Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Buffbeefbro said:

Wow, I feel pretty proud that someone thought to use my sculpt as a reference.

Here's my build thread if you want to check it out:
http://www.therpf.com/f62/wip-1-1-stan-winston-style-velociraptor-head-sculpt-182453/

I'll be watching this thread and taking notes on how you do the rest of the body and the mechanical work. Looking forward to seeing yours finished. :thumbsup

Click to expand...

Ah, just now saw this post. Thanks, I'll go read through your build thread here in just a few minutes!

-= Dave =-

Re: Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

greatzombiehunt said:

A big question to ask yourself is what are you going to do with this costume? If this is just a once or twice Halloween suit or something you will also use alot for Cons, Halloweens, and other events. For just a couple of Halloweens you might want to go with the Fursuit style that you have pictured as it will be quicker and maybe a little easier to build. Also you can use a thicker foam to carve away for details. If you want to use this for lots of events where you will be inside it for 8 or more hours at a time i would use a thinner foam that you can layer for detail effects.

As far as the arms if you go with the more realism look with your arms in the body you could make Raptor puppet arms that you can move from inside.

This video has a neat frame structureHow to build a raptor costume - YouTube

Click to expand...

Well, as with most of my costumes, the goal is for it to survive the two-or-three Halloween events I attend every year. Total wear time is probably on the order of 12 hours. Some of my past costumes didn't make it past that time. But last year's survived. And it would be nice if this year's did too. There aren't very many Cons in the Kansas City area, so unless somebody wants me to start showing up for birthday parties and bar mitzvahs, it probably won't get used past October 31st. BUT, I would like to hope maybe it would be good enough... and survive enough... to ALLOW for future appearances.

But TIME is my biggest limiting factor on the design. As I was reminded a few days ago, the first Halloween event I attend is a local festival for kids that.... this year.... is actually being held on OCTOBER 19th !! ACK !! Nothing like shortening my deadline by two weeks !

-= Dave =-

Re: Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

OK, here's an update with some photos.

During my breaks and lunch-hours at work recently, I created scaled-up drawings of the raptor's feet and arms. I used the 30-inch long foam head as my "standard", when when using ratios with both my paper raptor model and my toy action-figure model to calculate dimensions. That gave me two sets of numbers for every measurement...and usually, I leaned towards the toy model, because it's more a more-accurate raptor.

Here are some photos of the "blueprints" I made....for the shoulder and upper arm:



... for the forearm:


... for the "hand" / claw:


... and for the foot:





A few things to note about the above items:

1) I'm still not sure whether I want the arms to be completely fake or if I want to take my REAL ARMS and shove them inside some sort of sleeves and gloves. But I'm leaning towards using my real arms. Surprisingly, the scaled-up dimensions from the model aren't all that "far off" from my real arms. Yeah, my real arms are a bit fatter, but not as much as you'd think.

2) Note that the "top view" of the foot doesn't really show it, but the side-view does: I plan on angling the rear two-thirds of the foot to about 30 degrees. That last sketch sort of shows it, but this will be the start of the digitigrade feet "illusion".


Here's where I am with the head so far:








As you can see, I'm very close to the point where it will be time to slice opened / apart his mouth and lower jaw. The photos you see are a bit "rough-looking" because the last thing I did before I took them was to try smoothing out some hard angles with something called "Dragon Skin". It's basically metal sandpaper, but in construction it's almost like... what if you made a really flexible cheese-grater!
Unfortunately, it took off a little too much at a couple of spots.

I think I can do some more shaping to fix most of the problems: I bought some of those thin Personna razor blades and, as on the T-Rex head video over at StanWinstonSchool.com, I glued a blade to a tongue depressor and used it for detailed shaping involving small / thin cuts. So I think I can use that blade to fix some of the problems.

I may also be able to actually ADD a small bit of foam here and there if I need to, using contact cement.


OK, yesterday, I got some basic work done on the feet:

I had emailed my previous foam supplier the previous day. And, to my eternal annoyance, they once again didn't respond to email. <sigh> Pet peeve of mine: Why put your email address on your site if you're not going to respond to it? I just HATE having to call people on my day-off, because I'm on the phones all the time with my day-job.

