Darth Malgus: preparing for WonderCon 2014

Checking Darth Malgus costume for needed repairs

I'm off to WonderCon in Anaheim in a couple of days, so it's time to take out the costumes I'll be wearing and check for needed repairs. First up, Darth Malgus.

This year, I've got the advantage of a body form which I built a couple of months ago. It's just the torso, but it's proven to be really useful. Now I can easily see how the costume looks from behind, how the costume parts fit together, identify fitting problems...just invaluable. It also helped remind me what order to use when putting on the various components. It just made a lot of things easier.

For WonderCon, I hot glued together a few pieces of the armor which had started to separate. Some Velcro fasteners needed to be hot glued back into place. The respirator mask used a lot of thick CA glue to rejoin the part around the nose which had come apart from use. Also, some of the exposed materials needed to be painted black.

After the repairs, I tried everything on and it all seems to fit properly. There are some major rebuilds I'd like to make, but they'll have to wait until later. They include:

  • New pants made from black canvas
  • New thigh armor, possibly just shaped & painted foam or vinyl over shaped foam
  • New undershirt made from black canvas and with longer arms
  • Age the chest plate more
  • Remake the rebreather from vacuum formed styrene
  • Remake the balaclava as a stretchy pull over, like a turtleneck shirt.
  • Add real lights to the rebreather and to the forearm controls

 

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Written by Alan Irwin On In Tagged

Vacuum former: update 5, finished! (more or less)

Completed (nearly) vacuum former!

Here's the (nearly) finished vacuum former! Although there are a couple of fixes & improvements to be made, it's complete enough to start pulling parts.

Spacers added to the frame near the handles.

Spacers provide a tighter fit to the vertical guides.

I added some guides to the frame in order to more accurately guide the frame between the heater box and the vacuum platen. Now the frame lands perfectly around the platen every time.

The quick latch made from angle bracket bolted to the frame, an eye bolt, and a wing nut

I also added a latch to the frame so that I can quickly load it with styrene and lock it down with an air tight seal. The position of the eye bolt & wing nut are just outside the spacing of the heater box so I don't get any interference in either the heater or vacuum positions. And, the 12" x 16" size of the frame let's me cut up a variety of standard stock sizes without any waste: 12" x 48", 2' x 4', or 4' x 8'.

Magnets affixed with J-B Weld (corner) and 5 minute epoxy (front & side)

The final addition to the frame are the magnetic holds. I epoxied 12 neodymium magnets around the frame and another 12 embedded into the heater box. This holds the frame against the box in the upper position while the plastic heats. When it's ready, I pull the frame away from the magnets and slide it down over the platen where the vacuum pulls the pliable plastic around the pattern forms.

This part of the former gave me the most trouble. First, I ended up needing more magnets than I anticipated. And handling the epoxy required developing a reliable procedure. I started with the J-B Weld, assuming that my prior success with the wooden to metal offsets would mean quick and easy success with magnets. Nope! It's messy and the fine control I needed to position the magnets in the frame required longer than the very short setup time. And later, one of the magnets pulled away from the frame.

So, I went back to my more familiar 5 minute epoxy, and it still took awhile to figure out how to effectively position the magnets, and find tools that weren't subject to magnetic forces! I also ended up drilling mounting holes in the heat box, partially to give better epoxy mounting, but to also bring the magnets from the heater box closer to the magnets from the frame, without the aluminum box frame getting in the way. I finally got everything mounted and working, but it's ugly and I still have one magnet that needs to be reinstalled.

At this point, I had completed enough to try vacuum forming. I had tested the heater and vacuum wiring a bunch of times & it always worked. So, I put my 1st piece of plastic in, moved the frame up to the magnetic hold position against the heater box, placed the sample pattern forms, turned on the heater and watched the plastic heat & droop. Once it looked ready, I quickly dropped it over the forms and platen and then switched from the heater to the vacuum.

And nothing happened.

The orange switch burned out and needed to be replaced

I tried the switch several times and the vacuum never came on. So I tossed out that piece of plastic and began troubleshooting the problem. After ringing out the fuse and wiring, I finally found out that the switch had fried! Luckily, I was able to find another 3 position, high current switch at a local Radio Shack, and was able to replace it the same day. Then I did another test.

A couple of things in my shop that I used as buck forms

I grabbed a spray can lid and an abalone shell that I happened to have in my shop. They were sturdy enough and heat resistant enough to be good forms, and the vertical lines of the lid would be a good test of a tall, straight part. Also, the lid has raised lettering, and I can see how well the form would pick up detail.

The 0.03 styrene successfully vacuum formed!

And it worked! The plastic heated and became pliable after a minute or two. I saw the characteristic droop, and then dropped the plastic down onto the forms. I quickly threw the switch from the heating to the vacuum position, and the plastic was pushed down to form over the patterns. There was some webbing (those vertical fin-like pieces that branch off from the lid with one running over to the shell), and the shell had some overhang which locked the shell into the plastic. I was able to work the shell out, and the lid popped out pretty easily. I cut out the two pieces and cut off some of the webbing although I didn't meticulously clean up the pieces. Still, they came out very nicely for my first vacuum forming.

