Feathered Velociraptor Costume (Zoo Tycoon 2)

Thank you so much for the video!! For some reason I never found that in all of my searching. Does anyone have any recommendations for good fabric glue for spandex to foam? I've looked a LOT online but not really found anything besides the Flexible Stretchable Glue which doesn't come in spray, which I REALLY need spray since I'll have so much to cover. We leave tomorrow morning so if anyone has any suggestions I'd much appreciate it!!

EDIT: turns out the trip was postponed, so I've got time...lol.

Super77 spray adhesive works, but can get expensive. There's multipurpose for 8 bucks at Home Depot and Walmart has high-strength for 30 bucks.

On the cheap; I've had decent luck with locktite high performance (also 8 bucks), but that was only with pepakura projects. People will certainly recommend Super77. When I worked with these kinds of materials we used an industrial no name spray adhesive that was similar to Super77.

Either brand you go with gets everywhere so keep straight up acetone (not nail polish remover) handy and/or wear gloves. I HATE the stickiness getting all over my hair and hands, and to clean the spray tops clog. I always have a quart of acetone in arm's reach when I'm working because it cleans everything up.

I used Super 77 in the beginning to glue foam and haaaateed the stuff, but if I can't find anything better then I guess I'll have to get it. It's definitely expensive. When I did use 77 I didn't use any safety stuff, just went outside and made sure I was careful.

There really isnt any safety stuff to wear with it, it's more of a comfort thing for me.

Good to know I wasn't ignoring anything super important then!

Current plan is to head to Joann's, foam warehouse and some other locations for Christmas shopping tomorrow afternoon. Won't be stuff for the eyes unfortunately but mostly stuff in preparation for sewing skin which is coming up soon. Going to see if Joann's carries Jacquard Airbrush paints but I'm probably going to need to order those online. In the meantime, some crooked nostrils I still need to adjust...lol. My dad needs some repairs done on his boat so we're trying to get the head ready to take it over to a friend's house, he's an expert with fiberglass and apparently has some sort of spray stuff he said would work perfect for this.

Wow this is a seriously good build!! Can't believe it's your first one. Amazing job, well done

I got everything I needed and plan to get pictures up this weekend!

Sort of a picture dump here...today we worked on the ankles (they're looser now, wayyy easier to get on which makes me SO psyched because it used to take me 10 minutes just to get my feet through), got the torso cut out (but not glued) and I also worked more on the tail to make it hold better. Still some work on the torso and tail but I hope to be sewing fabric sometime next week. My resin for the eyes came, but not the ladle yet.

We went to a foam warehouse and the guy was SUPER nice there! Gave me a bunch of free foam, some glue and the nylon webbing I bought for $1 a yard. If you plan to do something like this, please seek out a foam store instead of Joann's. We didn't find this guy on google until a friend mentioned him so we didn't know we could have saved a good $200 on foam.



Velociraptor Costume Demo - Part 2 - YouTube

Quick video I took--still no torso and as the descrip. on YouTube says I still have quite a bit to do on it before I'll be ready to put fabric but I'm hoping that'll be soon. Luckily I've got a bit of money put away to buy some airbrush paints but I'm REALLY just hoping our air compressor will work with it and I won't need to buy a new one, but I seriously doubt they'll work together since ours is for bike tires lol.

Been working at the skin and stuff in the evenings but I've had family in town since Saturday so I really haven't had much time, which is super disruptive since I really need to be hurrying. :\

First off this thread needs one of these


Secondly if your compressor doesn't work you might want to try renting one from your local hardware store.

Really digging the tail movement.

Man, I wish at 14 I had this kind of ingenuity! Well done.

Seriously, this is incredibly impressive.

Koipond said:

First off this thread needs one of these
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Secondly if your compressor doesn't work you might want to try renting one from your local hardware store.

Click to expand...

OOH! Renting sounds like a great idea since I plan to save up for one but really I just need this done by March, big time. I'll have to seriously look into that idea! Thank you!

If your local rent it center doesn't have one, try asking around the local college. Between the labs and the students you may find someone willing to make a couple of bucks letting you use their equipment.

This is fantastic! *Subscribed*

One of my eyes is outside curing right now...I need to make four of them and I'm hoping it'll turn out all right and everything. Even though I measured it out with water it still didn't fill the mold quite all the way up. I'm also currently trying to find a better price on feathers...not liking the idea of $250 for 500 feathers.


First picture is of the patterns I had made at that point (I think feet). I use plastic bags because I've got tons of them even though we use reusable bags everywhere we go. Somehow we still end up with way too many. Second is showing the DVC claw next to the foot--we're going to drill holes in the base and sew it with fishing line because those will fall off if glued. Super happy with how it looks! Third is a picture of the tail pattern, which instead of plastic bags + duct tape we used brown paper and duct tape since my dad has plenty of it and I didn't want to waste so much duct tape. I was able to only run the seam down the bottom of the tail which makes me super happy since you can't see it at ALL and the tip of the tail will have feathers.

Then once the tail skin was done the nylon webbing showed through, which was an issue I saw coming anyway. I took stuffing and used tacky glue to put it right down onto the foam. It's holding up super well and it makes the tail even squishier, hehe.

The front of the tail isn't done yet, probably will get to that tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm going to work a lot on sewing and patterning + the eyes, and I'm going to order more silicone and clay on Monday if I can. Second picture is of the seam that runs down the bottom of the tail and then one picture of the hand I've done. I made the mistake of assuming (thinking?) both the hands were symmetric and they're definitely not so I have to make a separate pattern for the other hand.

Finished feet--also not 100% symmetric but I kind of saw that coming anyway. Doesn't matter since the tops of the feet come way down to the actually-foam toes and you won't even see the wrinkles. Currently have my resin curing outside with the set up in the last picture--the Home Depot bucket comes in handy for holding the ladle.

Also, thank you for all the reassurance! I've never done anything like this and it sure puts a smile on my face to know it's coming along well. I'm pretty lucky that I haven't had too many days of total ugh-this-looks-horrible for the whole thing.

EDIT: Dammit. Went outside to check my cast after this post and the wood ladle completely cracked open. It looks like the resin expanded or something and caused it to crack and half the resin leaked out. I don't know if it's fixable or not.

Making this a separate post.

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So...this is it. Luckily I've still got spare resin but I really don't want to waste anything. The wood refuses to move back into place so I really don't see being able to fix it--I spent $14 on this darn thing. I don't know what else I could use for a mold, I've seen those Christmas tree ornaments sometimes in halves but I don't know. I wish someone online sold 3 inch eyes already, haha. DVC used to sell very flat ones that couldn't follow (which is really important to me) but they don't even sell them anymore.

Any idea what happened here, or possible fixes? I used Mann's mold release 200, which the bottle said would be fine, and Smooth-On said it would be fine, so I don't think that's the issue.

EDIT: That's weird...the pictures worked perfectly earlier. I'll try to fix them in a bit.

Any idea on how to get the cast out of the ladle without breaking it? haha. Been tapping it on the floor and counter for ages and it shifted a lil but not enough.