Ben and Eva Hollis are huge fans of the Assassin's Creed series. That helps explain the amount of effort they put into
creating a bronze casting of the Apple of Eden from the game.
The first task was to actually design the Apple. We knew it needed to be
a sphere, and from game screenshots we figured out a rough size based
on how it looked in characters' hands. More troublesome was the pattern
on the surface of the sphere, which was hard to pick out from
screenshots, and which was not consistent from shot to shot. We ended up
designing our own pattern of channels inspired by the common patterns
from screenshots and fan art.
One feature I was particularly excited about was lighting. The Apple glows along its surface channels, and I planned on using EL wire
to provide this effect. EL wire glows uniformly along its length, uses
very little power, and looks very bright in low light. First, Eva
polished the inside of the channels with a wire brush to provide a
bright reflection of the wire. Then, I worked out how to take the EL
wire I had bought and work it into all the channels in a single
continuous line with a minimum of overlap.
1 comment:
The build is outstanding, with full bronze investment casting (as old as bronze casting, nearly 7,000 years old) fused with modern technology of electroluminescent wire. Truly new meets old here. I also appreciate seeing a well documented prop such as this. Propnomicon had a post previously about EL wire and I am glad to see this stuff resurface. I’m going to have to get some! Glowing spine worm: http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/2011/01/glowing-spine-worm.html
I could just see Eris chunking out this goodie and exclaiming, “ΤΗΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗI”! (Rendered in all caps in case some don’t have the Greek font plugin for lower case -- τη καλλίστη. When asked to judge a contest between gods, it might be best to try to get out of it, if you can.
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