Luke Riding Taun Taun costume w/ pics

[BYWInsaniac]

Hey all, my name's JJ. I frequent Brotherhood of the Bat, but I've hung around the shadows here for a while. I've got this project and I figured that the amazing talent base here would be able to help me out with a few ideas.

Years back, my mom and I made this costume:

As you can see, I play Luke's upper half and the Taun Taun's lower half. A noble effort, especially since it was designed by a 7th grader.

Here I am, 10 years later, and I want to put a new spin on this. I basically want to be riding a dinosaur.

I'm looking for inspiration though. So far, the only really good execution of this kind of costume that I've seen is in "Labyrinth."

http://www.fuzzyunicorn.net/dragon.html

This guy looks like he was off to a good start, but he never finished.

Could anyone point me in the direction of a successfully executed costume of this type? What the hell would the name be, anyway? What are they called? What would I search for?

I searched Google for "riding dragon costume" and came up with a few attempts that were about on par with mine, but the only inspiring one was the dragon link above, and he never actually got to the tricky part: seaming the rider and the beast.

Anyway, if anyone could help me out, it'd really appreciate it! Hopefully this will be by far my coolest costume ever.

-JJ

 

[ItsThatGuy]

This is what I saw at Dragon*Con this year...Hope they help. I know nothing of the person in the costume.

 

[Trooper_trent]

Did you ever see those guys that ride the birds at Epcot Center/Disney World?

I'll see if I can find anything on them. The cool part about them was that the birds were wire frame so you could see all of the controls and the guy's legs in side, but they were such good puppeteers that they still looked alive.

 

[Trooper_trent]

There's a good behind the scenes documentary of the making of Labrynth in the DVD that has some good shots of those "dragon riding goblins" and how they were built.

Finally found some info on those birds from Epcot. Took a while. They're called
Cirikli
http://www.bladeagency.com/artist.asp?a_no=5325 (click broadband to see a clip)

 

[jt001]

One of our fellow members, Dustin Crops Boy made an awesome Luke/Taun Taun costume for her daughter many years ago. Maybe he could give you some pointers

 

[jonny5]

There was a Han/Taun in the costume contest at Celebration 2. The guy playing Han was about a foot taller that the other 2 actors in the skit. They placed well in the final results. Won some sort of award. I think that year the 'Fan Favorite' went to a life-sized wampa.

http://www.paralada.org/Estonia_self/Estonia_htm/SWgeekhtm/SWCII32.html

 

[BYWInsaniac]

Hey thanks! This stuff is great, especially the Cirikli. That's exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking for: stuff that gets the creative juices flowing. I'd love to figure out how those guys manage to stilt walk while balancing a puppet AND puppeteering it. Amazing stuff!

My original design was more like the Cirikli, with cables controlling the head and neck, but when I saw that stuff on the "Labyrinth" DVD I adjusted the design so that the head was a hand puppet. I figure the result will be better since I can work a hand puppet, but might not be able to rig a cable controlled dinosaur head.... Hahaha.

I'll keep you all posted on the progress of this project! Last night I had a rather successful test of my tail. I've got it rigged so that it shifts side to side with each footstep. It's pretty cool!

Thanks again!

-JJ

 

[jonny5]

One suggestion, and if you are looking at the Cirikli you've probably already had this idea.

Based on the nifty animated concept images at the top of your webpage it appears you plan to have the dragons head supported by your right hand.
(or a hand at any rate) It seems to em that this will get very painful very quickly if you are unable to release the controls without dropping the creature's head.

Perhaps there is a way to incorporate the controls into the 'horn' of the beast's saddle with the bulk of the animal's neck supported from that.

Picture a sort of 'J' shape where the short end of the 'j' ends in a joystick disgused as the saddle's horn, with a pivot ball joint underslung out and forward from then up the neck of your mount.

The bottom of the 'j' should be counter weighted to keep the head upright (like one of those silly toy birds that tips over to drink from a glass of water)

The weight of the entire animal is then supported by your hips, or by your shoulders if you are able to conceal something like suspenders under your costume.

