Halloween Skate 2008 Costume Build

2008-10-31T20:33:00.001-07:00

Well that seemed to go well. Most people liked it, hopefully will have some photos of the event along shortly...

Actually if you have some photos of the event you wouldn't mind posting or linking from here, please drop me a line on facebook or in the comments below. I don't actually have any, since I was stuck inside the costume all night!

Have to say it's a lot harder to see out through that muslin cloth than I'd hoped! Visibility was ok as long as it was shaded from direct light, but when illuminated it just turns into a foggy white view of the world. Like wearing a foggy diving mask. If this costume gets used again, I think that bit will be replaced with something better!

I tripped only once, on a pothole I didn't see at all. Benders head fell off, and I dented the bottom of the torso when I brought my leg up sharply to recover balance. That also kicked the top of the torso up so it hit me in the lip! Unexpected costume hazards indeed! The head was mostly undamaged - his antenna rod came a bit loose, and eventually fell off after the skate. It's glued back in place now. The torso also bent back into shape, more or less, so there are no obvious ill-effects now!

2008-10-31T07:06:00.000-07:00

And here it all is, ready to go.

Gloves are sewn on to sleeves, paint is dried out. The torso door is drawn on with black marker pen - I wasn't about to try and make a working door!

I thought of doing something about feet to make my skates the right color - they are black and white. Could have made some sort of cloth boot to cover them over, say, with the leftover material from the gloves. But I don't want it coming loose so I can trip on it. I'm a pretty decent skater, but I don't need that! I already can't see my feet while wearing the costume, and Bender doesn't wear skates anyway - so fine the feet can be the wrong color.

2008-10-31T07:02:00.000-07:00

First wearing. Ok the first obvious problem is that the sleeves arent staying up and it's revealing the skin at my wrists. Kind of spoils the effect a bit. So next idea was to half-stitch the gloves onto the end of the sleeves. Half stitching would mean the gloves keep the sleeves up, but I can still get my hands out if I want to. The beer bottle is, of course, important.

2008-10-31T06:59:00.000-07:00

At this point I decided to go completely overboard with the sewing and actually make some gloves. I hadn't found any the right color or, ideally, with only three fingers. But I had found a grey fabric the right color at the haberdashery shop where I got the hat-brim wire. So £6 later I had 1m of material and proceeded about making up a glove pattern. This was a bit fiddly, but after some messing about and an hour or two stitching I had two gloves ready.

2008-10-31T06:55:00.000-07:00

The inside of the head is padded out with some cut styrofoam material that had formerly been used to pack a TV or something. I made it fairly tight so it grips onto my head a bit. The head is top-heavy and needs to remain on even when skating over the rough roads of central London!

2008-10-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

Time for some painting then, since after a looong time all the papier mache had finally dried. About £15 worth of acrylic paint from the local art shop, £1 worth of paint brushes from the local pound-shop, and this was the result. Not bad huh? I finished up doing two coats because I had to mix black and white to get grey, and the first time it came out too dark. I could have got away with one coat though if I'd been more careful right at the start.

At the advice of the shop I used the paint undiluted, so it was really quite thick. But this also turned out pretty cool - acrylic paint dries with a texture and finish that looks and feels almost like plastic (it probably is a polymer I suppose). This means the costume is a little bit water resistant after painting, which is cool. Not that water is going to be a problem of course, we don't skate in the rain.

The teeth have been drawn on a piece of muslin(?) cloth with a black marker pen. The cloth is glued into the mouth using ordinary craft glue. The cloth is very sheer, and you can see through it reasonably easily. The idea is that I look out through benders mouth. When the costume is worn the top of the antenna is about 30cm taller than me. I'm 1.86m. If you add on 10cm or so cm from a pair of skates Bender stands over 2 meters tall. Yeah!

I also added an extra collar under the head (not visible) so it will sit nicely into the hole of the neck.

2008-10-31T06:47:00.000-07:00

And this is the result after sewing (yes sewing!) the first few rings into the tracksuit pant legs. I can tell you now, I'm terrible at sewing, so this is really rough work but it seems to have come out ok.

