Li'l Ultra Magnus

[Theosteve]

So I'm jumping in at this due to the request of my 4 year old son. Last Halloween, he wanted to be Wall-E, and I made him a costume out of cardboard and spray paint that he loved. He mentioned it the other day, and then said that this year, he wanted to be Ultra Magnus of the transformers. I was intrigued by the possibility, and so started doing some research into cosplay stuff. Looked really fun, so I decided to go for it.

I thought I'd start with the toughest part first: the helmet. I got some EVA foam and craft foam, and went to work. I didn't find any patterns for tutorials online that exactly suited the sort of helmet shape I was considering, but took some of the ideas from some Youtube videos (especially by Evil Ted and Raw Customs), and jumped in. It turned out that the center panel for the helmet wouldn't shape the way I wanted without cutting out some wedges from the front and back, and forcing up something of a ridge down the center from front to back. But I'll deal with those later.

I added antennae with dowels and some more EVA form, then gave the helmet more surface dimensionality with some craft foam. The front rim of the helmet essentially covers the full wedge from the front of the helmet, which is nice. The helmet is not even close to perfect, but I'm having lots of fun, and thinks it looks pretty good for a first attempt at anything remotely like this. My son loves it so far.

Next issue: constructing the crest for the helmet. The crest should cover the ridge along the center of the helmet, taking care of the second major problem, leaving only the back wedge. I've used a compass, some cardstock, and some trial and error to create a pattern that mostly meets the surface of the helmet. Unfortunately, since the curve of the helmet isn't a perfect circular curve, I can't seem to get a pattern that meets it exactly. So my big dilemma with the crest is what can I use as filler for gaps between the crest and the helmet? Both will be constructed of foam.

Thanks for any thoughts and critiques!

 

[Theosteve]

I intended this to be WIP thread, but I ended up having computer problems over the last couple of months, and between that and spending what free time I had working on the costume, I never got to updating this along the way. But I did succeed in completing the costume, and am ecstatic about the way it turned out. The craftsmanship was frankly mediocre, what with this being my first time on anything like this, but overall it still looks about how I hoped it would. I loved learning some skills and concepts along the way, and look forward to trying more in the future.

I do have a number of WIP photos, and if anyone has questions about the process, I can upload some of those and discuss it. Not that I did anything innovative. All the techniques are things I learned from Youtube videos (Punished Props, Evil Ted, etc).


















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BTW, I can't understand why my photos don't orient right. They show up oriented correctly on Preview, on Photoshop, on my computer desktop. Yet when I upload them here, they show up off 90° counter-clockwise. If anyone can let me know what the problem is, I'd appreciate it.