Things such has the mouth and eye controls could be extended via multiple ball and clevis control lines like what are used for rudder and aleiron control in model airplanes.

 

[The Stig]

Sorry.

 

[BYWInsaniac]

Hey jonny5.

Although that link isnt MY site, that's about what I was planning to do. That's a very good point. I hadnt really thought about the discomfort of holding up the head for hours....

Any chance you could do a quick sketch of the J counterweight system you're thinking about? It sounds like a really good idea, but I cant totally visualize it...

As its designed right now, I'm using foam (from a futon) to build up the dinosaur's shape. I'm thinking the foam might be strong enough to hold up the head, but I could work something into the reins to help hold up/control the head, like with the Cirikli.

Also, I'm not familiar with ball and clevis control lines. What exactly are they? What/how are they used? Where can I read more about them? I'm always up for learning something new!

Man, I swear I sat and watched that video at least 5 times trying to figure out how they work. I think the neck's actually a lot like a desk lamp, and the up/down is controlled by tugging on the reins. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but they've got a little joystick and a cable they hold in their fingers that control the side to side of the head, and I think the jaw. Amazing beasts, they are.

Right now, I'm planning to have some suspenders so that the rig is held up by my shoulders. It's not too heavy so far, and I've built the bulk of the skeleton.

This is a picture of the tail rig. As I said, the cables are going to connect to my feet, so that with each step, the tail shifts to "balance" me.

Again, thanks for all the help so far! You all rock! I'll keep you up to date with the progress on this project. I get more optimistic about it each day!

-JJ

PS: MAN I love "Super Troopers"

 

[jonny5]

I'll see what I can cobble together to explain my ideas.

 

[jonny5]

JJ,

From the pics its clear you are off to a great start on this project.

Here is a quick sketch of the Dragon Neck Armature as I envisioned it.

The wire frame at the bottom of my drawing represents your frame. I'm guessing that is maybe 1-1/2" PVC, so I designed it with standard connectors.

The pivot point (red circle in my drawing) can be a modified tee joint (or even a straight coupler) with a large hole in drilled to drop the ball into and a smaller hole that will keep the ball from falling out, but should still allow a good range of movement for the armature.

I haven't quite resolved the ball joint yet, but I think it might be possible to hack the actual a ball from a large PVC ball valve.

The counter weight helps to hold the head slightly up in an alert position even when you are not holding the saddle horn (brown circle) Ideally it should be some sort of container (large coffee can?) to which you can add or remove ballast and seal, as needed to tweak the balance for best effect.

When the horn is pushed forward the head will go down and the CW will swing back between your legs (inside the dragon's belly) The hope is that you are a good enough puppeteer to avoid repeatedly knocking youself in the groin.

Conceivably, the ball joint assembly could be located along the top of the front most part of your frame putting the CW that much further away from your 'wedding tackle'.

You may find you want the frame to be a little narrower to allow you to stand up staighter and give your ride a bit more height.

I'm going to swing by the HW store this afternoon to see if I can find items to flesh out the rest of this concept.

Jon jonny5 Stokes

 

[Trooper_trent]

From what I remember from seeing the Cirikli Live is that the neck was segmented and swiveled on multiple points similar to those toy snakes where you hold the tail and rotate slightly to make the neck and body move. The head was attached to reins which worked like real ones. pull on the left side and the head, followed by the neck swiveled left. then there was a joint at the base of the neck that would rotate the whole neck up and down. Combinations of each movement gave it full mobility. Then I believe there were triggers attached to cables at the end of the reins. One opened and closed the mouth, and the other, opened and closed the eyes. The reins/triggers were attached to the joint at the neck so the whole thing was driven like an airplane yoke.
picture a yoke type steering wheel that when you pulled back, would raise the head up and down. pull on the left while pushing on the right and the head would swing left. Rotate the stem handles forward and back and the head would nodd. then grips on the stem handles worked the eyes and mouth.
I watched them for what seemed like an hour because I was so facinated by how it worked. I still remember 10 years later.

