Personal Tour of White Monkey Design Inc

What a great Friday 13th it was. I get the day off and nothing to do but drive up to Vancouver to tour White monkey design and then that evening watch the Mid-Season Finale for Battlestar Galactica with the Vancouver Battlestar Galactica Fan Club.

I roll up to the Peace Arch Border crossing around 12:40pm. I love the fact they remind you to use KM instead of MPH. (I did notice driving in BC that almost no one follows the speed limit.)

After a little lunch and a construction filled trip up to Vancouver I arrive at White Monkey. It's a very unassuming building. Nestled amongst an Asian food wear house and a small suburb. You would never know these guys were there. I go up to the side door and ring the buzzer. One of the workers greets me at the door. Booth Milton, White Monkey's owner, is in but is frantically on the search for two bottles of Methelene Di-Chloride that they recently purchased but no one can find. The lobby for all intessive purposes can be called that is a treasure trove of photos and props from previous productions. It's amazing to see the history on the walls.

Booth warmly greets me in the front lobby. "Come on in, let me show you around." Our first destination is the laser engraving room. It's full of old props. Lots of dentist chairs that have been converted to look sci-fi. In the back of the group of chairs is the dream chair used in "Tin Man" the miniseries. All of it's lights are still working. Right next to the engraving room is the 3D digital scanning station and break room. The scanning tech was working on cleaning up the 3D scan of a Northwest aboriginal wood carving of a Raven. Ultimately it will be rendered and animated so that it's wings will flap.

Around the corner and into another room is one of Booth's craftsmen working on one of his many Moto Guzzi motorcycles. Hey, all work and no play makes a dull boy as they say. It's great fun to see Booth shift gears and decide what to do with this bike. Apparently one of the exhaust bolts is cross threaded into the aluminum head. Of course it is seized in place and rusted. That always seems to be the case with anything old and Italian. (I should know I've worked on vintage Alfa Romeos.) They decide to leave the bolt alone and just ride the bike to enjoy it. "Smart move" I think to myself. While Booth and his employee were discussing the Guzzi I happen to notice that one entire wall of this room is filled with all of the prop moulds that they have created. It spans floor to ceiling. Some of the labels are of props for Eureka, like laser rifles and such. Directly connected to this room is the mould casting room. It's full of latex, plaster and resins.

Next in the maze of rooms is the electronics room. All of the little electric gizmos, LEDs, motors etc. are done in this room. It's full of bins of electrical stuff. The next room over is Booth's newly redecorated office. It's very peaceful and quite in there. Great for meeting with clients or to give Booth some peace -- or so they hope, Booth is constantly on the go it seems.

Off to the front entry and down the stairs into the basement. This is where all of the magic really happens. descending the narrow stairwell you are greeted by pewter masks and vintage radio equipment. At the base of the landing in every nook and cranny is "gack" -- an industry term for the stuff props are made from -- and lots of it. Old wireless units and scientific equipment with their buttons and knobs missing along with their guts prised apart and used for sci-fi bits.

Entering into the basement is amazing. It's a craftsman's dream shop. There are tables of props in various stages of completion. Photos and prop schematics line the walls. There are bins and drawers full of what seem to be random stuff but the chaos seems to have an order to it. Unfortunately, I was too late to see the most recent props White Monkey had built for Battlestar and it's spin off Caprica. If I had been there in the morning I would have seen them. Not to fret, there were plenty of other props to be amazed at. To my right an octagonal case was being constructed for "Eureka." On the work bench lay the artist's renderings of the final prop. It was some sort of electronic bomb. In front of me on a table was an old pitch fork. Rusted and dried out... or so I thought. Later on I would find out it was made of rubber. I passed this pitch fork no less than 20 times and each time thought it was real.

On a table to my left was a few light weight gold tablets for "Night at the Museum 2." These were made of vacuformed styrene with a foam core. This particular props was to be carried by the the little capuchin monkey named Dexter. Hence the light weight nature of the prop. There were four tablets being prepped. Each tablet was to be covered with real gold foil. One was being prepped so that the symbols could be rotated.

In the very back of the room sat the CNC router. They were in the middle of machining one of the face plates for the "Eureka" prop. Right behind that in another room was the materials room where all of the wood and billet aluminum was stored. Round the corner and you are standing in the milling and lathe room. To the back of the is room which is situated by the front stairs is the casting room. This room is where all of the rubber or resin props get cast before they are worked on in the prop room. The only thing in there at the moment were some soft rubber swords for "Night in the Museum 2."

Back through the lathe room and hang a left spits you right back into the prop shop.

To be continued...