‘Props’ to dad
Farragut’s Will Walter becomes prop,costume maker
The robot and the king stood still as Will Walter opened a door off his workroom.
At their feet were a big purple octopus and huge angelfish. Yellow mermaid tails and a red crab suit hung on a line behind them. The robot, the king and their friends seemed ready to burst into action. If you didn’t already know you were in Farragut, you’d swear you were in the middle of a movie.
Because a Farragut dad volunteered to get some paint on his hands, Concord Christian School and First Baptist Concord have gotten really lucky: they’ve had professional-grade costumes and props for plays. And that includes ConcordQuest, the church’s Vacation Bible School, which attracts about 1,800 children each June.
Walter has a supply of pliable rubber and Styrofoam, the building blocks of his trade, in his garage workshop. He has huge bins of leftover foam, work tables and all kinds of tools, including a bandsaw his great-grandfather used to make birdhouses before Will was born. Now his garage is the stage where he turns carved Styrofoam into a full-size hot rod and shapes flexible rubber mats into robot knees, mermaid tails and a big angelfish costume.
By combining his electrical engineering, computer systems architect and video game-making experience, he’s creating models, making patterns, fabricating, painting and finishing original props and costumes.
“A cool technique on this one,” he said holding up the angelfish costume. “I airbrushed the eye and then coated it with a five-minute epoxy to give the glassy look on the surface.”
His dive into prop making began eight years ago when he and his wife, Brenda, a neo-natal practitioner, blended their families. They each brought a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old to the relationship eight years ago. Last month their oldest children graduated from Farragut High School.
“I was working as a software consultant and driving the kids around a lot,” Walter said. “I quickly became the stay-at-home dad. The kids were all involved in sports, dance, etc., which prompted the start of a photography business. For six years, I ran a photography studio, with services including sideline sports, weddings, anything and everything.”
Then a couple of years ago, Walter saw something that fascinated him — sculpted pumpkins made with clay carving tools. That experiment launched him into carving Styrofoam and foam rubber.
“My daughter, Gracie, was in a couple of plays at Concord Christian School and I asked the set designer if I could make some props,” Walter said. “The next play that came up was ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ There’s the giant ‘Drink Me’ bottle,” he said pointing to a corner of the storeroom.
“These were cupcakes for the centerpiece for the Mad Hatter tea party,” he said picking up a giant foam carved cupcake. “And I actually made a 7-foot mushroom and a full-body caterpillar suit as well. That was the first time I’d ever tried to make anything like that.
“Then shortly after that, the church was working on ConcordQuest and asked me to work on the robot team. At that point I started building the workshop. We made three of those robots in about three-and-a-half weeks. It was a lot of work.”
The shiny blue and red robots look like they’re ready to walk and talk, but they’re costumes that can be adjusted to fit actors of various sizes and include four-inch lifts in the shoes.
Last year children were awestruck when a 6-foot-4 young man became a 7-foot-tall robot.
“I worked with Christie Watson [theater arts teacher at CCS] on what we were going to do this year, which turned out to be ‘The Little Mermaid Jr.’” Walter said, “and it really went over the top. There are seven mermaid tails, including Triton, a 4-foot-long fish costume, a human-sized octopus body and a full-body crab suit. The crab suit involves a lot of different techniques, it’s kind of like a Hollywood-style creature suit. It’s a spandex body suit with foam understructure to give the actor the flexibility to move but still has the hyper-details.”
He picked up one of the long, flexible arms of the octopus costume and turned it over to reveal the realistic detail: a double row of lifelike suction cups.
Behind him on two desks are the secrets to his success: three computer monitors. On one is a sketch of his hot rod. On the next is a digital sculpture of the angelfish costume and on the third is an angelfish shape covered in rectangles. He explained that in Hollywood they usually start with a maquette to use in patterning a full-size creature.
Like magic, he used a stylus to touch the monitor and “push” a piece of “digital clay” on the screen into different shapes. Once he has settled on the shape he wants, he then uses a Japanese software program, Pepakura, that will cover his shape with sheets of computer paper — virtually, of course — and provide downloadable patterns.
He uses the patterns to cut shapes out of flexible floor mats that can become anything from armor to tentacles, even an entire fish. To carve in the finishing details he uses a “pencil-grinder,” basically an air powered Dremel, or even a soldering iron to burn fine lines and scroll work.
Currently sitting in the children’s wing at First Baptist Concord is a full-size hot rod made completely out of Styrofoam and foam rubber, even down to the tires. The car is part of the children’s Sunday morning series called “Under the Hood.”
Walter doesn’t know where all his prop and costume-making will lead, but he’s open to the possibility of renting out what he has and taking custom orders.
He has named his business Metamorph FX and his next stop is the FanBoy Expo Friday through Sunday, June 23-25, in Knoxville where he will display some of his creations at the show and in the costume contest.
Walter even offers to suit up those who want to go but don’t have a costume.
