Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

[Emmalouwho2]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Exciting! Getting really excited to see this come together.

 

[Michael Bergeron]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

This is great and very ambitious! You should enter it in our costume contest.

 

[DR4296]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Real life interfered a lot today, but I have finally made a decision on what to do regarding the big-ass hook-like toes: I covered the foam with cardstock and masking tape...and then applied two (so far) thick layers of fiberglass resin with enough hardener to make sure they hardened quickly (as past experience has shown me the masking tape will release on you, if you don't hurry). So, tomorrow, I should be painting those.

But meanwhile, I just had a lot of fun "installing" the teeth! I basically cut underneath the gums, poked a slot through for each tooth from top to bottom and then tucked each tooth into place from underneath. I then used hot glue to reseal the gums. I did have to make a bit of gum repair, as the foam around each tooth would sometimes compress quite a bit so as to create a gap where you could see the white root of the tooth.

So, a bit of gum repair, a root canal or two <grin!> and now... I'm ready for my dentist appointment tomorrow morning (seriously, I have one!)

My wife said I should have painted the gums and the rest of the inside of the mouth before installing them. She's probably right, but it was so much fun putting these in! Makes you feel like the character's actually starting to "come to life"!

Big day tomorrow. I'm going to get up super-early and try to crank out as much as possible.

Thanks!

-= Dave =-

 

[Guri]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Serious fun to see this coming together!! It looks fantastic.

 

[DR4296]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Well, I started off this morning by popping the eyes into the head. From the side, they look good, but you can't see them at all from the front... i.e. they're too flat. I sort of expected this would happen. My wife is encouraging me to pull out some of the 2-and-a-half-inch domes I'd made earlier. These are the ones where I couldn't pop them out of the stupid mold. However, if I can find two of them (I think I have 6 or 7 out in the garage) that don't have their plastic molds scratched, I'm going to paint them into eyes.... just to compare and see if they'll work.

I'm not sure how I'm going to get them to STAY in the eye sockets, though. I'd have to glue them...and of course, that means I'm kinda screwed if I ever need to swap them out. Meanwhile, the flatter ones are just being held in by the foam itself.

You ever see that show on the Food Network, "Chopped"? The contestants are given a bunch of wacky ingredients and then have to whip out a dish in 30 minutes. Well, sometimes on that show, a contestant will look at ONE particular ingredient with such confusion about what to do, they put it aside and don't think about it... until at the last minute, where they either do something lame or completely forget that ingredient. It's a huge mistake... caused by a "mental block".

I'm having the same sort of situation over the legs at this point.

Originally, I had hoped that by bending the feet at a 30 degree angle, and attaching them to my boots in that manner, would help with the digitigrade illusion. However, the end result angle is less than 30 degrees. It hides my boots pretty well, but that's about it. So, if I continued with that original plan, my human legs would become the raptor's legs. No real changes required. Heck, I'm not even sure if I would need any foam, unless it were to, say, make my hips look a lot bigger in order to help integrate the legs with the torso better.

But then I'd been looking over and over at the various print-outs I'd made from online posts about building digitigrade legs by attaching foam to a pair of tights... and then overlaying that with whatever skin you want. So on Sunday, I taped a huge piece of paper to the refrigerator, stood next to it, and traced out my leg. Then, I slid my raptor foot over against the fridge and traced that onto the same paper. So then I started sketching a "what if"... "what if" I were to build those foam digitigrade legs, ignoring the feet for the moment.

I can't say I'm comfortable with what I saw. I'm posting a photo here for your thoughts on this issue:

So, whaddaya think? Do I go ahead and try to make that backwards-bend in the leg so as to go digitigrade? Or do I say, nah, that'd look kinda stupid, given how the feet turned out?


Thanks!

-= Dave =-

 

[Emmalouwho2]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

I don't know what to tell you, I've just now begun working on the legs myself and mine will be similar to Monoyasha's legs but with less around the ankles. Good luck, though...The image you have looks like it could use a little bit less toward the front but otherwise it looks pretty good.

 

[DR4296]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Well, we're down to crunch-time. Starting to feel the pressure.

Feet = totally done

Legs = I've sketched some outlines onto a pair of red tights that I bought a few years back for my Iron Man costume. Haven't done anything else yet.

Body = I started gluing foam around my PVC cage yesterday afternoon. I figure I'm about 60% done. It's looking good. I will still need to cut arm-holes into it, plus figure out how to cut it / edge it with regards to the legs.