Anyways, in the interest of starting to build the feet YESTERDAY, I decided to go buy some foam from JoAnn's Fabrics. I had checked their foam out earlier in the week, so I knew that, in terms of density, what they had was just a little bit LESS DENSE than the stuff I'd gotten from Mattress Warehouse of Lenexa. But I also knew that they have a 50% off sale on the foam going on through this coming Saturday. So, I bought these two pieces of 5-inch-thick foam yesterday for about $35.:




And then I cut out my foot-pattern and traced it onto the foam. Next I measured exactly where I wanted to put a 30 degree cut in the foam, so I could create the angle I wanted. I removed that. Then I used contact cement to glue the 30 degree gap back together again:



(Obviously, I have further work to do on these.) My plan is to buy a pair of used boots, make a hole in each green foam foot, and then glue the foam onto the boots.

I did find some brief info here from this Tauntaun costume build page on using PVC to build a frame. So, I did buy some half-inch and three-quarter-inch PVC the other day and I plan on starting on a body frame soon.


OK, I'm a bit short on time right now to talk about next steps. (But I can tell you my growing concern is what to do for the skin that will go over the foam, since the Stan Winston site STILL hasn't released part 3 of their video on the T-Rex head, which will reveal a technique I've been waiting anxiously to learn about.) I'm a bit busy the next several days, but I took some time off after next week Tuesday, so I hope to really buckle down then.


Thanks!

-= Dave =-

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Buffbeefbro said:

Wow, I feel pretty proud that someone thought to use my sculpt as a reference.

Here's my build thread if you want to check it out:
http://www.therpf.com/f62/wip-1-1-stan-winston-style-velociraptor-head-sculpt-182453/

I'll be watching this thread and taking notes on how you do the rest of the body and the mechanical work. Looking forward to seeing yours finished. :thumbsup

Click to expand...

Man, I sure wish I'd found your thread sooner! I was dying for a rear-view shot of your sculpt! Had to sort of estimate depth based on shadows. Oh well, what a terrific sculptor you are !!


-= Dave =-

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

id say this si the coolest thing ive ever seen thats so kick ass

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

I thought I might buy 4 small fans (for cooling CPUs)... maybe something on the order of 50mm fans... for cooling down this costume. But of course, I'd like them to be REALLY QUIET. Does anybody have any recommendations on specific fans?

-= Dave =-

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Dave, just a quick question, as we are building more or less the same raptor type suit I would just like to ask if you will be wearing stilts or as your drawings suggests, you are planning to have your feet protruding through the raptor feet just below the raptor's ankle level? I had originally designed a pair of short stilts having had the impression that Rosengrant wore those based on the pics and vid.


However when I tried mine on


I was thrown into a world of ankle, knee and back pain not to mention that torture that every step took. My wife said it’s because they’re too short. Well that was the way I planned them as I did not want to end up using a pair of digitigrades (like the hoof type picture here) stilts because they would make the raptor legs too long.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

bayani matalas said:

Dave, just a quick question, as we are building more or less the same raptor type suit I would just like to ask if you will be wearing stilts or as your drawings suggests, you are planning to have your feet protruding through the raptor feet just below the raptor's ankle level? I had originally designed a pair of short stilts having had the impression that Rosengrant wore those based on the pics and vid.
View attachment 220948View attachment 220950View attachment 220951

However when I tried mine on
View attachment 220947

I was thrown into a world of ankle, knee and back pain not to mention that torture that every step took. My wife said it’s because they’re too short. Well that was the way I planned them as I did not want to end up using a pair of digitigrades (like the hoof type picture here) stilts because they would make the raptor legs too long. View attachment 220949

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Click to expand...

On this picture View attachment 220950 it looks to me that the guy is wearing digilegs like another RPF member did when building The Wolfman costume (Link to thread).


If you ask me, it looks pretty similar.

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

The head is looking really good, interested to see this progress.

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Thanks man visited the links. Very helpful but over the past few days (we had a strom and the intenet wqas down) I had been mulling over making a godzilla suit instead-- lots more material but at least plantigrade. Will update when decided. Thanks for the links.

