TheLion’sCall Interviews Kevin Eslinger

TheLion’sCall recently interviewed Kevin Eslinger, a product designer for Master Replicas. He was involved with producing the replicas of the props and weapons used in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

TLC: What challenges did you face in reproducing some of the props?

KE: One challenge was figuring out how to make a sword. The Peter’s Sword Prop Replica is the first real sword that Master Replicas has made. We did make an FX Replica of the Sting Sword from Lord of the Rings but it had a plastic blade. A very cool plastic blade that looked like metal and then glowed blue when turned on. We had talked about making swords before, but we always seemed to have a way of talking ourselves out of it. There was no getting around that for Narnia since, in my mind, Peter’s Sword was too significant to pass up.

Weta provided us with great patterns for the Peter’s Sword so there was no challenge in making the prototypes. The main challenge was time. We got the prototype late in February of 2005 and the product needed to be engineered and manufactured and on a boat from India headed to New York by mid September. Less than seven months to do all of that while maintaining the Master Replicas level of quality was a bit of a pill. I have lost a lot of sleep and had many arguments this year because of Narnia.

Read the rest of the interview here at TheLion’sCall.