2008-10-31T06:45:00.001-07:00

The aha moment was discovering hat-brim wire. It's a plastic wiry stuff which is flexible to a point, but tends to retain a curved shape. This was probably the most costly bit of the whole project, I spent about £15 on 11 meters of it.

I cut it into lengths after measuring the tracksuit pants and top and then taped into loops with gaffer tape as shown.

2008-10-31T06:41:00.000-07:00

In the meantime I'd been been giving quite a lot of thought to making the arms and legs, eventually settling on an idea. Went out shopping at Primark, and picked up a pair of light grey track suit pants for £2.50 and a matching cotton top for £3.

Onto these drew black stripes using a black marker pen. Bender has five lines on each arm and leg, and this was one of the reasons for choosing this method - it's always drawn as exactly five lines.

2008-10-31T06:39:00.000-07:00

And this is the antenna rod all glued together and mached over!

2008-10-31T06:38:00.000-07:00

The ball at the top of the antenna was easily made from a ping-pong ball. Just 99p for 6 of them!

2008-10-31T06:37:00.000-07:00

Bender has a little plinth-thingy at the top of his head, created here by a bit of corrugated cardboard glued on top. Into the middle of this would go the antenna rod.

2008-10-31T06:35:00.000-07:00

Back to the head, and particularly the rod on top of the head. I rolled up a piece of that otherwise useless thin grey cardboard as shown, after coating it with wallpaper glue. I was hoping to make a nice solid sort of cardboard rod. And it worked! Took about a week to dry out, but after cutting the top and bottom off the result was pretty good.

2008-10-31T06:34:00.000-07:00

And papier mache that too. By now I was getting pretty tired of waiting for papier mache to dry out...

2008-10-31T06:17:00.000-07:00

Next job is to put some rings of corrugated cardboard around the armholes to form a basis for the shoulders. Four layers altogether, each a bit smaller than the previous one, to give it a sort of contoured shape. Benders real shoulder-loops are round, but for me a more oval shape was a wiser choice - otherwise you can't get your arms in and out!

2008-10-31T06:14:00.000-07:00

I used the paper template to trace out the shape of the armholes onto the torso, and then cut away the layers of mache with a stanley knife. Wire cutters were used to cut through the mesh underneath. A bit of filing and snipping got rid of the pointy edges.

2008-10-31T06:04:00.000-07:00

By now the torso was pretty much done, but missing some rather essential armholes. Next job was to work out how big they should be using some paper templates.

2008-10-31T06:01:00.000-07:00

While all this was going on every couple of days the torso got coated with another layer or two of mache. In the end I think it got about 8 layers on the outside and two or three on the inside. Figured I should do it on the inside because (a) it would mean the paper inside and outside the mesh would glue together through the mesh, making a nice composite, and (b) to cover up the spiky wiry bits and protect the wearer.

2008-10-31T05:58:00.000-07:00

Papier mache over that, and then glue another layer of cardboard around the inside of the jaw to give it reinforcement.

2008-10-31T05:56:00.001-07:00

Now we're talking! It actually starts to look like Bender's head.

2008-10-31T05:54:00.000-07:00

I made 3 circular plates to go inside the head temporarily, just to hold the correct shape during construction and gluing. I secured them with tape on the lower side only, so it could be cut easily, and put a circular hole in the middle of each so it could be pulled out easily.

2008-10-31T05:53:00.000-07:00

Head V2 would be made from corrugated cardboard, which does not warp much when papered over, and I would put the mouth and eye holes in from the start. So I cut out the right length of cardboard for a 28cm diameter head, and put the required holes in.

2008-10-31T05:49:00.000-07:00

Ok by now I was well hacked off with the mess the head was turning into... so I decided to hack the top off the head and start again. The dome part was still good, but you can see from this image just how messed up the sides had gotten.

2008-10-31T05:48:00.000-07:00

Finally papier mache over the lot.

2008-10-31T05:47:00.000-07:00

Roll this up and insert two balloons, partly inflated. I had to use tape to make the shape of the balloons right because unfortunately they weren't quite right.

