Anyone make DUNE props?

While it's been 20 years; having examined a DUNE rope, I do recall it being wrapped in black tape. It wasn't plastic electrical tape, it was a black fabric tape.

-Rylo
 
While it's been 20 years; having examined a DUNE rope, I do recall it being wrapped in black tape. It wasn't plastic electrical tape, it was a black fabric tape.
I figured they used gaffer tape, 1 roll wide. Do you recall the diameter of the rope and was it indeed orange? I have a feeling it was solid colored climbing rope or static line with the gaffer tape 1 width between wrappings.
 
It's been years, I could even guess.

I only remembered the tape because (like others have noted) I thought it looked like old school jump roaps at a distance.



I figured they used gaffer tape, 1 roll wide. Do you recall the diameter of the rope and was it indeed orange? I have a feeling it was solid colored climbing rope or static line with the gaffer tape 1 width between wrappings.
 
So I've begun scoping out what I need for the thumper. Still fixing to work out how I want the piston to function/how it's gonna be put together, but I think I know some of the parts I'm using and I've begun ordering them.


Buuut I'm very excited to say the major materials I want to use for the stillsuit are totally sound in principle. I threw together a mockup tonight (haven't taken pics since the rubber hasn't dried, I was too impatient haha) and while it's really a rough draft, it was only to see if the rubber was going to work right and I think it may have! I have to work out what exactly I want to use for padding since I'm not happy at ALL with the uncovered furniture foam I used for one part of it, and they didn't have the right strips of rubber at Lowes so I used some old stuff I had lying around while I wait for my order of correct tape comes in. Wrong number of ridges, and it was white so I colored it with permanent marker just to get me through the mockup LOL.

But all in all, given those factors, it still looks like it will work for a full sized suit once I get all the kinks ironed out. I'm gonna have to figure out how to get my hands on a mannequin to work off of.



I'll post pics when the rubber is fully dry, and I'm also gonna throw a little fullers earth on it for a pic to give it a "desert look". I definitely need to reevaluate how I want to make the padding though. What I did will not work on a costume because it won't bend and conform right. It'd work nice on a display though.



EDIT: What would you all say the color of the rope is btw? It looks sorta...orangey...red....white....I can't put a single color on it but then it also looks like the whole thing is covered in tape. If all of it is fabric tape like the hockey tape I have lying around, I could see it being covered in black and white then dipped in a kind of reddish dye....
 
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As far as the still suit goes, here are my thoughts in regard to construction:

1-2 mil wetsuit for the under suit. A separate farmer john zip-front jacket in 1-2 mil.

Using surgical tubing make the 'hydration tubes' and glue them down with wetsuit glue.

Sculpt the 'muscles' out of another layer of 2-3 mil wetsuit material. Add thin craft foam to ad bulk if needed.

Lastly brush on Plastidip or whatever laytex the batman crowd uses to smooth over their batsuits. This would blend in the seams. Can Plastidip be thinned and sprayed with an airbrush?

Finish off color with an airbrush.

Im sure everyone here has seen the below link.


http://www.duneinfo.com/arrakis/stillsuits.asp
 
Well what I had posted above was a quote from either the owner of a maker hook and rope or the auction from PiH and it said orange. I'm thinking the diameter of the rope is a little more then clothesline. I'm hoping to hit up Home Depot this weekend and grab some along with gaffer tape and see what I can replicate.
 
As far as the still suit goes, here are my thoughts in regard to construction:

1-2 mil wetsuit for the under suit. A separate farmer john zip-front jacket in 1-2 mil.

Using surgical tubing make the 'hydration tubes' and glue them down with wetsuit glue.

Sculpt the 'muscles' out of another layer of 2-3 mil wetsuit material. Add thin craft foam to ad bulk if needed.

Lastly brush on Plastidip or whatever laytex the batman crowd uses to smooth over their batsuits. This would blend in the seams. Can Plastidip be thinned and sprayed with an airbrush?

Finish off color with an airbrush.

Im sure everyone here has seen the below link.


http://www.duneinfo.com/arrakis/stillsuits.asp


......
:eek

......
:confused

Now time for reevaluation LOL.
That is the single most useful link I've ever seen.



What I had done was probably more complicated, was experimenting with different foams (furniture foam which was an abysmal failure, and model magic) and I thought the tubes were actually weatherstripping. But I was painting on it with liquid latex and it seemed to work relatively well.

Original:
22156_572520298065_49404675_33480526_3400556_n.jpg


My mockup of half of the lower abdomen (Ignore the red arrows, they were just there to point out the massive material fail regarding the furniture foam):
22156_572520063535_49404675_33480525_4430751_n.jpg

(It was a super rough draft anyways, so now that I'm reevaluating the whole project, disregard the cruddy quality of that mockup LOL)


I'm going to completely switch materials now to the wetsuit haha. Thank you SO MUCH!! I was originally going to use craft foam for the flatter parts like the arms but I was grappling with the fact that it just wasn't going to be thick enough...oh man this is a huge help. Thank you ever so much!

