Costume progress

Current state of the costume - without the head.

Head Failure #2.

 Here was our second head attempt. We did it in paper maché, which felt miraculously light. I thought for sure we'd have no problems with it at all; it was just that light. For this all we did was put plastic wrap over the clay sculpt and then do regular paper maché techniques over it. 

 For extra support, we cut out pieces of pool noodles and hot glued them inside where there were crevices.

 The paper mache head was a fair bit smaller as well, as it was nowhere near as thick as the resin'd fleece. So I had to make a new tongue, the bottom one. It also had to be flatter due to how much room was inside the mouth.

 Then, since at the time we didn't have much else option, we used the plastic mesh thing I created. I learned from that, that the fan was then way too far from my head to feel it (so any fans need to be close to the top of your head in a head like this). 

 The two were fiberglassed together for ultimate strength.

 We also covered the head in a LOT of mod podge. It made it very hard, solid and durable. I felt really good about the actual head on this one--not so much the attachment system, but the head itself felt really good.

 Then I painted the entire head several times in Plasti-Dip. I used a whole can--that stuff worked really well, made it sturdy and strong. I definitely liked the result I got from it.

 But then the head contraption started to fall apart so I took some pinboard, screwed it to the piece, duct taped it in, and hoped that would work. It seemed to work fine, and still has stuck together.

 Despite how much scaling I've done (two heads now), it didn't really get any quicker. Takes about 13 hours of nonstop work for me to do the entire head, which isn't too bad.

This head weighs 6.5 lbs, which is a fair bit lighter than the previous one. Unfortunately, it's not enough, as I can't wear it for longer than two minutes. The average human head weighs about the same as this one, so we're currently trying to figure out how to make one lighter than this.

Currently the options we're looking at:

- Making one from solid pink insulation foam. I really don't like the idea of this as it's very hard to get the mouth to shut all the way with that, but many have gotten this to work.

- Making one from solid green upholstery foam. Haven't found anything this big being done with it, and I feel like it may be too heavy, but math may be in my future for this one.

- Some sort of heat form plastic. 

I sure wish I had a 3D printer, ahaha. There are some people that have great deals for projects and will print things you need for you, but they usually charge by the centimeter and something this large would be insanely priced.

Head Failure #1.

I'm a more active poster right now on the Replica Prop Forum, as I have created a work in progress thread to keep track of things. You can find that here.

We had several ideas of how to make the head, and after we went through some fear about a fiberglass head being too heavy, we decided we'd try a latex box. First we made a box out of cardboard, covered everything in plastic wrap and filled it with water. When we did that, we realized the cost of the latex for the mold would be way too much. I'm not experienced enough for slush casting or anything fancy either, so once we figured out how much latex would cost us we decided we'd try fiberglass anyway.

 We also took pinboard/pushboard (not sure of the name; very thin wood like stuff from Home Depot) and tried making boxes but even that tight around the clay head was still way too much latex. 

 So with that decided on, we decided to try fiberglass. So we wrapped the clay piece in plastic wrap for the first step.

 Then we took pins and went through the fleece and clay to hold it in place.

 Then we took our resin (I believe we used boat/fiberglass resin) and paintbrushes and brushed it on over the entire thing.

 We ended up having to bring it inside the house in the bathroom with a heater on because it was pretty cold out for Florida that week. It was sometime in February, and it took ages to cure for the first few days while we did this.

 Overall, this made a very sturdy, strong piece. It really felt like it was going to work well for us.

 The plastic wrap stuck to it and created this texture on the inside, but also kept the clay piece from getting too sticky and gross (although it still did get sticky and gross).

Then we did the same for the head. We did one half, one half, and then the inside of the mouth.

 We reinforced the inside of the bottom jaw as well so it would support the hinges properly. We just used fiberglass matting. We kind of built this one to go to the moon, which is part of the problem we ended up having with it.

 Then we installed the hinges (as ordered by DVC, but we ended up using them for patterns instead as they weren't strong enough for this head--they're intended for plastic/resin, not a heavy head like this one).

 Then with some lining up, marking and such, we put the three pieces of the head together.

 Then we used this two part super strong adhesive to put the pieces together. You just pour the little black powder down, then the liquid over it and it dries instantly. It worked very well.

 Annnnnd then we reinforced the inside of it with more fiberglass matting to make it even stronger.

 In the gaps where it didn't line up I used model magic to fill it in. One of the most important parts of this head to me was that the mouth shut all the day--I don't like to see dinosaurs where their teeth are always showing.

 And then I put Model Magic on the outside of the head for a scale effect, which worked pretty well but hot glue wasn't the right adhesive for it.

 Then we thought of the idea to use the cement tubes--this one we found at Home Depot, Sak-rete was the brand for it, and put it on my shoulders. This idea didn't work, but it was a good idea anyway. I'm really determined to try and get this dinosaur on the top of my head without needing something to rest on my shoulders.

 And then here I was painting it over the scales (at the time I was afraid the white would show through the spandex but that wouldn't an issue). You can also see the surfboard cloth we have hanging out the back that was used to attach the piece to the concrete tube. It's not actually a tube made of concrete by the way, but one used for pouring concrete and getting that cylinder shape.

 And here's what it looked like "finished."

 

 There's the tongue I sculpted inside the mouth.

And unfortunately, this head weighed far too much for it to work. Total, it weighs 9.5 pounds. By the time we figured this out, we had about a week and a half left I want to say to MegaCon. We were still grasping at straws for it to be completed in time, so we started on Mark II nearly immediately afterward. This head is still outside in our greenhouse, and we're thinking it might be turned into a speaker box or a lamp or something. No clue, but if you're for some reason interested in taking it off our hands then you can contact me by leaving a comment below. :)