Dolla Dolla Flans, Y’all! I designed & lasercut some calamari flan out of clear acrylic, then painted & weathered them. Beskar gets all the love in the Mandalorean, but this Mon Calamari currency is what I was actually most excited about.
For accuracy’s sake, the best way to make an accurate prop replica would be to cast & mold these with some kind of translucent, semi-squishy material… but my goal was to make some flan in the style of real world currency, for… reasons. *cough cough* >.>
(Apologies in advance for my awful chipped nail polish in all the photos.)
There’s not much reference material available, so I modeled my design after the above reference pic and on RPF member Kylash’s prop replica design.
I made the design in Illustrator for lasercutting, and tried to keep the overall size relative to an actual US quarter. For the same reason, I chose 3mm thick clear acrylic as my material. Of course, a thicker acrylic could be used to create a more screen accurate piece.
Before cutting, de-focused the laser to create a translucent, mottled glass effect, similar almost to a stained glass effect with clear acrylic. After lasercutting, I sanded my pieces with some 180 grit sandpaper to create a diffused glass effect.
Left: After sanding, Right: Before sanding
For the final look, I wanted my flan to have an ocean-inspired opalescense, so I tried two different paints: Art Alchemy’s Opal Magic in Pink/Blue, and Color Shift’s Blue Flash.
I painted the backs of the flan so that the color would be visible from the front diffused acrylic. In the end, I preferred Blue Flash’s blue tone over Opal Magic’s for general accuracy. For the front, I did a wash using Army Painter’s Blue Tone.
Top: Blue Flash, Bottom: Opal Magic, Right: Unpainted Flan
Left: Blue Flash, Right: Opal Magic
