Zorg Remote

This is really just an informational post that I'm putting together as a contribution to a thread running at an online forum discussing the anatomy of the ZF-1, the awesome gun featured in "The Fifth Element".

Here is a photo of the hero, screen used Zorg remote for the ZF-1:



And here is the TYPE of game that was used to create it.



It took me a REALLY LONG time to get ahold of this game. Though they were plentiful years ago, they were not very desireable to collectors, so they were lost to trash bins worldwide. I spent a lot of time looking through online collections of 80's handheld LCD games, and finally stumbled upon a collector who had one. I got in touch with him, though he did not have one he was willing to sell. After about six months, he emailed me out of the blue and informed me that the had purchased one in a lot of games he won on ebay, and wanted to know if I was still interested. Naturally, I was, so I grabbed it.

For the screen used game, they literally just spray painted it black, and put yellow reflective tape over the screen. They didn't even sand off the decals or paint job on the original. The one in the picture above is NOT the same one used in the hero, though it is the same chassis. I learned that the same body was used for tons of different games. They even used the same programming, just changed the sprites.


I found a place online that sells a yellow reflective tape that appears to be a perfect match. Check it out.

Here are some posts I made in the past on this blog about building up my own Zorg Remote.

Zorg Remote is DONE!

Strike up the band, and all that good stuff, as the Zorg Remote is officially done! YAY! Not that much work really went into it, it was just a pain to find the thing, as mentioned in previous entries.



I also did some wetsanding on what I'm calling the "long screen" TNG padd. I made the mistake of leaning the padd up against a block of wood in order to blast paint into the sidewalls, but this had the unfortunate side effect of leaving an imprint on the back of the padd. So I needed to sand that out. It works best when you pour a bunch of water on it. Keeps the paper clean, and the finish smooth.



More in a bit.

Zorg Remote: SO CLOSE!

Tonight, I've all but finished the Zorg Remote for the ZF-1. This is a nice little companion piece to the ZF-1 itself, which is also in my collection. Well, the closed up pod is.

Anyhow, I'll walk through the final phases of this project.

The project kind of hit a snag when I got to a point where I didn't have any mold release. I need this to make a two part mold. I could have brushed in vaseline or something as a separator, but that usually gets a bit messy. I've always had really good experience with these types of spray on separators, so I awaited its arrival.



The first half of the mold had already been pulled, and it was ready to be prepped for the second half. I pulled apart the foam-core box I had built, to find this.



I carefully removed the clay, making sure not to loosen the game that was embedded in the rubber. That would be bad.

Here's what the mold looked like after I got all of the clay cleared out.



I sprayed it with a coat of the separator, and built up another box around it.



Then it was time to pour the rubber in.



A couple of days later, I finally returned to the project. I opened up the mold, and pulled out the master. It came out perfectly. No picture of the completed mold tonight, but I'll get on it.

Then it was just a matter of cleaning up the master. Removed some glue, picked out all the clay and rubber that got stuck in the little grooves, and I was good to go.

Nothing terribly exciting here. I'm just painting the front and back halves with krylon semi-gloss, which I'm almost positive is the exact same paint that was used on the screen used pieces. NICE!

Not pictured is me primering the front and back half. After all, no big deal.



And at last, here's the final product. Actually, this is a bit of photographic trickery, as the back side has not yet been screwed on. But since that's such a trivial activity, AND I wanted to have this posted by tonight, I've skipped ahead, and pretended that it is finished.



So yes, I still need to screw on the back half, but this is pretty done. I'll pour up a few resin copies for friends, and then put this one to bed. Oh, the yellow tape required a TINY bit of trimming, but it fit into the main window really nicely.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with this simple little prop. Too bad it took me almost 18 months from initial discovery until today :) But hey, it was a really fun trip. Along the way, I met a few really interesting collectors of hand held video games, and had a really good hunt. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't working on this project 18 months non stop. A good year of that was the time between me discovering the original prop, through acquiring one of the video games. The rest was just procrastination.