Greetings All !
OK, I figured it's finally time to start my "build thread" for my 2013 Halloween Costume.
The decision to go with a Velociraptor was something I actually made back in about mid-January. I was inspired by this video from Australia:
Velociraptor in Melbourne - YouTube
Key reasons for going with this idea:
1) I want to win FIRST place in the local big-dance-bar's Halloween Costume Contest this year. (I've placed SECOND place for the last two years in a row.) I think this costume has a good shot at doing that.
2) In my experience, if you want your costume to be popular with both kids AND adults, it has to be immediately recognizable (and a subject that is loved) by both groups. Any dinosaur, I think, would fit that requirement. And in addition to the bar-contest, I want to attend two different Halloween events that are more kid-centered.
3) I get to involve my wife again (as the Jurassic Park Ranger who will have me on a leash). I did this last year for the first time. I was Davey Jones from Pirates of the Carribean. My wife made a terrific Jack Sparrow (she even got hit-on by both men AND women on Halloween night!)
OK, so to prep, I've watched the excellent videos over at stanwinstonschool.com, specifically the ones about building a T-Rex head, since the methods there seemed similar to what I want to do.
I started by purchasing a big block of foam. The Stan Winston School videos said I should get "12-TF upholstery foam". So I phoned what appeared to be a large local upholstery foam supplier, Mattress Warehouse (Mattress Warehouse - Mattress and Foam Warehouse ). The guy in their ordering department told me, although he'd been in the business for 30 years, he'd never heard of that term. So I had to describe to him what I wanted to do with the foam...and hope and pray that he understood. Two weeks and $80 later, I had this large chunk delivered to my door:
I also ordered contact cement and contact cement remover online. Once I had this stuff, though, I kind of stopped working on this project for several weeks. The coming of "yard work season" took me away for a while.
But now that we're back to "90-plus-degrees-with-humidity" here in Kansas City, I abort all but the most basic yard work. It's costume time!
So, I started work the other day by taking a key reference photo and enlarging it. (Here's the photo:
)
I had THOUGHT about simply going to FedEx's Copy Center and asking them to blow it up. However, a quick check online told me that'd be a $25 minimum. And so, I called upon my ancient knowledge gleaned from 7th grade art class: I scaled the photo up by dividing it into a 1-inch grid... then drawing a 3-inch grid on larger paper... and sketching the outline of the Raptor head, square-by-square.
Here's the end product (cut out) for that previous photo. Note that for every photo of that exact same dinosaur, the model's mouth was always opened. So, on my final cut-out, I cut and adjusted the paper so as to close the mouth:
But while I was printing additional copies of that reference photo, I came across ANOTHER set of reference photos... this time some of a model Raptor head. I liked these a lot:
And so, I re-did my work. I drew grids again, enlarged, then cut out. Here's photos of what I ended up with. Note that I layed them against my hunk of foam (most of which has now turned yellow) for reference:
My wife wanted to stop by JoAnn's Fabrics for something while we were out today, so I went in too. She was all excited about my costume plans, so she encouraged me to hunt for stuff for the "spiked collar" that we'd like my Raptor to wear. I picked up a large strip of black marine vinyl (that will hopefully have a leather-like appearance). We also found some unusual bracelets that were made up of pairs of spikes. The spikes look like (and sound kind of like) metal, but they're plastic. My wife had given me a $25 gift card to JoAnn's for Valentine's Day, saying she knew I'd use that for costuming supplies at some point. So I used that to buy this stuff:
Now, I did actually get around to start carving the foam with an electric knife on Friday, but I haven't gotten very far yet. I'm proceeding very slowly and carefully. I don't have any photos yet to post on that... and I'm back to work tomorrow, working 12 hour shifts, so it may be a few days before I get more work done and photos posted.
Tomorrow, I should have a few supplies arrive in the mail: An Arduino Uno board, a Wave Shield kit, plus a few extra related items. My hope is to build a sound effects player and incorporate it into the costume. I'm hoping I can build something that will actually put out a bit of VOLUME, as that's always been a challenge with whatever sound solution I used in the past (and I've tried a couple of methods).
Gotta run.
Thanks!