The latex I had a fairly easy time working with actually, so I'm probably going to stick with that. It's more controlled than something like a spray, and the color I got dried and looked just fine. I'm going to dirty it up with fullers earth when I'm done though.







LordFett--sweet deal, definitely post progress pics. I'd love to see what you can come up with! I don't think I'm gonna be able to find a hook like that though as I originally thought, it's like they designed it off of a fishing hook and anchor but they really don't make 2 pronged anchors anymore, just 3 prongs because of the added dimension of hold. :unsure I'm back to square 1 on that one because I don't have the means or equipment to do large-scale resin molding like that.
 
Sorry Barbie, I thought I had posted that link for you before... That is where I've gotten a lot of info regarding this stuff.

Also one suggestion I found on a LEGO board regarding the thumper was to use a motor from windshield wipers.
 
I would think a motor from an old casette player would work just as well, the whole thumper piston mechanism doesn't have to be made out of heavy material. The whole thing could probably be constructed out of wooden dowel rods and cardboard tubes (the piston mechanism, not the whole thing).

And as for what to use on the outter most construction of the suit, I'd suggest using headliner foam, the same stuff they use in cars, and this was the same material that made the bulk of my suit. It's thin enough yet has enough strength to stay "puffy". Double it over along the edges and glue in place. If that doesn't do the trick, use some cotton batting to add a little more cushion to it.
 
Barbie, Home Depot sells a 'three ribbed' strip of weather stipping that is made to self adhere to the bottom of a door. The ribbed portions are flat on the sticky side so laying them out wouldn't be a problem. IIRC some of the torso protions of 'hydration tubing' are sections of three.

If the wetsuit glue doesnt take to the tubing you could hot glue the ends and/or sew from underneath to hold them in place. That way the threads wouldn't be visible.

Anyway basic used wetsuits can be had for cheaper than buying new foam. That's my way to skin this cat.

Like Dropshipbob mentioned, Headliner material can be found at Joanns fabrics in 1/4 I think. Not sure on the price. Dont know well it would absorb the latex-plasti dip coating. But if you are a clean seamstress this is an excellent method also. I just imagined the suit with a rubber texture.
 
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Barbie, Home Depot sells a 'three ribbed' strip of weather stipping that is made to self adhere to the bottom of a door. The ribbed portions are flat on the sticky side so laying them out wouldn't be a problem. IIRC some of the torso protions of 'hydration tubing' are sections of three.

If the wetsuit glue doesnt take to the tubing you could hot glue the ends and/or sew from underneath to hold them in place. That way the threads wouldn't be visible.

Anyway basic used wetsuits can be had for cheaper than buying new foam. That's my way to skin this cat.

Like Dropshipbob mentioned, Headliner material can be found at Joanns fabrics in 1/4 I think. Not sure on the price. Dont know well it would absorb the latex-plasti dip coating. But if you are a clean seamstress this is an excellent method also. I just imagined the suit with a rubber texture.


Yeah I actually stopped at Lowes last night, the 3-ribbed ones were not the right size so I just stuck with innaccurate stuff for my mockup. I'm still shopping around to see how close I can get with weatherstripping, but I don't trust the adhesive alone. Now that I know the stuff is all neoprene I can get some wetsuit glue but I like the idea of hot gluing. It won't look too bad if I need to do the ends because it'll all be rubberized anyways afterwards.

I was originally going to go with Barge, does anyone know if wetsuit glue is much better for that sort of thing than contact cement? I couldn't pick up Barge last night so I used GOOP (ugh never again, I'm so sick of that stuff getting everywhere, and somehow, I don't know how, I can't get the damn taste of goop out of my mouth even today. And it destroys my nailpolish. I know, I'm a wussy girl LOL) and it seems to have held decently. Then again I haven't really done much with moving it...


I'm definitely going to be going the route of buying already put together suits, but going to take extra neoprene and attatch it that way. Noooo way am I going to sew up entire wetsuits, not with how rocky my relationship with my sewing machine is haha. The problem they were mentioning on that interview though was with the latex not drying properly, which I have thus far not really encountered on the mockup. I need to double check the furniture foam though, because that kept soaking in right away (something I'm concerned would happen with the neoprene) so I eventually just started coating the sucker and it took the longest to dry. Need to make sure it really did dry all the way through. But neoprene still isn't as porous as that stuff so I don't forsee it being that huge a problem, as long as I'm not wrong and the latex doesn't get absorbed easily into the material. (Took to the model magic like a duck to water, it's too bad neoprene doesn't have a surface like that.) The other problem they mentioned was sticking which I think I can just circumvent with fullers earth and talc.



