February/March Update

 

First off, like many other bloggers out there, I am going to now try to stick to a regular update schedule.  Once a month, usually around the first week of each month, I will add an update of some sort.  Also, like many other bloggers, don’t hold me to that.  That’s the plan.  We’ll see how well it works. Now on to the costuming updates.

At this point, I’ve got the drill construction 95% complete and several layers of Mache on the Delta helmet.  I’m really waiting for some warm weather to start working with the nasty chemical part.  I decided it was time to start cutting and poking holes in the helmet though.  It was hard to do because I never knew if what I was about to do would end up destroying everything or not, but I had to.

To do this properly, I couldn’t use the back of my old office chair for a stand anymore.  So, a more proper one was built.

It’s a stand! I swear!

 See!

I needed to construct a backpack and frame into the helmet to:
help hold the helmet in place
provide a surface for attaching the tanks
help carry the weight of the tanks from the helmet to my shoulders and hips
I had an older backpack that I thought about using the frame from it. I did use the straps and waist belt, but the Boy Scout in me would not allow me to destroy a perfectly good backpack and frame.  More PVC then.
I built the frame into the helmet and even used some more expanding foam to help secure it to the helmet.
  
     

Yeah, I know, all the pictures are of the helmet on my old office chair.  It just worked better for getting the foam on the inside.  The build was actually done on the stand.

With all that done and dried, it was time for another test fitting.  This did not go well at all.

 

      

Adding the frame had also caused some warping in the back.  Nothing could be done about that though.  But I had to do something about the horrid shoulder mismatching.

After looking at the pictures, I decided the best thing to do would be to just slice the shoulder off and rebuild them.  This would also give me a chance to add in the ventilation system I’m after.  I mean, I’m going to be walking around Atlanta in September wearing insulation on my head.  I need to get air in and out somehow!

 

Once the shoulder were cut off, before I rebuilt them, I added an 80mm computer fan to each shoulder blowing air in onto my neck.

     

  Exhaust Fan

I’ll power all three fans from the same source as the LEDs I’m adding.  What LEDs you ask?  Must have forgotten about those.  See, Subject Delta’s helmet lights up in the face mask area.  Yellow if he is calm and red during combat.  He also has two lights on his chest that come on in the dark.  I’ve ordered all the LEDs and resistors and am building out that part slowly.  The power will be from a 6 volt camping lantern battery.  Heavy, but long lasting and steady power, and it fits in the 4 inch tank on my back.

This is one of the two chest lights.  They each hold 5 10mm white LEDs.  I cannot express to you how bright these are when they are lit.

Sorry, I digress, back to the shoulder repair.

With the new intake fans in place, I had to make sure that I did not seal them in, but left some sort of opening for them to draw in fresh air.  This would mean the shoulders would be some sort of vent hood.  I went back to my roots and broke out the card stock, scissors and tape.  This just needed to hold on long enough to get a layer of Mache over it anyway.

     

The two blue dots on either side are the lights in place.

Now for another test fit.  This one went much better.  Not perfect, but without scrapping the whole thing and starting over, it’s as good as it is going to get.

 

 

In the last picture, you can see how the frame got a little warped when I added the foam and it set up.  That bothers me some, but once the tanks are on, I don’t think you’ll notice.

Now one final coat of Mache, and this one was a special coating with some wood glue added to it.  This gives you a chance to be able to sand the surface smooth if you want.

Peek-a-boo. I see you!

 

Now, just need some good weather to apply a layer of fiber glass resin and a primer coat of paint and see what it looks like all one color.  It is easier to see any major screw ups once you are looking at an even colored surface.

I know the helmet isn’t perfect, but I didn’t set out to make a perfect replica either.  Plus it is supposed to be worn and beaten looking.  That was one of the reasons I chose this method.

Also you might have noticed I started referring to this as the Delta helmet.  When I first started this, I was going to do Subject Sigma from the Minerva's Den DLC for Bioshock 2.  Well, Subject Sigma was never paired with a little sister, and the little sister is another piece to this costume.  In order to be more accurate, or anal your choice, I’ve switched to Subject Delta from the main Bioshock 2 game.  Fortunately, the two characters look exactly alike.

Drill, Baby! Drill!

Now when I started this costume, I decided I did not want to do the drill arm weapon, but do some other weapon from the game.  The drill arm is complicated to build.  Its heavy to wear.  It can just be awkward.  Unfortunately, I never really know what I am doing.  The drill arm is an icon of the game and synonymous with the Big Daddies.  Without it, my costume could just be a guy in a diving suite with a girl riding on his back.

