Larp- Monsterbau.de

no secrets; just a helluva lot of work

- now also in broken english -

This is a special- interest-website about
“Building of Monsters for Live- Action-Roleplaying”;
meaning in german “Larp-Monsterbau”.

What content is to be expected?
Documentation of how the creatures shown here were built (with texts and pictures). Nothing is sold or can be bought on this website.

The dropdown- menue in the above left corner splits at “about monsters” into “projects” and “your monsters”. There the building of fantasy- masks, -outfits, -costumes and suits of armour is explained focusing on “simulated” materials- concretely meaning mostly “made of foam”, recently including “composite”.  We also reflect on aspects of design, look, safety and field-operation- procedures; all the little things you don´t get to see inplay and have no time to notice when the critters chase you around in a dark forest, but which make the monsters cool and dangerous instead of slow, harmless and clownish.

Nowadays the website consists of 80 pages (double it for the second language) with over 1400 text- backed pictures. Most photos are large-sized and can be zoomed with right-click “display graphic” (or whatever windows tells you in the language you use). When something doesn´t work, please tell me where (see email-adress below). I´m secretly working on a more professional look and functionality but for the time please consider the two- language- version with direct links the only improvement in sight- I haven´t even finished translating everything.

Oh, there´s a table of contents. Zis way please: Contents

Why this website?
Because a few years ago I didn´t get satisfying results when I googled “larp monster”. That still hasn´t changed, although meanwhile I know about a lot of great project documentations “out there”. If only one could find them with a search engine... And that in times where there´s a forum for about everything.
I´d like to establish connections to people whose ambition it is to populate the game-worlds with as-cool-as-possible-monsters, either if you build them already or would like to. And I want to encourage the talented hobbyists out there to share their knowledge.

And somewhere along the line they all say what they really want:
First: Thanks for your friendly comments! I had no clue that there´s so many of you who´re interested in this particular “occupation” nor how far this site could reach; the two- language- version is a result. Nowadays I most happily chat with english- speaking folks from (almost) all over the world. Isn´t the internet a great thing?

But - and here it comes- I very well know that my creations are neither the best nor even the only ones and that there are many ways leading to results. So:
Have you built your own spectacular monsters, artefacts, chaos armour? I´ll be honoured to show them here or link to your sites.
I´d like this website to be a “receipt collection”. For monster- builders.

This is not about others stealing your designs but for monster-builders to find solutions for their own projects and construction-problems, thus enriching the gameworlds. Don´t worry- whoever undertakes this kind of labour has more than enough ideas of his own but constantly needs solutions for problems like volume-generation, choice of materials and working- techniques.

Please keep in mind that I´ll assume that it´s your own respective material- I absolutely hate having  to apologize to enraged copyright- holders (see also disclaimer in “about me”).

Questions or comments? Please mail me at alex@larp-monsterbau.de - generally I answer soon and enlarge the faqs if necessary.

Alex (first in may 2010, two-language in 2013)

By the way: as you might have noticed I am no web-designer and admit jealously that there are more functional and nicer-to-look-at websites than this one (am trying to make it even with content- quality). Nevertheless - or better because of that- a big “Zank you” to the guys at Net Objects Fusion and the web.de- hotline who make it possible even for computer-dummies like me to ooze their messages into the www.

I don´t supervise or analyze webtraffic, for specifics please see “about me”.

“Now zis is ridikulus! I ap-solutly don´t no wot peaple haf aghainst my praktikally non-ekzistent sherman akzent!”

Meaning: Not being a native english speaker and having aquired most of my vocabulary by reading the original version of “The Lord of the Rings” I´m doing my best here and hope you can make sense of my texts.

last edit Jan 2016, oct 2016, Mai 2018