-= Dave =-
OK, I figured it's finally time to start my "build thread" for my 2013 Halloween Costume.
The decision to go with a Velociraptor was something I actually made back in about mid-January. I was inspired by this video from Australia:
Velociraptor in Melbourne - YouTube
Key reasons for going with this idea:
1) I want to win FIRST place in the local big-dance-bar's Halloween Costume Contest this year. (I've placed SECOND place for the last two years in a row.) I think this costume has a good shot at doing that.
2) In my experience, if you want your costume to be popular with both kids AND adults, it has to be immediately recognizable (and a subject that is loved) by both groups. Any dinosaur, I think, would fit that requirement. And in addition to the bar-contest, I want to attend two different Halloween events that are more kid-centered.
3) I get to involve my wife again (as the Jurassic Park Ranger who will have me on a leash). I did this last year for the first time. I was Davey Jones from Pirates of the Carribean. My wife made a terrific Jack Sparrow (she even got hit-on by both men AND women on Halloween night!)
OK, so to prep, I've watched the excellent videos over at stanwinstonschool.com, specifically the ones about building a T-Rex head, since the methods there seemed similar to what I want to do.
I started by purchasing a big block of foam. The Stan Winston School videos said I should get "12-TF upholstery foam". So I phoned what appeared to be a large local upholstery foam supplier, Mattress Warehouse (Mattress Warehouse - Mattress and Foam Warehouse ). The guy in their ordering department told me, although he'd been in the business for 30 years, he'd never heard of that term. So I had to describe to him what I wanted to do with the foam...and hope and pray that he understood. Two weeks and $80 later, I had this large chunk delivered to my door:
I also ordered contact cement and contact cement remover online. Once I had this stuff, though, I kind of stopped working on this project for several weeks. The coming of "yard work season" took me away for a while.
But now that we're back to "90-plus-degrees-with-humidity" here in Kansas City, I abort all but the most basic yard work. It's costume time!
So, I started work the other day by taking a key reference photo and enlarging it. (Here's the photo:
I had THOUGHT about simply going to FedEx's Copy Center and asking them to blow it up. However, a quick check online told me that'd be a $25 minimum. And so, I called upon my ancient knowledge gleaned from 7th grade art class: I scaled the photo up by dividing it into a 1-inch grid... then drawing a 3-inch grid on larger paper... and sketching the outline of the Raptor head, square-by-square.
Here's the end product (cut out) for that previous photo. Note that for every photo of that exact same dinosaur, the model's mouth was always opened. So, on my final cut-out, I cut and adjusted the paper so as to close the mouth:
But while I was printing additional copies of that reference photo, I came across ANOTHER set of reference photos... this time some of a model Raptor head. I liked these a lot:
And so, I re-did my work. I drew grids again, enlarged, then cut out. Here's photos of what I ended up with. Note that I layed them against my hunk of foam (most of which has now turned yellow) for reference:
My wife wanted to stop by JoAnn's Fabrics for something while we were out today, so I went in too. She was all excited about my costume plans, so she encouraged me to hunt for stuff for the "spiked collar" that we'd like my Raptor to wear. I picked up a large strip of black marine vinyl (that will hopefully have a leather-like appearance). We also found some unusual bracelets that were made up of pairs of spikes. The spikes look like (and sound kind of like) metal, but they're plastic. My wife had given me a $25 gift card to JoAnn's for Valentine's Day, saying she knew I'd use that for costuming supplies at some point. So I used that to buy this stuff:
Now, I did actually get around to start carving the foam with an electric knife on Friday, but I haven't gotten very far yet. I'm proceeding very slowly and carefully. I don't have any photos yet to post on that... and I'm back to work tomorrow, working 12 hour shifts, so it may be a few days before I get more work done and photos posted.
Tomorrow, I should have a few supplies arrive in the mail: An Arduino Uno board, a Wave Shield kit, plus a few extra related items. My hope is to build a sound effects player and incorporate it into the costume. I'm hoping I can build something that will actually put out a bit of VOLUME, as that's always been a challenge with whatever sound solution I used in the past (and I've tried a couple of methods).
Gotta run.
Thanks!
-= Dave =-
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