Oldeworldsmith
New Member
Thought I'd share a quick prop I whipped together as a carry-around cosplay accessory for SDCC. My girlfriend will be dressing as Claire and I'm attempting a Lowery (since I have no hope of matching Chris Pratt's physique). We wanted something extra to hold and carry around as well and settled on the hunk of skin the Indominius Rex tears out of itself to get at the tracking device embedded in it. I know neither of our characters actually come into contact with that prop during the movie but it's a mostly organic shape that I knew I could replicate fairly easily... and it just looks cool. Now let me just say that my goals here were not to be 100% screen accurate but as close as possible allowing for found objects that could be assembled and built quickly in time for the con. Bearing that in mind, I still wanted to get at least the same basic shape of the prop and to do that I used screen caps to sketch out a basic shape & size for transfer to 1/4" carpet foam. After cutting my shapes, I used foam puppet crafting techniques to start shaping the foam bits into scales using contact cement to stick & shape the pieces into a nice bumpy surface.
With that complete, I needed to concentrate on the tracking device that would be embedded into the opposite side of the dino skin. Again, owing to not having much time I knew I'd have to be relying on finding pre-made objects that matched the screen reference as closely as possible. It wasn't easy but a weekend toy store search finally turned up clear, plastic "test tube" shape for the body of tracker.
The rest of the metal body of the tracker would be made up stock aluminum tubes from the hobby store and some spare faucet bits & washers for it's tip.
The flashing blue light that adorns the tip would also need to be off the shelf. I found a "pet safety light" on Amazon that had three settings for a blue LED light one of which is a slow blink similar to how it acted in the film. It was also fortunately very easy to disassemble and get at the light & battery board.
The only major surgery that needed to be done before install into the aluminum tracker body was that the LED had to be soldered off the board and given a new wire extension.
After that, it was just a matter of gluing things in place with a PVC base that fit snugly into the plastic toy test tube from the science kit.
With that complete, I needed to concentrate on the tracking device that would be embedded into the opposite side of the dino skin. Again, owing to not having much time I knew I'd have to be relying on finding pre-made objects that matched the screen reference as closely as possible. It wasn't easy but a weekend toy store search finally turned up clear, plastic "test tube" shape for the body of tracker.
The rest of the metal body of the tracker would be made up stock aluminum tubes from the hobby store and some spare faucet bits & washers for it's tip.
The flashing blue light that adorns the tip would also need to be off the shelf. I found a "pet safety light" on Amazon that had three settings for a blue LED light one of which is a slow blink similar to how it acted in the film. It was also fortunately very easy to disassemble and get at the light & battery board.
The only major surgery that needed to be done before install into the aluminum tracker body was that the LED had to be soldered off the board and given a new wire extension.
After that, it was just a matter of gluing things in place with a PVC base that fit snugly into the plastic toy test tube from the science kit.
Last edited:
