re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013
Can't wait to see more pictures! Did you ever get the moving jaw?
Not yet... I'm just now circling back around to everything I need to do before Saturday:
PRIORITY #1: Ability to SEE
I have some of that buckram stuff that fursuiters use to see out of their costumes. I'd resisted the idea of using it, because typically, you have to paint it to match your costume. But I'm going to have to use it to create a fairly large area of the neck that I can see out of. It's some pretty stiff stuff. So perhaps what I need to do is glue a layer of fabric (with the backing removed from it) OVER it. Not sure.
My only other choice would seem to be to try to paint it in some manner so that it looks like a natural "throat sack" for the raptor.
PRIORITY #2: Increase the amount of time I'm able to wear the head / i.e. reduce pain due to head trying to slide forward and down and thereby choking me with the helmet straps.
It would seem I need to somehow move the center of gravity of the head backwards. Now, that would mean either adding weight to the back of the head or removing weight from the snout... or both. I'm thinking... I could probably use the nose holes to carve into the snout. I could also, in theory, peel away the roof of the mouth, carve upwards to remove extra foam, and then re-glue the roof of the mouth into place. Not sure if that'd be good enough, though. My gut says there's a lot of foam in the area of the eyes-and-forehead. I would have to remove the skin material from that area, which might be a bit tricky.
The helmet is heavy enough so I really don't think adding weight to the back of the head would be smart. That said, it'd probably be fairly easy for me to dig some sort of "pockets" into the back of the neck and tuck something heavy into them.
The only other thought I had on this was that I could perhaps use an elastic strap to somehow strap the back of the head / neck area to the PVC base of the neck. And then that would apply an "opposite force" as the head tried to slip forward. But it seems to me that would make putting on the head-helmet a lot trickier and might actually restrict movement when you WANT to nod the head forward.
Any thoughts ?
PRIORITY THREE: Add the moving mouth
As I'd mentioned in a previous post, just adding an elastic strap between the raptor chin and my own chin was an option suggested by that one person's "Tiger of the Wind" costume over on some Fursuit forums. However, I wondered if I could just run some strong fishing line or cable up THROUGH the lower jaw and connect it to a wide fender washer... or some other wide object that would help spread out the force when I pulled the line. And then connect that line to my chin.
I'm also a bit worried about exactly HOW I'm going to connect that line or even the elastic strap to my chin. In the Tiger of the Wind photos / video, it sort of looks like it's attached to her chin-strap, which would make sense. But my chin strap is a bicycle helmet connection. Would I just tie or glue the connection to one of those two bike helmet straps? Not sure. Wish I had more examples of what others have done to go by. But not very many people seem to have creature heads that actually sit ABOVE their own.
PRIORITY FOUR: Sound Effects
I have all the materials. The problem is, exactly HOW am I going to trigger each effect? Meaning: WHERE is the switch going to be and am I using a finger to switch it? I have a set of five "cloth switches", where the switches are already built into a piece of cloth. That'd be great, if my raptor hands weren't already subdivided into fingers. If the hand was like one big mitten, then it'd just be a matter of hot-gluing that set of switches into place. But it's more like half-mitten, half-glove. Two human fingers inside one raptor finger, then two more, and then my thumb in the thumb.
Of course, I could go with a more-standard switch. (And really, my original dream was to use three switches: one for quick chirp sound effects, one for long roars, and one for in-between duration roars. But with this hand issue and given the time remaining, I'm willing to rig up just one switch.)
But again, where do I put it? What hand or finger do I use? I thought about using my mouth, but hey, I'll probably already be using my chin to open and close the mouth. And you don't want to rig the sounds to ALWAYS play when YOUR mouth opens, if it's YOUR mouth that's triggering the creature's mouth to open. You can't talk to your friends if you do that !
PRIORITY FIVE: Shove in two fans
That's about it, but that's plenty !! Any advice on my issues / decisions here would be greatly appreciated. Gonna go get started on the buckram vision thing now.
Thanks!
-= Dave =-
