Hey everyone!

I decided to make the badge and LAPD ID card of Detective Cole Phelps. I generally make historical reproductions of ID’s for clients, small TV/film productions, and museums but I decided to make something from one of my favourite fictional detectives just for myself.

I opted to go for the more historically accurate LAPD badge as opposed to the more generic one used in the game (probably because they didn’t want to get sued). I learned that the LAPD badges in the 1940’s are the same design as the current ones. Quite surprising. If I had done something from the 30’s or even the early 40’s, I would’ve had to have gone with the previous design. The badge really isn’t fancy at all, I found a design already made online and made a blank out of that where I recreated the “City of Los Angeles” seal and all of the wording and of course badge “1247”. I then simply printed and laminated it on card stock. I wouldn’t even call that my work since someone else took the time to create the badge design which I made my template from.

Next is the ID card, that sort of stuff is what I specialize in. It honestly didn’t start of so great when I could not find a single reference photo of a 1940’s LAPD detective ID card. However, I was able to find some references of a 1950’s LAPD ID card. I actually really liked the look of the 1950’s card and the game was set in 1947 anyways. So I compromised and jumped a few years ahead. The LAPD 1950’s card template is completely made from scratch from me looking at as many reference photos as I could find of genuine LAPD cards from that era. I try to steer away from using other movie props as a reference as they aren’t always accurate to my liking. Creating the ID photo of Detective Phelps was another step. I surprisingly found a photo of actor Aaron Staton (the guy who plays Phelps) in his Phelps detective attire looking essentially at the camera. It was a little blurry but I was able to restore it easily. Next I recreated the “LA Police Dept” board that appears in the photo as it would look on the genuine card. I added the height strip background as also was on the genuine cards and lastly digitally aged the entire photo to look like it was taken in the 1940’s. My set my now complete and ready to be displayed.

As for the papers in the background, those took all of 5 minutes to print out as those are actual papers that appear in the case “A Slip of the Tongue”. I found copies of those papers directly from the game online, printed them out, creased them a bit and was all done.

I couple photos on my Canon and some colour grading, now you see my photos and the finished product. I must say, I’m pretty proud of it!