Construction - Amphistaff
Its a snake. Its a staff. Its a whip. No its Amphistaff!
I'm no snake charmer so getting a real snake to wrap around my arm is out of the question. And carrying around a staff would just be a little too simplistic. It's not like I can do this easily, right? So I need something that is both rigid and flexible. My research started pointing me towards making a segmented construct with bungee cords in the middle. If you've ever worked with modern tent poles you can see my inspiration.
One day wandering around Home Depot I happened upon a roll of metal encased electrical wire. Bells sounded, the heavens opened up, and flocks of angels sang...well it was a good idea anyway. But an even better idea came a few days later. (Hint: Never buy materials on impulse. Measure twice, open the wallet once.) I was wandering through Radio Shack and happened upon a set of microphone goose necks. You know those flexible metal poles that microphones sit on. You can bend them and they hold their shape. They also screw together end to end (Loctite holds the threads together so they don't unscrew later).
Four of them gave me my base. Now onto the tail...
I used a flexible foam core with a wire (old hanger) to keep it's shape. Then I wrapped the whole thing in Saran wrap to seal it up and give it a strange texture.
After that was done I started on the head. I didn't want your average looking snake head. I found a lot of inspiration in the images of the amphistaffs. I knew I wanted a wide flat shovel head with tentacle like ribbons flowing off the back. Made a wire frame and then covered the frame with a wire mesh to flush out more details. More Saran wrap covered the head as well to seal up everything and give it some texture.
After I fixed the tail and head to the body I used latex window caulk to create spikes and cover over any major imperfections. This was a good deal of trial and error to get the effect I was looking for. Finally I coated the entire contraption with PlastiDip. It's a rubber coating that's normally used to coat tool grips. It's flexible, durable, comes in several colors, can be thinned out, dries relatively quickly, and sticks to all types of surfaces. (It also smells from a wide range of nasty chemicals. Use in a well ventilated area!)
I also realized I needed a mouth. Here's where my first leap into the world of rubber latex began. I created a mold out of clay and layered on liquid latex (This took about 10 layers). Then I glued the end of the mouth to itself to create the image of a closed throat. Finally I secured it inside the head with epoxy. I also added the effect of glassy eyes on the head with little pools of epoxy.
The end result on the head brought back visions of the Queen from the Alien movie series.
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