The build has not disappointed me.  It has been hard and complicated and a royal pain, but the result is pretty cool.  The goal is something like this:

The drill actually makes up the right arm of the character from about the elbow down.  there is a support piece that starts at the elbow and then the main drill mechanism starts at the hand and goes nearly to the floor, when the arm is held straight down.

I would need a cordless drill.  Some sort of housing for it and a way to relocate the trigger and battery.  I have several cordless drills, but all the batteries were dead in them except my main one, and I wasn’t about to butcher it.  I got a new Ryobi 9.6 volt drill for less than $30.  It stayed in one piece for about a day and then was taken to the basic parts and a new housing built.

The tape was mainly just to hold everything in place while the PVC cement cured, but I never bothered to remove it later.

The new handle with the trigger mounted inside.

I did have the arm support piece connected for a while, but in the course of the build, it eventually broke.  This actually made it easier to finish the drill, but I’ll have to go back and repair it before long.

 

Next I got a threaded rod for the spin of the drill.  I was going to use just a wooden dowel, but they are never very straight and I needed this to be as straight as I could.  Mainly because I know I’ll get something in off center (and I did) and having something start crooked would only compound the problem.  Unfortunately even threaded rods are not perfectly straight.

The disks are in place to help hold the rest of the skeleton in place and guide me in making the cone shape.

It took about 4 different builds to get here.  The upper portion was easy enough, but the lower half is below the drill and over my arm.  The spinning motion had to transfer from the top down, but as it did some of the off center and bent bits really showed up.  I ended up having to cover the internal drill housing with a layer of foam to smooth it out and protect it from the spinning skeleton.  What was happening was as it would spin one of the support ribs would hit the support on the drill housing and either start a horrid wobble or snap everything on the lower half.  By covering the drill housing, I left nothing for the ribs to grab onto, so if they did wobble, they would bounce and glide.  I also hoped once I got the skin on it and strengthened it more, the wobble would lessen.

 

A day spent gluing on the skin of card stock.  I had a hard time with this simply waiting for the glue to dry.  The purple tape is just painter’s tape that I used to hold a few bits in place while the glue dried.  Once it tried, it was time for the drill edge.

I had a thought about using a spiral cut out of the blue foam and just wrapping it down the drill.  It was a good idea, but it didn’t work.

Idea number two was to wrap a string around the drill and take bits of card stock and layer them using the string as a guide.  That worked really well.

I used the painter’s tape again, simply because I didn’t know if this would work or not.  Once it did, I switched to regular masking tape and replaced most of the painter’s tape.

One problem I had with this was after one night of gluing, wrapping the string, and adding more paper the weight had gotten too much for the drill and pulling the trigger resulted in just the lovely chunking sound.  I had forgotten when I was working out why the drill kept destroying itself that I lowered the torque setting to the very lowest setting.  Now I had to cut it open and raise the setting higher.

Bandage in place with painter’s tape while the glue dried.

Once that was set, I replaced the string and continued to wrap the card stock pieces.  Eventually it was done.

Fortunately too, this was something I could do in my office where it is warm and it is easy enough to do this while on conference calls too.

 

Here’s a video of it actually working.  The music and giggles in the background are from the soundtrack I am making to have playing from the costume.  Just music from the game and the voices of the Big Daddy and Little Sister.

Holy crap the thing works!

The next steps will be to cover the whole thing with a layer of paper Mache and then once the weather warms up a little, a light layer of fiberglass resin and paint.

In hindsight, I am actually glad that I built this thing.

Winter Update 1

Its been quite a while since the last update.  I’ve been working on the costume, but its been slow.  It is so freaking cold here and my workspace is not heated at the moment, so progress has been minor.

I have had to go back and redo or redesign several things:
the tank backpack is now going to have to be worked into the structure of the helmet. No way to wear the helmet and a pack frame at the same time.
the tanks will be used for battery storage.
I will be building the drill arm.
LEDs and lots of them.
My Little Sister is now shorter (still headless, but I’m carving on that).

One of the main things that I can do in the cold is work on the costume’s soundtrack.  I did find a better speaker solution that my original one and did a rework on the tank that will hold the speaker.  Pictures will be coming on that soon.  But back to the soundtrack.

