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Shade's Live Action Role Playing (LARP) List: Forums
Joined: Jul 12, 2002 Posts: 1060 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2003 11:00 pm Post subject: Big monsters
I´m in the process of making a large humanoid.
We started with long-sleeved overalls with a zip-up back. We´re wrapped thick sheets of soft foam around the limbs, glueing them on with hot melt glue as we go. We made a head-hole in another sheet and folded it over the torso like a tabard, glueing it on to the jumpsuit, and adding foam strips up the sides of the torso to join the front and back. We´re carving the shape of the humaoid into the surface of the foam, and planning to paint it. Just got the head and arms to go. The shoulder joint is particularly difficult, as the arms need such high degrees of motion.
It´s looking very good indeed, and it wil be the most complete all-over body costume we´ve ever done. I´ll post photos once the game is finished. I don´t want to give anything away to players.
Has anyone else done this kind of thing? What were your materials and methods? Anyone know how these things are done by professionals for TV, movies and stage?
Joined: Jan 08, 2003 Posts: 31 Location: Dallas, TX
Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2003 9:25 am Post subject: Big monsters
Definately post pics!
Another way I´ve seen this done is to build a sort of frame ouf ot PVC pipe and set it on one guys shoulders. That forms a basis for the giants torso and head. You put a big shirt over that. Ifyou are really clever, hecan have some pppetry controls that move the head, but that´s not necessary. The lower arms were actually large boffer weapons tipped with big foam fists. They were operated by two extra NPC´s wearing black.
Overall the effect was pretty cool.
Hob _________________ It is the Gamemaster's paradox that the only person that runs the kind of game you like, is you.
Joined: Jul 12, 2002 Posts: 1060 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 3:37 am Post subject: Big monsters
Quote:
On 2003-04-08 10:25, daHob wrote:
Another way I´ve seen this done is to build a sort of frame ouf ot PVC pipe and set it on one guys shoulders.
Nice, that sounds like a good way to buid something really big. Ours is build for a large person (6´ 6" say), and makes them look inhumanly beefy. But your way would be a better way to do even larger beast, especially if it was non-humanoid.
We´ve been thinking about a small dragonish thing, say operated by five people (1 head, 2 claws, 1 wings, 1 tail), and your PVC piping would make a good framework for that. Each of the operators could have a position in the framework, holding it up together. Some sort of canvas for skin. That would be a very expensive project though. And there would have to be some sort of cover-up job instead of legs.
Joined: Mar 03, 2003 Posts: 137 Location: Lexington, Kentucky
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2003 9:50 am Post subject: Big monsters
Making large { multi person} reps is uber expensive and time consuming if you´re doing it by yourself.
Depending on the length, type of foam you´re using, or if you could redo parts of it you could just use one long piece for the arms/sholders and affix that piece to the frame. If its standard open cell foam it would be flexible enough to move as the person in the suit did. If its something harder I´m not sure if it would work.
If I understand your description correctly you could just attach a really thing piece of foam to the upper arm/sholder to connect the too also. Maybe have it bowing outwards already.
As far as attaching it goes you can glue or sew by hand, prolly both for good measure.
Someone captured this backstage at the game, using a digital camera. I think you need a fairly new version of Windows Media Player, or Quicktime to view it. I´d recommend you watch it full screen.
That´s my voice saying "take a swing". I think it´s well worth the download.
Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 12:34 am Post subject: Big monsters
I have to say that is very very impressive. Is that just one person in the suit?
I´m starting the process of creating my first Giant Red Ant costume, the mask will be the hardest part, considering i want to try some latex foam sculpting and latex. Head will be pretty big and I duno how to make the place to look out of. the Body suit MAy or may not have foam to make the ant bigger.
-Vic _________________ Letting players live shows the GM has s sense of humor..
Joined: Jul 12, 2002 Posts: 1060 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 7:10 pm Post subject: Big monsters
One person, and about 4 mattresses worth of foam. Mattresses that people were just throwing away. And a whole lot of hot melt glue. It looks taller than it was because the camera is low.
For skin surface for your giant ant, I would recommend doing what we did. Glue soft foam onto your material, carve whatever texture you want into the foam, then spraypaint directly onto the foam. A black undercoat, then red or whatever, then lowlights and highlights in black and a brighter red. Don´t mess around with latex. It´s expensive, horrible to work with, and nasty to wear.
My new theory is that latex is great for movies SX, but painted foam is better for LARP SX. We also used carved & painted camping mat for monster masks at this game, and they were much admired.
Joined: Jul 12, 2002 Posts: 1060 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 10:23 pm Post subject: Big monsters
Camping mats are thin foam mattresses used by campers and backpackers when they need to carry something very light and compact to sleep on.
They are about 1 cm thick, 70cm wide, and 150cm long. They´re made of a fairly low-density closed cell foam, which is rather rubbery. They are typically blue. Camping shops will sell them, but you´ll probably get a better price at a bargain mart.
They are horrible to sleep on, but better than hard ground. We cut shapes out of them for masks, then shaped them by slicing away arcs from the shapes and gluing the edges back together. Then we sprayed them black, then painted them. You could use rubberised car underbody spray for a really durable undercoat. Some of our players made mock metal armour this way, and it looked pretty good. A lot like the Xena and Hercules armour, where they got the idea from.
Joined: Jul 12, 2002 Posts: 1060 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 8:56 pm Post subject: Big monsters
Haven´t got those photos developed yet, but should be soon.
I don´t think you´d need camping mat for your giant ant head. Better to use the same material you use for the rest of the costume (soft foam), that way it´s uniform in appearance.
The pattern we used for the golem´s head would work. Essentially you get a rectangular piece of soft foam sheet, and wrap it around your head so there is a join at the back and along the top, but plain sheet across the face. Cut the corners at the front and back off roundly. Fold the edges in so that they are flush, and glue them to each other. Probably need to glue a strip of material over the join to hold the pressure. You end up with kind of a bell shape that fits over the head. Once the head is built, cut eye and mouth/nose holes, carve the head to suit (probably glueing more pieces of foam on to enlarge it, and finally spraypaint. The pressure of the foam holds the head onto the wearer perfectly, although you may want to cut a hole on the inside to relieve pressure on the nose.
I reckon a giant red ant is a pretty nifty idea for a body suit costume. You could give it an extra pair of arms at the midriff, and attach them to the weapons so it looks like it´s using up to four hands. That would work especially well for holding a spear. You could make really large eye holes and cover them with faceted coloured cell, glued to a wire mesh or something. Make the chest bigger with foam but keep the waist as small as possible, then flare out again slightly at the hips to achieve that wasp waist look. Use photos of fire ants as a visual guide. Don´t forget the antenae!
Joined: Jul 12, 2002 Posts: 1060 Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 9:02 pm Post subject: Big monsters
Never really looked inside excercise mats.
Do they have some sort of brightly coloured aggregate inside them? Like, made out of lots of little bits of foam? That rings a bell. It could be a problem, if they were inclined to fall to pieces when not inside those blue covers.
I´m sure there are lots of sources of that kind of foam though. I think those floating foam pool covers might be another example.
Have a look at these helmets to see how the foam method can be used for mock armour. The´re on the silly side, but there´s not reason it couldn´t be carved to more sensible armour shapes.
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