re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013
Greetings All !
My apologies for not posting an update sooner! My work schedule was totally changed there for a couple of weeks, due to a training class. And as a result I had very little spare time.
Here's where I'm at right now on this project:
Body:
I have made good progress on building a PVC body "cage". I started by measuring neck circumference and base-of-tail circumference on my model and scaling those measurements up. I then cut out PVC strips of those two lengths and taped those together to be loops.
Next, I cut and bent some one-inch PVC to form a backbone, plus three other "lines" that travelled along the length of my raptor. I attached everything together with duct tape, at first, and then used bolts and nuts. Then, I heated and curved PVC into loops and inserted the first one inside the neck-looped-PVC strip. I then bolted the PVC tube-loop into place and removed the PVC strip.
At the moment, I'm in the middle of doing the same thing for the base-of-tail area. Oh, and I'm cementing all of the PVC connections. By the end of the day, I ought to be attaching supportive strips of PVC to this skeleton.
After that, I intend to attach a layer of foam, but I'll admit, I'm wondering how in the heck I'm going to attach foam to PVC ??
Note that I had to shorten this PVC cage to fit my own frame. Had I gone with my model's proportions, the base of the tail would have been at about the floor if I was standing up straight.
Tail:
I'm a bit concerned that the 3M Super 77 spray didn't seem to hold up on my tail. I noticed the other day that areas that I thought were firmly together had separated. Now, this COULD have been due to the fact that the tail has been out in my garage... and overnight temperatures there last week got down into the high 40's ?? Perhaps the glue didn't hold up in the cold? Fortunately, hot glue seems to be holding.
I still have to cut the tail's surface foam into strips, stuff everything with poly-fill, and then start sewing my "skin" over it all.
I plan on running a foot or two of PVC down the center of the pool-noodle-tail and then attaching it to my PVC body skeleton... BUT, I need to figure out how to make it so that I can detach the tail at will (otherwise, I'll never be able to get into the bar I want to go to on Halloween night)...and yet rely on that attachment to remain firm while I "perform" in the costume.
Oh, and I MIGHT angle the tail UPWARDS a bit to help prevent it from contacting the floor so much.
Eyes: What time I did spend on the costume lately has been mostly spent on eye development. I had tried using EasyCast in those Hobby Lobby plastic ornament domes, but found that I couldn't get the resin eyes out of the molds, even with a mold release spray.
And that EasyCast isn't cheap. So, I usually had to wait a week to buy more in order to continue experimenting.
I tried using a mold putty. But eyes that popped out of that had dull surfaces. I did find out that drizzling a small amount of fresh Easycast over the completed resin dome WOULD eventually dry to form a shiny surface. However, getting that surface to be even and without blemish was very difficult.
Then the other day I suddenly realized that using a DOME would actually distort badly any image I painted or glued behind the dome. What I really needed was a thinner DISK-shape. Two of those, glued back-to-back, supposedly will get me "follow-me" style resin eyes.
Everyone had recommended I go get a plastic "painters pallete" to act as a mold. But I had only encountered palletes like that that had very small dome-depressions in them. I needed something on the order of two-and-a-half inches.
Well, yesterday, I ran into this:
And this time, I tried using Pam cooking spray as a mold release, to help things out. I used Pam on two of the depressions, but left two others alone. And I only had enough resin mixed to fill three of them.
This morning, two of those disks popped out nicely !! I'll admit, they're a bit wider than two-and-a-half inches, but I figure I can tuck the excess underneath foam surrounding the eye sockets.
So now, all I need to do regarding the eyes is:
a) Make two more disks.
b) Super glue each pair back-to-back.
c) Paint the pupil-and-eye pattern onto one disk/ dome surface in each pair.
I hope to do that during my lunch hours starting tomorrow.
Teeth: I made 32 teeth out of Sculpey last night while watching TV. I need to make 32 more. I then intend to paint them. I can't glue them into the mouth yet because first I need to figure out EXACTLY how I'm going to make the jaw open and close. This is quickly becoming a priority.
In other news: My wife bought two used bicycle helmets at a thrift store the other day for me. So now I need to start looking at reducing the length of the neck, carving in a depression for a helmet, and then gluing that helmet into place.
I am concerned though that, based on my model and in looking at my PVC body cage, the head may need to be angled somewhat backward on my own head in order to get the proper angle. Either that or my own neck would have to be tilted backwards 90 degrees almost all the time.
Also, since I had to reduce the proportional length of that body cage, I'm wondering... will the head now look too big, proportionally?
Here's a quick photo where I layed the major parts out the other day on my garage floor in order to look at the proportions:
Sound: I stumbled upon some el-cheapo tin-can, unpowered computer speakers I had lying around. I then tried plugging them into a Boostaroo amplifier that I have from previous years of costuming. And yes, as with previous years of costuming, the volume didn't seem to be quite loud enough, when I plugged that all into my Arduino (Wave Shield). But then I remembered I have a SECOND Boostaroo lying around, so I daisy-chained them. This IS fairly loud, but I know that even in a small crowd or outdoors... that won't be enough. I have no idea how many ohms these cheesy speakers are. But I'm planning on ordering some 4 ohm ones in order to test them with this setup. If the cheesy ones are 8 ohms, I ought to see a volume increase.
Oh, and I did order and receive from Sparkfun a sort of "cloth controller"... 5 buttons embedded in cloth that I can rig up to the Arduino. I was surprised, though, by how much I can NOT feel the buttons within the cloth strip. So that concerns me a bit, as does the question of how I'm going to put this into one of the hands and manipulate it comfortably.
Props: My wife has shopped at thrift stores in order to come up with a hat (pith helmet) and a sort of khaki-dress. I bought her a 6 foot bullwhip off of eBay. She already has two Jurassic Park patches that I bought for her a few months back. And then we were at Michael's and she spotted this chain, which seems to be about the perfect size: big-looking, but not overly big.:
So, we bought two of these and intend to chain them together. It looks like we'll have to superglue each link at the point where it attaches to itself, as those spots appear to be prone to separation. We'll also need to paint these a bit "better", though I haven't had time to think about how exactly I want to repaint them.
Also, we will need to figure out how to attach this to the costume so that it LOOKS like it's attached to the spiked collar, but we need to be able to DETACH it when we want to. (It sounds like, during the key children's Halloween event I will be attending on October 19th, there may be periods of time where my wife / handler will be committed elsewhere and I'll have to "go solo".)
As you can see, I'm still way "behind", if I'm going to be ready by October 19th. But I'm encouraged in that: I have the entire month of October off AFTER the 9th. Plus, my wife has agreed to be involved in a little "Halloween Play", so she's going to have to run off for multiple-hours-at-a-time to multiple rehearsals... so that removes some distraction and gives me nice "slots" to work uninterrupted in.
Thanks for everyone's advice! I sure do welcome it!
-= Dave =-