Hands = I had sliced them almost completely in half a few weeks ago and had carved out holes / space for my hands. But when I try closing the two halves, basically, my hands are "too thick" and I need more foam at the sides to cover them. So, I need to cut out and glue in 4 foam "triangles" today. I will probably try to glue in a pair of cotton work gloves as well. I hot-glued the finger nails / claws onto them the other night. But one big surprise was that the weight of those claw tips now cause the fingers to sag, bounce, and sway. When I glue the two halves of each hand back together, I'm hoping that sag effect will be seriously reduced. If not, I may have to figure out how to shove some metal or plastic rods through them in order to stabilize them.

Head = Over the past two days, I have painted the inside of the mouth with a flesh-tone color that I added some red to. I used acrylic paint. I learned yesterday that it was taking forever to dry, so I aimed a fan at the mouth and that really seemed to help. I did get some pink on the teeth, but I'm planning on mixing up some dark red "blood" and painting it over those mistakes. One growing problem is that propping the mouth opened has caused the foam to now sag, so I definitely have to attach elastic at the sides to help pull it back up. Oh, and I keep totally forgetting about a TONGUE. I have no idea what I'm going to do about that! But whatever I do, I want this week's tongue to be a temporary one, just in case I decide to make a better one later on. ACK !!

Of course, I still have to attach elastic to make the mouth open and close, and then cover the whole thing with material. (I'm happy to report that my emergency online order of 10 more yards of material arrived early yesterday.) And I'll also have to work on the neck material that I extend off of the head: I'll need to cut away the second layer of this two-layer material so that I can potentially SEE through it !! (The cloth is actually two layers that are connected together every inch or so.)

Arms = My wife and I took a cotton long sleeve shirt of mine (again, a red one that I think I used for an Ironman undergarment)... and we simply cut and hot-glued material to it. We took it all the way up to just beyond the shoulder. I need to add some glue at the shoulders, but that's about it.

Tail = I need to decide today whether I even want to BOTHER to test the screw-on-adapter method that I had decided upon last week. I'm trying to attach a 1/2 " PVC tail bone to a 3/4 " "butt" bone and at the time, the only PVC adapter system I could find was a set that screwed into each other. However, I'm very worried that if the tail starts wagging back and forth, the amount of force placed on that joint could easily cause it to break.

An alternative idea I had was to simply put a 4-6 inch extension off of the "butt"... made of the larger 3/4 " PVC, then slide the 1/2 " PVC into it. To make it stay in place, I'd drill TWO holes along the length of each pipe, then slide metal pins (not sure what to use here) through them. I could make the rear-most set of holes a bit LARGER left-to-right than they needed to be, in order to allow for a bit of bending and sliding at that point, which might help reduce the stress on the pin-point ahead of it. Uggg, I'm dreading this.

At some point today, I need to think about how and where I'm going to attach my two speakers. I suspect that the ideal place might be along the "collar" of the body, which means I'd have to figure out how to connect the plastic speaker housings to the PVC... in a way that still allows me to freely shove my head through that collar.

Lord... all this... and I'd PREFER to have it done by 2 PM tomorrow, so I can try it all on and walk around a bit. Final deadline is 2 PM Saturday. <sigh>


Thanks!

-= Dave =-

 

[Briciius]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

you can do it !!!! COURAGE !!

 

[DR4296]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Taking a break... gonna actually go power-walk for an hour or so. My brain is fried.

But I took a photo to help me check how things are gonna turn out proportion-wise (and perhaps help me with the pants / legs later on tonight), so I thought I'd post those here.

But first, here are some photos of the finished feet that I took two days ago:

And here's one where I threw on my T-shirt with the arm material, threw on the body (including the screw-on tail) and the head... just a few minutes ago:

NOTE: There are foam sheets in the stomach area that are just hanging, uncarved and unglued at this point. So that's NOT how that area is going to look, in the end.

This morning, I finished piecing together the hands and gluing them, so those will be ready for material to be applied later on tonight. My goal was to be able to hold a beer with one of the hands. I don't think that's quite possible, but I will certainly be able to hold a beer with TWO raptor hands! <grin!>

I did use red paint to bloody-up the teeth and mouth area a bit, to help disguise where I had accidentally hit the teeth with the pink flesh-tone paint.

I spent way too much time adjusting the helmet straps and the whole thing still doesn't seem quite right. I can see this is going to be a huge pain to my neck and back, so I anticipate only being able to wear this thing (without standing completely upright) in spurts.