2008-10-31T05:37:00.000-07:00

So time to start on the eyes - what I like to call the 'eye-box'. Measurements were derived from the ratios I'd worked out right back at the start of the project. Eye diameter was to be about 13cm.

Pretty simple idea: First cut a length of thin cardboard (the type we already know warps all too easily), but then back it with strips of corrugated cardboard so it will curve around the edges and be flat at the top and bottom.

2008-10-31T05:34:00.000-07:00

...And torso surmounted by head. Already it's apparent that the head is too short for the torso. This became more obvious when I started working out how big to make the eyes and mouth. And combined with the warping and distortion (not obvious in this picture) I was becoming pretty dissatisfied with this first version of the head by now.

Over following weeks successive layers of papier mache were applied over the torso surface and the bevelled collar. The collar warped and distorted quite a bit, and was fixed essentially by folding paper over and over to fill up the holes and hollows until it started to look the right shape. This paid off actually, making the collar quite a strong part of the costume with so many paper layers.

2008-10-31T05:33:00.000-07:00

Torso surmounted by collar...

2008-10-31T05:30:00.000-07:00

And here it is again, with tape over the joints to stop them from sticking out too much...

2008-10-31T05:23:00.000-07:00

Ok so I finally learned my lesson about that thin cardboard. Not going to make that mistake again with the torso. I duly went out and, by lucky coincidence, found some gardening mesh just the right height for the torso. Wasn't sure if it would work out, but two pieces at about £4.50 each seemed worth the risk. Here it is clamped together temporarily while I get ready to wire it together with bits of twisted wire.

2008-10-31T05:19:00.000-07:00

Then coat the head with papier mache, this time using wallpaper glue. Much better outcome glue-wise, but I hadn't learned my lesson with that thin cardboard. It immediately started to warp and bend all over the place as it dried. The dome worked really well - the balloon kept its shape perfectly, but as the layers went on the sides of the head gradually turned into a more and more misshapen mess.

2008-10-31T05:17:00.000-07:00

Time for the head - simple construction idea really, blow up a balloon and tape it into a roll of cardboard to start with.

2008-10-31T05:08:00.000-07:00

And then it was time for the first layer of papier mache, and also time for my first big learning experience...

There are various ways to make papier mache glue, and the most common 'home recipe' one is to boil some flour until it makes starchy water, which is basically usable as glue. I'm here to tell you, this is a recipe only for disaster! Glue made from flour & water turned out a wet, wet, mess. It didn't actually stick and took absolutely forever to dry out. Perhaps I was just doing it wrong, but I don't recommend it!

Luckily one of the papier mache sites also recommended wallpaper glue as a better alternative. So the next day I was off to the local hardware shop to pick up a bag of wallpaper glue for the grand sum of £2.50. In the rest of the project I used less than half of it, and it worked brilliantly. It comes as dry flakes of glue that you mix with water. I did learn to give it a good 20 mins of brewing time before use though, otherwise it may also not stick properly.

I also learned that the thin layer of cardboard I'd used for the curved surface of the bevel was not up to the job - as it got wet it warped and distorted all over the place. The corrugated cardboard of the bevels kept their shape just fine however.

2008-10-31T05:04:00.000-07:00

Here I've surmounted the collar with a cardboard rim underneath. The original idea was to attach this to plain cardboard to form the surface of the torso itself.

2008-10-31T05:01:00.002-07:00

And here is the collar with the curved surface taped on.

2008-10-31T05:01:00.001-07:00

So here's the collar with all the buttress pieces taped on.

2008-10-31T04:45:00.000-07:00

First step was the creation of the bevelled part of the top of the torso - hereafter referred to as the 'collar'. This was to be 50cm diameter at the bottom, bevelled at 45 degrees. I started out by making a cardboard frame as shown.

This consists of two annulus-shaped cuts of cardboard glued to each other (to create double-thickness) and 12 triangular cardboard buttresses to give the required angle. This is covered by a curved cardboard surface to give the overall shape.