 

[jonny5]

OK what you want for the ball joint is either a 2" ball caster (Lowe's Home center called it a 2" hooded ball caster)

or a cheapo round door knob.

Either way, you hack off the un-round part drill a hole thru it epoxy something like a 24" piece of 5/16" threaded rod into it as a lever arm.
Figure 5" or 6" of threaded rod up from the ball to act as the 'joystick'. The rest hangs down below the ball to add strength to this part of the mechanism which is sure to encounter a lot of stress when in use.


Get a PVC tee coupler v

Hack up a PVC tee to look something like this ^

Drop the ball and rod into it.

A piece of larger pipe can be cut to fit over the ball to hold it in place and add strength to the modified tee coupler.

Drill matching a hole in the center of a rounded PVC cap like this

Run the rounded PVC cap up onto the threaded rod.

Note: Dry fit these as you build, don't add the epoxy until final assembly so it won't all come apart during use.

Run a nut up the threaded rod and inside the cap to hold the cap in place.
Find a dowel that will just fit into the PVC used for the long straight pieces of the neck. Cut a length of it to fit into 'L' from the armature sketch. Drill a hole down the center to fitr onto ther threaded rod. Coat the dowel with epoxy and slip the pipe over it gluing it to the rounded cap. Run a few screws through the pipe into the dowel for extra strength.

After this has been completed the rest of the neck armature goes together as seen in my earlier sketch.

 

[jonny5]

The wire frame at the bottom of my drawing represents your frame. I'm guessing that is maybe 1-1/2" PVC, so I designed it with standard connectors.

I'm going to swing by the HW store this afternoon to see if I can find items to flesh out the rest of this concept.

The visit to the the also informed me that the standard size for the elbow in the middle of the Dragon neck should be a 22.5* not 30* as I had originally indicated.

 

[BYWInsaniac]

Hey, I know its been a while, but the project isnt dead! I'll post some pics later tonight or tomorrow, but here's the progress:

I've built the ball joint neck, thanks to jonny5's ideas! It works really really well! I do have one question: What should I use for a counterweight? And what's a good way to get a weight stuck on the neck rig?

I've built up a lot of the foam muscles, and I want to skin them with latex. I read about it in a thread about a life-size Incredible Hulk costume. Basically, the idea is to build up muscles with foam, then cover them in saran wrap (or something like it). You then cover THAT with a custom tailored spandex suit, and paint latex onto the spandex suit.

Has anybody done this before, or could someone point me in the direction of a project where this was successfully done? Thanks a lot!

I've also put together most of the costume for the rider. I'll post those pics later on as well. I'm REALLY happy with how that part came out!

I have to say thanks for all your help! You're really helped me take this idea to a new level of awesome. Thanks again!

-JJ

-JJ

 

[BYWInsaniac]

Okee! Here are some pics!

So this is the cast that I built my leg muscles onto. I made it with duct tape, then I used expanding foam from Home Depot to fill it. Took about 5 cans...

Here is a pic of the cast with most of the muscles on it.

This is what the rig looks like so far. Starting tomorrow I'll be foaming it up!

Here's a shot of the ball joint! Thanks again, jonny5!

And finally, here's the rider!

Check back soon! I DO plan to have this done in 8 days!!!

-JJ

 

[Spartan117]

Excellent work

And I'm glad to see you are using a more..whats the word..crooked stilt contraption.

I was going to reccomend something like werewolf stilts but it seems you have that in mind. The guy from dragon con in the second post looks great, but his legs are too straight. It seems thats a big problem.

 

[BYWInsaniac]

Well, after sewing up my tights, I realized the material I used had WAY more stretch than I though. SO, I was able to fit the muscles into the tights! That said, I decided I needed to do a test of the whole contraption. Feedback is more than welcome!

Eek! Eight days to go!!!

-JJ

 

[THStudio]

Man thats lookin good. Even in the stage its in now, it still throws off ones eye. The musculature on the legs is really good, and the locations of all the parts ot one another on the (yoshi?) dino is really good too. This will look awesome finished, because it already does right now.