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

bayani matalas said:

Dave, just a quick question, as we are building more or less the same raptor type suit I would just like to ask if you will be wearing stilts or as your drawings suggests, you are planning to have your feet protruding through the raptor feet just below the raptor's ankle level? I had originally designed a pair of short stilts having had the impression that Rosengrant wore those based on the pics and vid.
View attachment 220948View attachment 220950View attachment 220951

However when I tried mine on
View attachment 220947

I was thrown into a world of ankle, knee and back pain not to mention that torture that every step took. My wife said it’s because they’re too short. Well that was the way I planned them as I did not want to end up using a pair of digitigrades (like the hoof type picture here) stilts because they would make the raptor legs too long. View attachment 220949

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Click to expand...

Well, I'm glad to see somebody else was able to provide you with some suggestions. I am NOT planning on wearing any sort of stilts. I'm in the middle of working on the feet now. I'll post some pics when I get a chance, but basically, the claw-area of the feet will be flat, but then the foot takes a sudden 30 degree upward tilt. I will be putting my feet THROUGH this piece, with a shoe being attached underneath that 30 degree angle. So, if people look closely, they'll see the back of my foot. But after another 12-15 inches, that 30 angle will suddenly bend back forward, giving the illusion of short digitigrade legs.

If I were 20 years younger...and perhaps had a bit more time... I might have tried the digitigrade stilts method. But I'm 45 and too out-of-shape. And I'm the sole bread-winner in my household. Sure, insurance would cover accidents, but why risk it when I don't have to?

Thanks!



As for a minor update: Everything's taking three times longer to do than I'd like it to. Yesterday, I separated the lower jaw from the head. And, as I said, I spent a lot of time today working on the feet.

I've been debating on what sort of pants to buy (used) in order to start building up the legs. I had bought some pajama bottoms from a thrift store for $2.99. They were camouflage...and, oddly enough, had lower legs that were connected to the thighs by zippers! But my wife ended up telling me they're too short. I thought I could work with that.... but then I thought maybe I need something as sturdy as jeans. Walmart only had one pair in a straight-leg jean in my size... for $17.99. So I passed on that. Still waffling back-and-forth about it.

If you're wondering, I'll be attaching foam to the legs to help with the "digitigrade feet illusion". And then I'll probably surround that with a thin layer of foam that would become the full legs.

I MIGHT start doing some PVC body work tomorrow. Not sure. It's pretty hot outside here lately. And I was enjoying working on the feet. I'd really like to get them to the point where I've got them glued to the boots.

Today, I also posted on a fursuit forum, asking them for advice on a few things. I'll list them here in case anybody wants to comment:

1) How to attach the foam head to my real head? I've seen some fursuit builds where the wearer puts on a bicycle helmet and attaches / glues the foam head to that.

2) How to do the jaw hinge and especially how to trigger it using my own chin? The Stan Winston site video showed how to make a jaw hinge with PVC and a bungee cord. I need to go watch that part again. I'm concerned that when I separated the lower jaw, I didn't separate enough of the back of the mouth... I ended up with two rather narrow ends to that jaw.

3) How to make a "see through" neck that isn't terribly obvious? I'm pretty sure most folks use screens. I saw a youtube video of a girl showing her fursuit head with its working jaw mechanism. And in that video, she said the neck was see-through, but didn't give a close-up or detail its construction. I posted a question about that to her youtube thread but she never responded. I was impressed that I could NOT tell at ALL that the front part of the neck was any different than the rest of it. She kept the head about 4 -6 feet away from the camera the whole time.

3) Eye construction? I've seen some threads that talk about using a clear "bowl" over a non-clear "bowl" with the pupil drawn on it. But I'm also intrigued by the idea of getting a set of eyes from a taxidermist... something for an alligator or crocodile.

Here's one I did NOT ask them, though:

4) I'm getting really concerned about what to do for a "skin". As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the folks at the Stan Winston site still haven't published part 3 of the key video series that I'd been basing my work on. I know that he ended by spraying adhesive (that 3M 77 spray stuff, I think) all over the T-Rex head. And the final product sure looks like latex. But, geez, how many GALLONS of latex ($$ !!) would I have to get? And I have to wonder if he sprayed it on? I'm tempted to start checking out the fabric shops for something similar-looking to a reptile skin. I could probably sew that into place over the foam, disguise any thread / seams with liquid latex, and then paint it.


Thanks!