Four standoff feet added to the bottom of the vacuum box

Two more components were added to the build before I stopped for the day. First, I added stand off feet to the bottom of the vacuum box. I used the 4 feet that came with the toaster oven I had dismantled. The feet were necessary to lift the vacuum box off of the table. When the vacuum former is standing upright and without the feet, the lower box forms a seal with the table, and the out flow of air from the shop van when it's turned on causes the box to lift up off of the table like a hovercraft. Until I added the feet, I had to place spare boards under the corners of the box to give the airflow an exit path.

Adding a protective face to the heater box

Finally, I placed a protective face onto the heater box in order to shield the operator from the 110 V going to the heater elements. I only did the one face, but intend to place an aluminum facade over the additional 3 sides later.

And that's it for now. The following open items aren't critical, so I'm going to set this project aside so that I can get come other projects done, and so that I can use the vacuum former to make some props!

Remaining to do:

  • Replace the pilot light
  • Remount a magnet that come loose
  • Add 3 more sides to the outer heater box

 

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Written by Alan Irwin On In , Tagged

Headless Horseman

Headless Horseman costume at 2013 Comic-Con

Early promo ad for the Sleepy Hollow TV show

While thinking about a new costume for the 2013 Comic-Con, I was watching the promo trailer for the new Sleepy Hollow series. I have a personal connection to the creator of the show, and so I decided to recreate the antagonist: The Headless Horseman. The promo trailer showed a headless revolutionary war soldier (red coat) with an ax and machine gun. How bad ass is that!

So, the challenges were to put together a recreation of a historic red coat soldier's uniform, create the headless illusion (while still being able to see well enough to get around), and create all the weapon props. All trying to be faithful to the upcoming TV show's character (which no one had seen).

First, I created the headless illusion by taking a black dress shirt (which I got at a thrift store), ripping out the arms, installing tall shoulders I made from foam, opening up the arm holes to fit my real arms, and building up a fake chest to match the new height created by the shoulders. My new neck consisted of an EVA foam cylinder capped at the top, all painted black or covered with black craft foam and sporting an attached white cravat, made from white tulle (veil material). This fit over my head like a hat, but came down to the bottom of my nose. I cut out a panel that I can see through and covered that with a couple of layers of black tulle. Also, the white cravat came down over my eyes, so there were 4 layers of tulle, both black and white, covering my face. Pretty effective for hiding my eyes and allowing me to see well enough.

I found a pattern for an 18th century military coat which I bought and then I made my own red wool coat with all the trimmings. I had to modify the pattern in order to make it large enough to fit over my fake shoulders yet still allow my real arms to go into the sleeves. Luckily I had a lot of muslin so I could make and modify pattern pieces in order to come up with an acceptable final pattern. The result came out just fine.

I created a vest facade, altered some gray pants, bought a pair of cheap black shoes, modified a set of pirate boot covers to recreate the leather boots, and made a bunch of fake shotgun shells. I bought a variety of gun accessories (belts, straps, bandoleers) and fake weapons, and I made the ax from wood (after all, I am a woodworker).

And I did all of this without a body form. It was a lot of putting on, marking alterations, taking off, and then modifying. Rinse and repeat, many times. It was a lot of work, but I am happy with the result.

For the same reasons as the Malgus costume, I didn't take many progress shots (no blog plans at the time). In future posts I may elaborate on parts of this build, but this post is meant to be an overview and introduction to the character in order to give some background for future posts.

I got a photo with one of the Fox promotional Headless Horsemen

I inaugurated the costume at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con. I anticipated being the only Headless Horseman there, because the show hadn't premiered yet. What I hadn't anticipated was that Fox would publicize the show by fielding 10 guys in Headless Horseman costumes. So, instead of having a unique costume, I was one of many, and I was the one who didn't have prizes to give out! <sigh>

Another cosplayer who wanted a photo, and I was able to get a copy!

Still the costume was popular and I had a lot of folks come up for photos. I threatened a lot of heads with the ax. Oddly, I also had someone on the convention floor ask for an interview, and after I said "sure" they told me that it was for the Playboy channel. It was an odd interview and I've never seen the video (insert your own "I only look at the videos" joke here). By the way, the above photo is NOT from that interview; she was a fellow cosplayer who wanted a picture.

I did win a costuming prize from the Costumer Designers Guild. This is the professional union for all Hollywood costumer designers. They apparently go to Comic-Con every year and give out awards for any costumes that they deem worthy. They do it right on the spot, and I was pretty surprised and pleased.

So, I guess I now have an award winning costume. Cool.

 

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Written by Alan Irwin On In Tagged