Jurassic World Indominous Rex Skin and Tracking Device

Oldeworldsmith

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Now that I had the size & shape of my tracking device, I could free-form the foam pieces of meaty flesh that would make up the back side of the skin and form a spot for it to be secured into. Little bits of ripped foam were also glued with the contact cement to add more texture & break up the clean lines.

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With foam architecture in place, it was time to move onto painting. I used simple old Halloween prop techniques to give the skin a rubbery coating and hide the foam surface. Mixing rubber latex mold builder and acrylic paints gets you your colors. Painting it onto both the foam and then textured tissue paper (which then layers over the foam) got me a cleaner and less porous surface. After that, it was just a matter of layering the colors I wanted to get the look and shades I was after.

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The same was done for the back side with of course a meatier color scheme.

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The final touch is to add the blood spatters that could be seen all over the screen prop. Wanting something more permanent and less messy than stage blood, I opted for a blood-colored nail polish that would maintain a nice, glossy sheen when dried.

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And there we have it! Admittedly, not a 100% spot-on replica but I think it comes pretty close and should hopefully look great as a cosplay aide.

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Click the link below for a video of the tracking unit in action
[video]http://tinypic.com/r/mi2xqx/8[/video]
 
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Thats awesome man!
r u doing a run as well?
Thanks! Unfortunately I don't at this time have any plans for any kind of run of these. Most of the parts used in the tracker (like the test tube) and even the materials cut for the skin were all pretty unique and not easily replicable in greater numbers.

That is epic! I wish I had the skill to even come close to doing something like that.
Thank you too. Trust me though, it doesn't take too much. The best part about crafting and painting organic things is that you can be very messy and still have great results!

Hey our ACU group heading out to SDCC and would be very interested in getting to look and maybe pose for photos with this prop. Whats days would you be out there?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jurassic-World-ACUINGEN-Forces/765908896863821
I'd love to get pics of that too! I'll be there late tomorrow (Thurs) and then every day until the last (Sun). The current plan is to wear my own JW costume with the prop on Saturday when I'll be available anytime after noon (I'm on a panel in the morning). But I could certainly bring the skin with me on the other days you may be looking to do your photo shoots on. If you like, PM me your schedule & let's see what we can arrange!
 
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Well, bringing the Indominus Skin to Comic Con was a lot of fun. Especially since my girlfriend and I were invited to come hang out and get pics with the extremely awesome ACU crew from right here on the RPF! Here's some of the pics I got of the event. I think the skin looks 10 times better being held by a camou-clad security solider, and MAN you guys were LEGIT. I didn't need to be dressed as Lowery to be fan-boying over your costumes!

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Tour guides!

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Dr. Wu doesn't care that you aren't used to being the canary.

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We also found an "Arm-Totin' Ellie" and "Chest-Strapping Malcolm!" LOL

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Great job on this. What are the dimensions of the test tube? I may have found a supplier of just the tubes and I'd like to make my own for my JW collection :)

Paul
 
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