Haha, the beauty of it is guessing what it's made from! I like taking existing objects and using them as props. That's half of what makes old sci-fi props fun. My PADD is a VHS case, and my tricorder.... is a modified Kodak Colorburst 250.
My brain said "Kodak" when I saw it. I'm surprised you didn't turn the flash into a screen. It would be in the right spot to match a TOS tricorder.
I actually plan to do just that! But the flash is mounted in the casing weird, and I needed to destroy the plastic lens in order to remove the assembly. I'm planning on 3D printing a new transparent piece that slides in snugly, and I can backlight it with a little LED.
This looks fantastic so far! I'll also be keeping an eye out about the auditions, as I am in Ambler, PA but would love to be a part of this!
Ambler isn't too terribly far away! Yeah, stay posted. I'll need help with other things, too - so any kind of help will probably be appreciated when the time comes!
It's time for another round of "guess the origin of that prop"! Well, not really. But feel free to give it a try! Here's my 2200's communicator for Pacific 201. I've tried to evoke a sense of the communicators from ENT, The Cage, and TOS all at once.
Haha, I guess it does have some of the qualities of an electric razor, but despite being an electronic device, that's quite different than the original item that I modified to make this! I've had some fun showing this to friends, because it's hard to guess what it used to be. Even I didn't know what I was holding at first when I found it.
I dunno...it doesn't really feel all that related to the others. The Cage communicator was see-through, not exposed circuits.
The real idea was to make a clunkier, more unattractive communicator that would evoke a feeling of the general shape of the TOS prop, while nodding to the ENT communicator by giving it a silver lid. I wasn't planning on putting in any reference to the Cage communicator at all, as it's an odd-one-out for communicator design, but I thought I could make a subtle nod towards it with some circuitry - regardless of how it was presented. But after some discussions, I've actually started reworking the interior face of the prop. As it stands, the lid doesn't actually close very well, which requires some amount of redesign. When I'm finished with that, I'm going to post the newest version of the tricorder alongside the reworked communicator.
the ports on the side look like an bulky cell phone, but that would be too easy, maybe a computer accessory
It's a battery-operated device, so that'll narrow it down! Here's something I threw together: a rough size comparison between the 201 and the 1701. You'll immediately see that the Pacific is not a large ship at all.
Yes, it should still be bigger than the NX class. But not substantially. Alright, here's a new update: new interior facing on the communicator!
The communicator looks like a camera, actually. Really cool looking design on it! I like how the bottom has the copper or brass colored perforated area, looking like the antenna grid on the TOS communicators!
Oops, yeah - I guess I haven't really revealed much at all about the plot! Maybe some people are starting to worry that I don't have a plot at all, and I'm just making random stuff. Let me dispell those worries, and say that plot details were merely going to be revealed in a cool, exciting way. But... my PC has been down for a while, and I haven't had any chance to work on that. So maybe I'll just reveal plot details in a more mundane way in the near future. Stay tuned! Ding ding ding! Yes, the communicator (like the tricorder) is also a Kodak camera. This time, it's a Kodak Cameo Motor EX.
I love it! There will be a credit at the end like you'd see in 1960's TV shows when they'd mention who supplied the cars: "Starfleet equipment by Kodak"!
You could probably make a retro-type tricorder with the help of an old cassette recorder from the late 70s/early 80s http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/philips-tape-recorder.jpg