Development
This project had one obvious challenge – the sheer scale of the thing! And unfortunately, I was also provided extremely limited references for the bow – one from the original manga and one from the anime series. Not the fault of the client of course, this model just isn’t shown very often (I was unable to find anything else myself, though perhaps my Google-Fù failed me!)
This prop measures around 2-meters tip-to-tip, which for a plastic 3D-printed object with a narrow profile… it was an engineering challenge I had to put some serious thought into so that the bow wouldn’t snap in half the first time it was picked up!
In the end, I ended up joining the sections of bow with a sequence of overlapping internal skeleton sections made from PVC piping. One long continuous skeleton would have been preferable, but not possible with a curving shape such as this.
However, from all accounts, the client has been very happy with it so far, so it seems my efforts did the trick!
