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Matt Stagmer is a prolific weapons maker. He’s part of the Man At Arms Reforged youtube show and he spoke to me at Magfest about his work.
1:14 – Matt was in charge of making the Optimus Prime sword handle. He loves the old school cartoon. He’s made up to 40 or 50,000 weapons over his career.
2:26 – He never really feels a weapon is finished but he has deadlines to meet so they’re done on deadline.
3:20 – Matt’s a big video gamer and games sometimes inspire him. But much of his work is history inspired. He uses lots of books and museums for history. He used to be part of some fighting societies but not anymore.
4:29 – He listens to all kinds of music and comedy while he’s working on weapons. Music inspires and helps kill the sounds of weapons making.
5:23 – He loves to hammer the tang over the pommel. He loves that last step and tries to do that on every weapon. His older brother got him into weapons making. He thought he might be an engineer or architect. Creating three-dimensional art is addictive. He’s used auto CAD and uses CNC tools to make the weapons.
7:22 – The first time he sold a folded steel Damascus sword he knew he wanted to stay with weapons making. You won’t get rich making weapons so you have to love it.
8:09 – Sword makers used to be social outcasts but Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings changed that. Weapons makers are cool now. They’re just grungy guys in a shop thought but he loves making his fans happy. Things changed around 2000 when the fantasy stuff started coming out.
10:14 – He’s a huge Zelda fan. He plays Pub G and Ark. He’s got a lightsaber handle that he can put a blade into. They’ve worked with Robert Rodriguez on a project. He loved Never Ending story and Flight of the Navigator when he was a kid. He liked a program about a football team that became knights of the Round Table (King Arthur and the Knights of Justice.)
12:04 – He wants to make some of the Star Wars hand-to-hand weapons. He wants to make Chaos Eater. He also wants to make the rapier from Princess Bride.
13:08 – He streams on twitch and his gamer tag is stalkertron. The Man At Arms: Reforged vidoes are online hosted by AWE Me.
Links
https://playbattlegrounds.com/main.pu
http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110/ARK_Survival_Evolved/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292411/?ref_=nv_sr_2
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNKcMBYP_-18FLgk4BYGtfw
For more “Creating Sci-Fi and Fantasy – An Inside Look” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi
Guests: Matt Stagmer
Host: Cris Alvarez
Tags: weapons, blacksmith, weaponsmaker, fantasy
