posters to appear in Michael Showalter's pilot for a new television series. They needed to appear to be designed at different times, and by different people - and the photos cleared for use were mostly pictures of animals, and photos of someone's vacation. I had fun thinking up names for non-existent programs, [...]

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Silent Library – Indian Burn Machine

Posted: June 30, 2010-Likes: 0-Comments: 1-Categories: Propmaking, Silent Library-Tags: Props, willkrause, silent library

Designing and building this machine was one of my biggest challenges on Silent Library. Figuring out a way for the hands to rotate around a point where I could place no pivots was tricky - so I made a semicircular track for a set of rollerskate wheels, and attached a pair of silicone hands to [...]

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