costume – MakerBlock

Halloween costume too [10/27/2010]

[Just a bit of Halloween silliness. In recent years my go-to Halloween costume has been “mad scientist” since I can wear a comfortable white lab coat and LED goggles over my regular clothes.]

In all likelihood, I’ll probably wear the same costume I’ve worn for the last several years. It consists of two small horns I sculpted out of modeling clay and painted to look like bone. I use spirit gum to affix them to my forehead and try to slightly obscure them with my hair. I then print off a page long contract that starts off at 20pt font and gradually shrinks to 4pt font, entitled, “Contract for the Sale of Intangible Goods.” The contract has a large blank space in the middle where the person can specify anything they want and a spot at the bottom for them to sign. I dress in a suit and carry a small black satchel with a red pen¹ , a stack of those contracts, some candy, some play money, some stickers and other minor knickknacks. When someone asks me who I am, I insist that I’m a broker for a party that wishes to remain anonymous but who is nonetheless still interested in purchasing any spare intangible goods they may have. When they ask about the horns I simply say that they’re a birth defect I’m very self-conscious about and politely change topic. When they ask about the nature of the intangible goods, I assure them that it’s nothing required for their day-to-day existence and that most people get along quite happily without such baggage.

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

Blood? No, of course not. That’s just silly. Red just shows up better on my photocopier. It’s more of a symbolic thing anyhow. [↩]

Making Cosplay Armor from Foam Mats

This post has been a long time coming. My kiddo and I made Fallout inspired combat armor out of Harbor Freight floor mats. We’ve now brought these to Maker Faire 2024 and 2025. They’re only $13 for about 16 square feet of 1/2 inch thick sheets of material which was enough for a front and back panel plus enough to do it all again.

I’ll update the photos below with pictures of the finished¹ armor. However, below is what it looked like part way through the construction process. We added some 3D printed parts to allow the front and back “plates” to be kept together with some seat belt looking nylon webbing.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The very short version of the build guide, for our first simple builds with these mats, would be:

Make patterns on paper or cardboard
Trace and/or cut out of foam using a utility / craft knife you don’t care about because the foam will dull the knife quickly
Bevel/shape/sand as needed
Using gloves, apply a thin layer of contact cement to one piece of foam and the other piece where it’s supposed to go. Let it dry. Then, carefully place one piece upon the other – because the moment the two pieces are joined the contact cement will bond instantly making adjustments² impossible.
Bevel/shape/sand/paint as needed
If making weathered armor / metallic features, consider using a silver pen or paint to dry brush on the silver color

I tend to take pictures as I build things out of an ambition to turn them into a blog post at some point. So, hopefully these pictures give a sense of how the build went:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

These were easy enough to create as the entire design was basically just bit flat planks of material. Making more complicated / curved features would probably best be done by using a heat gun to soften and shape or cutting the curved features into flat panels with “darts” / wedges cut out so that when they’re glued together and the form built up, it will take on a curved shape.

The tutorial videos from Robert van de Walle and Evil Ted Smith are absolutely worth watching. The short version would be that when copying another form, you could cover it with aluminum foil, that in duck tape, draw in lines for what could be fairly flat sections, including registration marks, cut the duck tape into flattened sections with “darts” as necessary, trace onto and cut out from foam, heat-shape as necessary, apply and allow contact cement to dry, assemble. Some stills from ETS’s videos might be helpful:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

These stills won’t do the full videos justice, so you should go watch those. Robert’s point with his short 3 minute video was basically that these materials are incredibly inexpensive, able to build up huge shapes quickly, and look great. I’d agree on all counts.

Nothing is ever finished. [↩]
Nearly [↩]

Halloween costume

My WordPress/gravatar avatar is basically a small picture of David Tennant as Doctor Who. I started using that picture because I’m a big fan of Doctor Who and have been for a long time. ¹ In actually, no one with any visual degree of acuity would ever confuse me with David Tennant. ² That’s why I thought Bre’s drawing of MakerBlock as a posterized black-and-red rendering of David Tennant was particularly hilarious. When my wife saw that she couldn’t stop laughing – that picture is just so much cooler than I really am.

That said, I think it would be really cool to dress up as MakerBlock for Halloween. The idea really only occurred to me today, otherwise I would give it an actual shot. I don’t think I have time between now and Sunday to source a red and black suit with matching black and red shirt and tie.

I liked Doctor Who before it was cool, man. Oh, wait, it’s still not cool? Crap. [↩]
Our only similarity is that he wears glasses sometimes and neither one of us can properly coordinate shoes with suits. I’m sure his manner of dress is more of a fashion statement. My inability is better described as a crippling form of fashion Tourette’s syndrome. [↩]