-= Dave =-

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

This project looks super cool.

I followed you from the fursuit board and will continue to eagerly watch for updates!

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Why not build it so you can walk more naturally and the costume does the rest? Like walking with dinosaurs does for the Raptor

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

HIGH5orDIE said:

Why not build it so you can walk more naturally and the costume does the rest? Like walking with dinosaurs does for the Raptor
View attachment 225137

Click to expand...

Because I really, really don't like the way that reveals the human's legs. Totally breaks the illusion for me. Personal preference.

-= Dave =-

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

this is awesome where at in kansas city do you live i am from overland park areai cant wait to see more

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Check out the video I just posted on a costume made like this.

http://www.therpf.com/f24/ultimate-jurassic-costume-prank-193915/#post3028876

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Hey there! (Brand new to the forums myself)
Love your project so far and I wish you luck with the due date--I've been working on my own velociraptor (feathered) costume since April of this year. Hoping to finish it by Halloween however I'll be extremely lucky if I'm done with foaming by that point. Mine will be similar to Monoyasha's raptor in build and hopefully realism. I'm fairly younger than most on the forum (only fourteen hehe) but I'm doing really well so far, I think. I've been updating my progress here, if you care to see some of my plans. My Velociraptor Costume Tutorials
I've got this bookmarked now and I can't wait to see more progress...looks amazing so far!

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Wait! I noticed you haven't even mentioned Monoyasha's works.
She builds realistic fursuits however she was commissioned a few years back to make a Jurassic Park raptor costume and the owner, Elizabeth will be retiring it after this upcoming DragonCon (Labor Day weekend) as she's making a larger, utahraptor costume.
Her YouTube videos of the raptor: Putting on the Raptor - YouTube
Velociraptor Progress - YouTube
Velociraptor Fullsuit - YouTube

She also sells raptor claws in her webstore.
Resin Claws - DreamVision Creations

And her deviantart has some older pictures.
Velociraptor Fullsuit 1 by ~Monoyasha on deviantART

Apologies if you've seen these before...you probably have. I love her costume so much I have an entire file of bookmarks just of pictures/videos I've found on the suit.

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

hopefully you have some fun like this...

re: Jurassic Park Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013

Whoops, just noticed your earlier post. I swear I read over the entire thread but I guess I missed your current issues. Again, I'm new here so I'm not sure about the formatting. Sorry in advance!

1) A lot of people use bicycle or rock climbing helmets. Personally we plan to make the head from fiberglass, and with that being said the structure will be custom (as to fit a fan inside it).

2) You could use quadsuit methods, unless your costume will be far too large for such a thing. Using a balaclava method, presumably with elastic around the jaw to "pull" it down when you open your mouth. This is how I plan to do it, and I'm sure there are other methods though! A bungee cord to me sounds like it would be much too hard to pull down with my own jaw--however I have a minor case of TMJ and will be avoiding any strenuous activity for my jaw as much as I can. Some sort of elastic material has to connect one jaw pivot to another, is all I can offer, which isn't much. >_<

3) I'm not sure if you mean Monoyasha or DartTheDenseBoy, but Monoyasha used athletic mesh and airbrushed it to match the design from what I can tell. DartTheDenseBoy used a sort of thinner type of athletic mesh, but as far as I can tell very similar just a different color.

3) I'll be casting my own eyes from resin and painting them in a follow-me style. They'll be about 2.5-3 inches big, and I'll be using a kitchen ladle for the mold.

4) Walking With Dinosaurs show used fabric, Monoyasha used fabric, DartTheDenseBoy used fabric...most people tend to use fabric, as will I. Some bigger places though have used latex and if you can afford it I'd say go for it. Silicone holds up better over time usually except it weighs a frick ton so that's not so good. Airbrushing does a lot to fabric though for realism, I know that much! Good luck with this...maybe you'll come up with something new. I had the idea to use Crayola Model Magic (as it's lightweight, foam like) to create scales under the fabric and glue it down really tight for the hands/head/feet or other detailed places. If all goes to plan, it'll make it somewhat textured.

All of this is my own research and planning--obviously tentative. The fiberglass luckily isn't a big deal since my dad has worked with it many times before in boats, so he's quite experienced. I'm getting very excited!