Q: Okay, so in the case of the Ragnashock – walk us through your thought process for how you imagine a weapon functioning. Does the end result (an electrical axe) inform the design, or do you start from materials side and let the scrap you’ve collected guide you?
Mark: The Wasteland designers gave me a very open brief for a melee weapon (just the sort of brief I enjoy) so I was looking for something that would just feel ‘cool’ and something that might offer some interesting game mechanics for the players. I’d had the old washing machine motor stator (the copper-bound ring that forms the ‘blade’ of the Ragnashock) kicking around the workshop for a few months. As with a lot of things in my workshop, I knew it would come in useful at some point, I just didn’t know
when. I figured it would make an interesting head to a melee weapon and it also cried out to be something that would have some sort of electrical capacity to it as a weapon, so that single piece basically informed the rest of the build.
Q: The weathering on these pieces appears completely natural. How do you approach weathering your pieces, and do you have any secrets you can share?
Mark: It’s really all about faking the passage of time and creating a history for any particular piece whether it’s props or clothing—it’s basically lying in 3D.
Creating texture where there is none, whether that’s physically through dents and scratches on items, or repairs and patches on clothing, or visually through layers of chipped paintwork and dirt, it all helps to create a story. Giving pieces the feel of their previous uses through things like industrial or military stencils also helps create the feeling of things having been repurposed for the wasteland. Basically you’re trying to create depth and layers of age, so that often involves repeated applications of paints and dyes and powders and inks, which can be a long process—creating the passage of time takes… time.
Q: What kind of advice would you give a burgeoning prop maker? Have band-aids on hand? Cut away from yourself? Don’t use the nailgun over the family’s dining room table?
Mark: The main thing I always say to anyone looking to get into this sort of work is: Health and safety people! There are so many ways to hurt yourself, either in the short term through burns and cuts, or in the long term with the chemicals and dusts you can be exposed to. A lot of the materials we use in this industry seem to be actively trying to kill you, so taking care to use the correct safety equipment is really important, whether it’s goggles for grinding, masks and proper extraction for fumes and particles, or gloves to protect yourself from chemicals – they’re all important because you’re only ever going to have one pair of eyes, lungs and hands, and you’re pretty screwed without them.
Other than that, I think you just need to have a genuine passion to learn and create fun stuff, and fortunately the internet offers so many useful tutorials for anyone who wants to learn cool, techniques, (my early, pre-internet, career was often spent scouring the pages of Cinifex and Fangoria looking for clues to how things were made, it’s much easier to find out these things today).
Cult of the Holy Detonation in-game weapon models based on Mark’s prop designs.
Q: Be honest: when you make your post-apoc pieces you envision yourself as someone out there foraging for scrap, right? What’s your alter-ego’s name and story?
Mark: Oh absolutely. I do a lot of LARP—I’ve been active in the hobby since 1982—in fact I got into the Post-Apocalyptic genre through a LARP here in the UK about 7 years ago, so walking around in costume pretending to be a wasteland survivor is something I’ve done a lot of. My main character ‘Strugatsky’, (named after Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, the authors of ’
Roadside Picnic’ which is one of my favourite semi-apocalyptic novels), has been to quite a few different apocalypses over the years, including the OldTown festival in Poland and Wasteland Weekend in California - both amazing festivals. Strugatsky's kind of old and grizzled, (a bit like myself these days alas), but he’s not dead yet. I guess his secret is that he doesn’t really take the apocalypse
too seriously – even at the end of the world you still need to find some humour righ, and he’s also the character in the ‘
I’m Going To The Store, Do You Want Anything’ meme that did the rounds last year (yup, that’s me) – 2020 was a strange year all round!
Q: Where can people find your stuff, and do you want to give anyone a shout out?
Mark: You can find my website at
markcordory.com where you’ll also find links to my various online platforms on
Facebook,
Instagram and
Pintrest, plus my stores on
Redbubble and
TeePublic. As to a shout out: well the Post-Apocalyptic genre has inspired a lot of incredibly talented crafters over recent years, so there’s a lot of great work out there, but I have to give special mention to a few of my favourites including
Wasteland Pirate, (whose work is probably among the best out there at the moment),
Evan Ohl, (who’s work on weapons is just pure movie-quality stuff), and also
Moxx Industries and
Craft Collabo who are both producing amazing work, so go and check them out. Anyway, thanks again for giving me the opportunity to contribute to your game!
Thank you, Mark! We’re excited to have some incredible post-apoc creations to display at our offices, but we’re also excited to play with them in Wasteland 3! We hope you enjoyed this short Q&A, and hope you’ve enjoyed putting the Bolt Thrower, Diminuator, and Ragnashock to good use in the Cult of the Holy Detonation expansion.
Before we split, here’s our Community Manager Matt “
Mattonomicon” Amy messing around with the Ragnashock. Tastes like a penny!