I found several programs that would allow me to basically rip the audio from the BioShock PC game, which has been great.  I had all the various musical soundtracks, but having the actual Big Daddy groans and the Little Sister dialogs is perfect.  The quality of the audio is great too.  I originally created one 20 minute long track.  It was good, but not great.  I went back and decided to make several new tracks, breaking them up by theme.  I’ve created a track for:
Finding an angel
Fun and giggles
Creepy
Frightened – Being hunted
Sleepy
Take a picture

I can cue up all these in one playlist and just let the iPod play through, and I can also skip back and forth now depending on the interaction with people at the moment.  Personally, I think having the music and sound effects from the game are adding a whole new dimension to the costume, especially if I can continue to work it in very inconspicuously.

I’ve got on order right now a ton of LED lights for the costume as well.  I’ve worked out most of how I will be lighting the face mask, diving lights, and my Little Sister’s eyes.  Just going to be a lot of soldering.  I’ll be using the tanks to hold batteries for power.  I say batteries because, just to be safe, I will carry a primary and a spare.  I was trying to avoid having to do the LED work, but I’ve gone this far into it, I might as well go all the way.  I will be able to switch between the yellow (passive/calm) and red (angry/hurt) lighting now that I am doing it myself.

I have also started thinking about how we’re going to travel this monster to Atlanta and get it in the hotel easily.  I’m afraid I will end up having to make a custom crate for this monster.  If I do, it will be padded heavily and marked fragile.  I’m already looking forward to the looks we’ll get coming out of the elevator at night with me in nearly full costume.  I may have to warn the hotel staff.  Not sure.

I know this has been a boring/no pictures update, but better ones are coming.  It is supposed to be warm this weekend, so here’s hoping that I can get a lot done.

Christmas Break Update

 

So, I typically take the two weeks around Christmas and New Years off from work.  This year I had the crazy idea to use that time in some way that I wanted in order to be somewhat productive.  I have basically spent most of the time working on the Subject Sigma costume in one form or another.  It has been great.

I realize that not everyone may be that familiar with what I am trying to accomplish with this costume.  I actually do own the action figures, which serve as a fantastic reference, so here are a couple of pics of what I am aiming for.
 
I am still not 100% sure if I want to do the drill arm or not. There are plenty of other weapons in the Bioshock universe that I can play with.  I am trying to build a marionette of the Little Sister to carry on my back, and I have to say, it is getting creepier and creepier building her.

I started building the helmet some time ago, but have forgotten to upload any progress.  You’re going to get it all at once.

The whole mask is built using insulation foam.  The pink is 1/2” foam and the blue is 1/4” foam.  This has the advantage of being easily carved, sanded, and bent into shapes without adding any weight.  The tape and the toothpicks are to help hold while the glue sets.

Once I had the above skeleton made, I used expanding spray foam to cover and fill in the overall shape.  I would then carve back into the foam to fine tune the shape.  Kind of like sculpting.

Due to the cold, I did set up a heat lamp to help dry this out.  This is what the basic shape became.  Next was the opening for the face mask.

The foam does have some issues.  It is not very sturdy, doesn’t have  a smooth surface and it is not really paintable.  All this could be solved with just a few layers of fiberglass resin, but the resin will eat the foam.  Some have used a product called UreShell to coat and protect the foam.  At $85 a gallon, it is out of my budget at the moment.  I have found others that use the foam and then coat it with a few layers of Paper-Mache and then resin and paint the Mache.  So, lets give that a try, shall we?

 

Because it is barely 30 degrees and my basement is not exactly well insulated (to be fixed this summer), this part had to come upstairs to the kitchen to be done.  Also, Melinda was a HUGE help in making and applying the Mache.  It pays to have a school teacher for a wife.

I do have the camera roughed out.  It will be attached and then Mached later.

Once I get at least two layers on the helmet, I will then start adding the lights and other electronic details.

The expanding foam is a great medium.  I had earlier posted about building the skeleton of my Little Sister, but I had no idea how to cover the skeleton.  Foam to the rescue.  Spray on, let dry, carve and sand.  Adds shape and definition with little to no weight.

And yes, I do realize it looks like guts.  This has only added to the creepy factor.

One other feature I needed to add to my Little Sister was a set of hands.  I wanted to make them articulated somehow.  The solution I came up with is by no means original, and I must give credit once again to Harrison Krix over at Volpin Props.

Pulling on the wires does make the fingers close.  Some of the wires did break during the process, but enough are still articulated that I am happy and don’t want to rebuild them again.

The hands are attached to a dowel rod that is then inserted into the PVC with the wires routed out the elbow.  All in all creepy as heck.  Oh, and no, I have not forgotten her head or feet.