I do anticipate shortening the base of the tail tomorrow. I'm just going to cut a good 4-6 inches off of that exposed PVC and put on a new adapter. So far, the screw-on adapter seems to be working okay. Thankfully, on Saturday, I will be outdoors. So as long as I'm conscious of where my tail is, I think I'll be alright. My wife says my tail-tip was dragging a bit so I will probably take a heat gun to that PVC joint so as to angle the tail upwards a bit more.

And I had two "oh crap" moments now that I'll have to figure out. :
1) I know there's that one video of the Fursuit maker whose Tiger of the Wind character has a jaw that is connected to her own mouth by what I had THOUGHT was a piece of elastic. So, I had purchased some elastic to use both there, and then also at the sides of the back of the mouth, to help keep the jaw closed. However, as I picked the elastic I had bought up and started thinking about how to attach it, it suddenly occurred to me that I don't think this is going to work. If I glue one end to the foam head and one end to a strap on my chin, when I flex my chin, the elastic itself will stretch. I think what's needed for that chin attachment is something that WON'T stretch. Not sure what I really need for the sides of the mouth. Any thoughts ??

2) I had told myself that on Saturday morning, I could whip out my Arduino, go manage and prep my sound files and just program it so that when I pressed a button, it would play a random sound of 1-2 seconds in length. And I'd time this with the opening of my raptor's mouth. But of course, this was a "gravy item", something that was completely on the back-burner for Saturday. I seriously hadn't thought this through: I haven't even rigged up a button / switch to my Arduino yet! And I hadn't figured out how I'd be activating this button with my chin yet! So, unless a small miracle occurs, I doubt I'll be rigged for sound in time for 2 PM Saturday. <sigh>

Tonight will be focused on covering the hands with cloth and building the legs / pants.


I know one might ask: Why are you wasting time taking 30 minutes to post here when you've got all this left to do? To that I say, it helps me think through problems and actually lowers my stress a little. Gotta go walk now, catch you all later.

And THANKS FOR YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT !!


-= Dave =-

 

[Emmalouwho2]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Nylon webbing might work well for a less stretchy elastic. Dog collar material, if you can find it or maybe just buy a cheap dog collar? I found some at a boat repair place nearby to avoid outrageous shipping costs.

 

[DR4296]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Update:


Body = completed / covered with cloth. Has velcro at the belly area to help attach foam together in that area.

Legs = completed. We used the same "rough" method that we used for the arms: We pinned the skin material to the leggings, while I was wearing them. Then I took them off and hot glued the pin-points and created seams. Unfortunately, we ended up with some seams on the front of the legs, after twisting some of the material around. But I'm hoping the camouflage pattern will help hide that. I'm going to be using some suspenders to keep the leggings up, though, as they tend to slip on me at the waist. Note that I ditched the idea of attaching foam to the back of the legs to create a digitigrade look. I did this after consulting my reference model and images and concluding that doing that would look best.

Head = I'm about 70% through covering that with cloth, at this point. Basically, all I have left to do is the "throat sac" area, plus the cloth that's going to become the neck, which will completely enclose my own head. And I'll need to remove the second layer of the cloth to allow me to see.

Feet = done.

Hands = done.

Tail = I shortened the length of the exposed PVC at the point where it attaches to the base of the torso. Previously, I had kept that area about a hand's width in length. Now, I'll need to screw the tail back onto the torso, and disguise the attachment with cloth. But before I do that, I want to take a heat gun to the length of PVC that it attaches to and try to angle that upwards a bit further, without weakening it.

Collar = My wife wants to make this. It's basically going to be a fake leather collar about 3 inches in width, with spikes along it. The spikes aren't that terribly long. We're taking apart two spiked bracelets that I think I found at Walmart. She's just going to hot glue the spikes onto the collar, which SHOULD work. But I will need to add a foam "ring" to the body at the neck for this collar to wrap around. That shouldn't take long to do.

I simply will NOT have time to finish the sound system for today's event. But obviously, I SHOULD be able to get that up-and-running prior to Halloween events.

Also, I doubt I will have the lower jaw be MOVABLE in time for 2 PM today. I do have a slightly different idea about that, though: Suppose I made a very narrow angled hole in the lower jaw and threaded through some 50 pound test. Then, inside, I attached it to some sort of grate-like piece of metal. When you'd pull on the fishing line, that grate would pull on the foam at the bottom of the mouth. And then I'd just have to figure out how to firmly attach the fishing line to my own chin. And I think I'd want to lubricate the line a bit with some soap along the area that moves through the foam. Just a thought, at this point. I doubt I'll get time to implement today.