The white paper template was a neat idea I remember from school for approximating the unrolled shape of a curved and angled surface. The wide edge is roughly 1/12 of the circumference of a 50cm circle. The narrow edge is 1/12 the circumference of the top edge of the bevel (a 30cm circle), and the two sides are the length of the 45 degree bevelled surface (i.e. 10cm times square root of 2). If you lay out 12 of these templates edge to edge the shape they will make is roughly the shape of the unrolled surface of the bevel. If you trace them out on cardboard you can just cut out the approximately correct shape with minimal measuring. Neat huh?

2008-10-31T04:43:00.000-07:00

Raw materials - some leftover boxes from the local Maplin Electronics store. They were quite happy to let me take them, actually seemed surprised I was polite enough to ask first!

2008-10-31T04:09:00.000-07:00

So how do I create Bender the robot for Halloween Skate?

I had a look around on the internet for pre-existing costumes and found a couple of pretty cool examples dotted about. This one uses heat molded plastics for example, and this one used full metal construction with commercial ducting for legs and arms. Both are pretty cool!

My main concern is that I want this costume for Halloween Skate. I have to be able to skate in it too! Last Easter Skate there was a fantastic example of an Easter costume done by one of the regulars - a big easter egg, done as papier mache over a wire frame. I thought it worked quite well, and it could be the basis for this project too... Papier mache is light and a bit flexible, and you can paint it and sand it. Cool. Of course later on I'd learn that in the English autumn it can also take forever to dry out!

But the first step was to work out the dimensions of the costume. This involved finding various pictures of Bender on the web and measuring them, more or less. The idea was to boil Bender down into a set of ratios, with the diameter of the bottom of his torso arbitrarily designated as length 1. Different images of course delivered different ratios, but at least gave the rough shape.

Scaling it up to my own body size quickly showed that Bender is rather short and squat, with a big head. As opposed to myself, who is quite tall and slim with a small head. Clearly any Bender costume wearable by me was going to have to err towards the 'taller' end of the spectrum of possible Bender shapes.

So fine. After much messing about with a tape measure and a mirror I settled for a 42cm bottom torso diameter and 50cm top torso diameter. The torso has to be tapered a bit to look right. The torso itself should be approximately 60cm tall. The bevel at the top of the torso should be 10cm high and approximately 45 degrees angle. These dimensions should put the bottom of the torso right next to my hip joint, which means my legs are free to move (i.e. skate!) as required.

In drawings Benders head is almost as long as his torso, but this would probably look ridiculous in real life - so I decided on a shorter head of about 14cm diameter and 31cm height (plus the 14cm dome). This would later prove to be a bit of a mistake - version 1 head suffered problems in construction and also looked too short. It was later replaced with version 2 head, a couple of centimetres taller.

At this point I had different ideas for arms and legs involving upholstry foam, commercial ducting (per the example above) and so on. The final idea for legs and arms didn't come until much later.

2008-10-31T04:02:00.000-07:00

So what costume? Death maybe? Not new. Something fun would be better. One of the muppets perhaps? Lot of sewing in puppets tho, and I'm pretty terrible at sewing. Got to be easy to make ... well I'm a futurama fan ...

How about an alcohol-fueled, chain-smoking, kleptomaniac robot with a swarthy latin charm and an in-your-face attitude? Oh, and a repressed desire to kill all humans. That last bit should fit the Halloween theme. The alcohol-fueled bit will certainly fit the skating theme...

Perfect.

Bender Bending Rodríguez - you're it.

2008-10-31T03:55:00.000-07:00

I help marshal a number of public street skates around London on a weekly basis. We use a couple of websites to publish our weekly routes and organise everything, see http://www.lfns.co.uk and http://www.londonskate.com.

It's a lot of fun. Every year we have a couple of special dress up skates, at Easter (http://www.easterskate.co.uk) and Xmas (http://www.santaskate.com) for example, and at Halloween (http://www.halloweenskate.com).

So this year our annual Halloween Skate was scheduled for 31st October 2008. I need a costume. The last two years I've not bothered putting much effort into it, but this year is different. This year I've got a bit more time on my hands... so maybe this is the year to really go for it!