The thing about the puffyness though...looking at the studio pics in that link, it looks like all they did was take pieces of neoprene and tack it down in waves to make pockets. It doesn't look like they used much foam at all. Which makes much more sense now because they way those things bend, it looks like there's nothing in it. (Which is kind of aggravating because aren't they supposed to be filled with water? :rolleyes ) A friend of mine just linked me to a great neoprene supplier so I'm gonna check it out and see if I can't find a wetsuit and then seperate neoprene that matches at least somewhat.





As for the thumper, the main problem I'm having is figuring out the mechanism of movement itself. I guess I'd just want it to be a 1-way movement, since 2 way would be much more difficult to construct, just have something pull the cylinder up and drop it. The cylinder shouldn't be hard to construct, nor the smaller cylinder inside it...my main issue is just getting the whole mechanism figured out from the inside.
 
As for the thumper, the main problem I'm having is figuring out the mechanism of movement itself. I guess I'd just want it to be a 1-way movement, since 2 way would be much more difficult to construct, just have something pull the cylinder up and drop it. The cylinder shouldn't be hard to construct, nor the smaller cylinder inside it...my main issue is just getting the whole mechanism figured out from the inside.
It is just a simple piston. The motor's drive shift is basically your crankshaft, but since it is flat you'll need a plate to act as the crank shaft.

Four_stroke_engine_diagram.jpg

You only need P R C from that diagram.
 
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RB - I used hot glue for the water-tubes on the 2 suits that I did..I covered the entire suits with black latex rubber, and then dusted them with (get this!) cinnamon!!
For that authentic smell.. :lol
As soon as I can get a new scanner..(mine is so old that it won't work w/ my computer) I'll upload some pix..
 
LordFett -- uber helpful. Thanks muchly. I think a trip to a radio shack and perhaps a car supply store is in order soon.


Stimpy--yeah that's the stuff I used, it's the foam rubber weatherstripping, but the only one they had in the 3-ribbed variety was WAY too small (it was like a quarter inch wide for a single strip, needs to be much larger) so I'm looking to see if I can find something wider to use.


Jayn--please do! I'm excited to see photos. And that's actually funny, I had JUST been thinking about mixing a half cinnamon, half fullers earth mix. I'm already going to be getting a cinnamon perfume (because I accessorize that hardcore lol) but it's not just because I want to also smell authentic, I want to be able to cover up the smell of latex which is pretty terrible. :sick
 
As far as the still suit goes, here are my thoughts in regard to construction:

1-2 mil wetsuit for the under suit. A separate farmer john zip-front jacket in 1-2 mil.

Using surgical tubing make the 'hydration tubes' and glue them down with wetsuit glue.

Sculpt the 'muscles' out of another layer of 2-3 mil wetsuit material. Add thin craft foam to ad bulk if needed.

Lastly brush on Plastidip or whatever laytex the batman crowd uses to smooth over their batsuits. This would blend in the seams. Can Plastidip be thinned and sprayed with an airbrush?

Finish off color with an airbrush.

Im sure everyone here has seen the below link.


http://www.duneinfo.com/arrakis/stillsuits.asp


Just to add a note....

I dont know if Plastidip can be thinned..BUT

YOU CAN BUY IT..as a spray.

I use the stuff, when I make certain wings. You can spray the stuff on thick..or thin...just takes longer to dry. Oh..you have to hunt for it, as not every Home Depot carries it. Out of all the stores near me..I have found it in two so far.


--
Also..just out of curosity, I happened by a walk-mart yesterday..and I saw 2 prong anchors. Not QUITE like those in the movie, but they were small and flat, and folded to make it easy to carry.

Hope that helps...
 
Looking over that interview/tutorial again, it looks as if they did not use a wetsuit for a base, but rather a leotard. I THINK the padding was constructed using neoprene, but I can't be certain....Plain black leotard with some minor mods like zippers and collars will be far less pricey than a full wetsuit!


I'm still researching the thumper outer pieces...it looks like a model russian rocket on the bottom half, but I'm trying to find one in the right size. (I'm also working on 3 costumes right now to make up for my pitiful 09 lineup so it'll be sorta slow going. :lol)
 
Hi Guys,
Im new to this forum but am a big fan of Dune .
Im a model maker and have been at it for a while. I thought you might be able to help me . Im looking for some images of the maker hooks. I already have the ones from the previous post and they help....also have image caps from the movie.
Im currently working on a kit version of the poster art of Paul Atreides....should have it ready for release next month and wanted to add it as a part .
I have also got an Atreides ship out as well . Let me know if your interested.
I also have plans to do other dune stuff down the road.
Thankx again for any help on the hooks.
Tony
 
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