That disappoints me, BUT, I think with my choice of cloth, this raptor's going to look pretty good. I will try to get some photos at this afternoon's event, but it will probably take me a couple of days to get my friends to send me THEIR photos that they take of me.


Thanks!

-= Dave =-

 

[Emmalouwho2]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Can't wait! Hopefully you got the raptor at least temporarily finished for today's event.

 

[DR4296]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Just got back from the "Mystic Pumpkin Festival"! I'm afraid I could only last two hours in the costume before it felt like I was going to choke to death, as the head kept slowly slipping forward. But a friend took this photo, which I think shows that this turned out pretty good!:

I was standing quite a bit upright there... more than I would have liked for this photo, but still, I had a LOT of "photo ops" with kids! I could barely walk 5 feet without getting a photo request! <grin!> Wish I could have gotten a photo of when the one 3-4 year old boy suddenly gave me a big hug!

I gotta get back down there, as my wife's still down there... she's involved in a Halloween play all afternoon and into the evening. I wish I could have lasted longer in this. But I'll go into the key issues that need fixing here in a day or two.

Thanks!

-= Dave =-

 

[Emmalouwho2]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Those feet, man! They're HUGE. xD It looks great! Looks like a total blast.

 

[DR4296]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Those feet, man! They're HUGE. xD It looks great! Looks like a total blast.

Well, keep in mind, the actual raptor "feet" are about the first third of each foot, then the other two thirds are supposed to be that digitigrade back-bend where the angle ended up being too shallow. But I have big feet anyways (size 12). <grin!> I was surprised by how amazingly well they held up!

Oh, and I forgot to mention the ULTIMATE honor: I was told to move back from a particular area... the area where the hay ride was picking up passengers. It seems my costume was SPOOKING THE MULES !!! LOL !!


-= Dave =-

 

[Guri]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

You did it!! What a challenging costume, especially in the time you completed it.

Looks so fun! I bet those kids were all over you. That must have been a blast to walk around in.

 

[DR4296]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

You did it!! What a challenging costume, especially in the time you completed it.

Looks so fun! I bet those kids were all over you. That must have been a blast to walk around in.

Yeah, it was! But I couldn't see a thing: I had planned to cut away the second layer of material in the neck area in order to be able to see through it. Well, I actually finished attaching the neck material at 1:30 PM, so cutting away the eye section was a last-minute rush. But I found that I could do a few inches per minute if I cut in a certain direction. However, once it came time to bunch-up the material, shove it down my neck, and then make sure I was the see-through material sections were lined-up with my eyes.... I found... I had way too much material and the see-through section would sag at an angle I couldn't see through.

I really hadn't wanted to make a "left flap" and a "right flap" of material in the front neck area, but that's how it turned out. Fortunately, my wife thought to part that material so I had a small triangle opened that I could see through. Only over just a few minutes time, the material would sag and drape back closed. We'd left our straight-pins in the car so we couldn't pin it into place. At best, I could see directly ahead and down with like a 15 degree window for 2-3 minutes at a time.... which sucked.

But I'm thinking I can redo the entire neck area this week, put in some of that buckram stuff instead, but build the entire throat sack area so it's made up of that stuff... and then figure out how to paint it with a color scheme that's "close" to the material pattern, but say, maybe a bit more green or gray in that area. The down-side would be that the throat area might end up looking a bit stiff.

But one of my two events coming up is at night, inside a bar, so I've GOT to be able to see. The other one is another outdoor festival for the kids, put on by our church. It's only two hours in duration, so I should be able to hold up for the whole thing.

Not being able to see and react very much to the kids yesterday was annoying.

Here's another couple of pics. Not liking the way the neck-material was bunching up in these, but I will fix that this next week:

Thanks!

-= Dave =-

 

[Emmalouwho2]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

It came out really nice! I wasn't sure how your fabric choice would look when finished but it's actually really neat.

 

[TurboTrey03]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Awesome!! How did you attach the fabric to the foam parts? Spray glue?

 

[WrenW]

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

It seems my costume was SPOOKING THE MULES !!! -

LOL There is no higher complement than that. Congrats! It looks great! But I bet it gets pretty toasty inside the suit...