Toothless Quadsuit - ADVICE???(HTTYD)

[RegularGent]

Toothless Quadsuit
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Hi there!
As a huge dork i've become obsessed with the idea of a Toothless costume. Last year at the Adelaide Comic Con there were fairly basic versions of him as a jacket or jump suit with pull-string wings but I wanted to create something a lot more complicated.

To start with I've drawn up sketches of what I envisioned the suit to look like:

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I've planned to use a PVC pipe to connect the head to a backpack type strap set on my back to keep everything off my head and neck. The backpack will also be the running track for the articulated wings. That's right, I'm making the whole thing work.
Gosh, this'll be difficult.
In the top design I drew the wings attached to my thighs so if I stood the tightening wiring would cause the wings to expand. Since then I've dropped that idea and made a new one.
But wings later, back to the main structure.
The head is planned to be able to freely move up, down and left to right. To start with I have to plan for a hook

to hold up the head at a certain hight to make sure when i stand he isn't watching the ceiling.






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Whether i use brackets welded at certain angles or a ball joint for the movement I'm not sure. Any ideas would be awesome.


The tail will start off as PVC so it can bolt to the backpack but will ultimately be fabric and Plush Toy stuffer I think, although a strip of furniture foam might be better. I'm not entirely sure.


Now, the making part

HEAD Pt.1


I began buy purchasing a roll of chicken wire and a roll of malleable wire from Bunnings. I then set out to shape Toothless' head. I gathered as many reference images as possible and began to do that thing called MATH.
Using ratios i figured that full sized dragon would be 8 metres long. I, however, didn't fit the required amount of length in my torso to accommodate that, so i re-calculated to make Toothless only 3 meters long.

I started shaping the head with the chicken wire and other wire and found it much more painful than i expected. Wire is pointy. Take notes people. so after around two and a bit painstaking hours i finished the head and decided the placing for his eyes.



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The next post will have the head base being foamed and my wing design.
Cheers guys.

 

[RegularGent]

Re: Toothless Quadsuit - Training the Night Fury (HTTYD)

Right,

FOAMING
So i got Pollyfilla Expanding Foam for Toothless. It was okay, didn't expand as much as i wanted and trying to shift it while it was still tacky is a really bad idea. Also nothing cleans it off things, it recommended nail polish remover. That didn't work. I tried soap, nothing. Solvol, nothing. Brake cleaner, nothing.
In essence it needed to be pried off of surfaces and tools. It sanded okay though.
Pollyfilla comes in a can with a long plastic nozzle to direct the feed. All i can really recommend is to practise first and use gloves, otherwise good luck.
Here's my wire structure after the foaming:

I covered it in the expanding foam. I bought the most expensive one in the shop thinking it would be the easiest to work with. It is not. If you are going to use this anytime soon, take it from me and get the cheaper one. It wont be so hard to remove off your tools, will expand more and doesn't drive you up the wall when it doesn't go where you want.

So with foaming done shaping began. I used a large toothed file, a medium toothed round file and some sandpaper. It took me a good few hours to file it down properly and then hollow it out. I removed the wire on the base of the head and took out the newspaper I had stuffed it with beforehand. This allowed me to finish sanding down the eye areas and finish that part. It then looked like this:
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I still wasn't happy with the shape and some of the holes were too large that when i drape the fabric over it, it wasn't laying correctly. So, i decided to use a secret method of mine, homemade playdoh!

So to make this i used:

• 2 cups of flour
• 2 cups of warm water
• 1 cup of salt

Combine in a saucepan with a wooden spoon until it looks like mash-potato. Then place on a low heat and mix. Keep scraping at the bottom of the pan so the mix doesn't burn/stick to the bottom (If it does don't worry, let it soak and it'll be easy to wash off later). Once the mix is so hard to mix that you're sure that your wrist is going to break and it comes off the side of the pan easy then take it off the heat. Dig it out and onto a chopping board till it cools enough to handle. If it's really sticky, cook it more. aside from that, you made playdoh!

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I mushed this into the porous textured head piece to add the definition I wanted in the head. Meanwhile i had found the eyes that match his demeanour and printed them out to see how they looked. I like it although he's a little cross-eyed. If anyone has a better photo of high quality i could use please mention a link to it!

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That's as far as i have gotten for the head, i don't know how i'm going to add the fabric. The eyes are planned to be a plastic bowl with the picture printed onto high quality photo paper and stuck on the inside of the bowl. I was trying to figure out how to make Toothless blink. One idea was to use a rubber band. Fix it at the point closest to the nose and have it pull at the other side forcing the rubber band to thin out giving the illusion of a blink. There would be a pulley system inside it to have them both blink at the same time by pulling a rope.

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It was just an idea but making him blink would be awesome, let me know what you guys think.
I've begun brainstorming for the mouth. I would like to create two versions of his mouth (gums and teeth), having the teeth come down from the roof of his mouth to create a second jaw. Think of a book and having all the pages in the middle stuck together. When you open the front all you see is the gums of the dragon but when you move all the pages to the bottom you see the teeth. Tada!
Since all the teeth are different and there are 30 of them i need something light, cheap and easy to shape. My friend suggested super sclupy but i feel it will be too heavy. I had the idea of using balsa wood, it's light and easy to use and stick. My only worries is if paint will stick to it or if it will be too easy to break. We all know how annoying the public are with having to be all touchy feel-y. Ugh.

Feedback would be lovely.
Will explain wings in the next one.

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