We started the costume with the head, since that is really the most important part. If the head turns out like crap, then the entire costume will look like crap. So I spent an awful lot of time getting the head built right. An awful lot of time; it's now going on fourteen months since this project started. Indeed, it's taken so long that I've decided to leave it be at just a mask. I'm only going to do the head before moving on to my next project.

You can click on any of these images to see a larger version.

The next step was to put the hard skin onto the mesh. After trying and discarding a few methods, we hit upon Magic-Sculpt. This is a simple and cheap resin. You merely knead the two parts together by hand and press it in into the surface. It's fairly hard in an hour or two, so there's no need to rush the job but you're not sitting around waiting forever either. You can sand it after a day or two (we waited for seven, due to scheduling). I used a power sander to get the biggest bumps out and then sandpapered it by hand. You can see here a not-very-close-up of the stuff after it dries.

There's not a whole lot to say in this part. The main difference here is it was painted with Rust-Oleum spray paint. I used the Satin finish; not too shiny, not too dull. Then a few layers of protective varnish were added, since the paint seemed to scratch easily.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do the eyes. Since my main idea was to make the costume as real as I could, this was no small task. We thought spraypainting something on a doorscreen just wouldn't do it. Eventually we hit upon a wonderful solution. We took a baby toy made of lexan, like the one at the left that we found in the Toys R Us baby section. This stuff is relatively clear, and very thick and tough. It might get scratched, but not broken. I cut it in half, and then into a wedge shape. Thus I had a cornea. Here is where the old design and the new one diverge. There were two extra layers: the whites and the iris were seperate materials. You can see a layout of this arrangement to the left, and below a completed eye of the old design, with the new design below that for comparison. The whites consisted of the ubiquitous white needlepoint grid, this time in a circular pattern instead of a square. The iris was yellow mylar, with the paint pens used on it instead of the metal screen. I cut holes in the center of each about an inch across, for the pupils. That consisted of a stamped-metal mesh, sold at Lechter's (a kitchenware store) as a pan screen, with a black pupil painted directly onto it. You can see it to the left, complete with paint. Put on a happy face! This arrangement worked fine when the eyes were close to mine, but when the sockets were placed a few inches away it became just as hard to see out as it was to see in. The viewable area -- the pupils -- were too small and too far away for any kind of visibiliy. So I eliminated the white plastic fabric and the yellow mylar. Instead, I went straight to the mesh. With a very thin paint pen that I found in a crafts store, I drew the yellow iris directly onto the metal. So long as it's not rubbed too hard it'll stay, and I don't anticipate it getting to much rubbing behind the lexan. I added an orange border to make it seem a little less monochromatic, and drew on the pupils as well. With the current arrangement, I rely on the reflection off the metal to give the illusion of white eyes (and if they look silvery, it just looks a bit more exotic), and the iris was little trouble. The arrangement is slightly off center on purpose; that's simply where they looked best once they were seated in the mask. The old design, I'll be the first to admit, did look better, but unless it's very close to your own eye it just won't work; there's too many layers, plus a bit of glue to cloud things up. But one of the nice things about the eyes as I did them was that they are removable. If the lexan gets too scratched, I can unscrew them and cut some new crescents. And if I can figure out a way to get them looking more like the old version without being so opaque, then I can always start from scatch. Still when everything is tied together with the plastic tie things, even under the new version, they end up looking pretty good. Not quite as real as I'd hoped, but already there are some ideas of how to fix that. I'll let you know if they come to anything.

We placed the eyes -- the original eyes -- directly against the helmet for a time. But it just didn't look right, no matter how much we shifted the eyes around or built foam up around it. Eventually we realized that putting them directly against the helmet just looked wrong; I'd made the beak too long, which made the head itself look too small. The solution: put the eyes further out on the beak. I had to build a place for the eyes to actually go, first, though. We started out with celluclay. It's much lighter than the resin we'd been using. I used a big lump of it as filler on the bottom, to build up the mass. Shaped and covered with a thin layer of magic-sculpt and then fine-tuned, it ended up as a pretty solid chunk making up the cheeks. The white crescents are the slots where I didn't add resin, allowing the celluclay to show through and giving the eye modules a nice slot to slide into securely. The wires were support for the upper portion of this area. They eventually got their own combination celluclay-and-resin cover. The eye-ridges were tricky, because their position is essential to determining the mask's mood. He could have glared, been wide-eyed with surprise, happy, sad, or any of the other expressions. I also made sure not to have big, huge ridges as seen from the front that look flat from the side. There are two seperate bumps to sculpt the ridges as they go back towards the helmet; one, the eye-ridge itself, is hard to see; the other looks like a curved triangle on the top of the head. It was placed to help the big ridges blend a bit better, and they made great places to mount the horns. More was done at this point than just adding the top layer of celluclay-and-resin. A lot of the paint was removed here because I removed much of the extra plastic resin from the beak. I estimate I sanded off a pound, more or less. The white grid is the needlepoint fabric that was tied on in order to keep the sides of his head from being a big hollow under the fabric. I put it on after the top layer of stuff was on, which made it very difficult to shape and attach (Note: plan better that this). In addition, if you look closely, you'll see that the foam, which had been glued on ages ago and then taken off, had been re-glued on and re-shaped. There's not very much of it; its main use was to cover the transition from some of the more built-up areas, like the end of the beak, to the helmet. We used an electric carving knife, made to cut turkey, to shape the foam, and it worked beautifully.

I worried a lot over the horns, mostly because, due to more bad planning, I hadn't really made any type off ready attaching area. But it turned out to be pretty easy. I took some heavy rubber tubing, the type used for washing machines, and cut about two feet for each horn, or perhaps a bit less. I cut a long section out of it, in the shape of a triangle if it were laid flat. This left a nicely tapered look on the end. The bottom half was left a nice even cylinder, since the cut didn't go all the way down. To stiffen the structure a bit and keep it from creasing, a 3/8" diameter delrin rod was inserted along its length. This is great stuff if you can find it; an eight-foot length is only a couple dollars, it's flexible, and it's strong. The 3/8" isn't too flexible, though, so it had to be bent using a 1000° heat gun. At any rate, it was good material for this, since it'd stiffen it while allowing some small give. And with a hole drilled in on end lengthwise and threaded, we would be able to screw the horns right to the helmet. Before we could do so, however, a few other things needed doing. The tip was pointy, but was cut from a tube and so was curved inwards. To fix this, a length of foam was glued in there and cut to shape. A thin, thin wrapping of foam was places around the horns' length. This kept them slightly soft, so I'd not hurt anyone with them. It also provided outward pressure, which helped hold the fabric "sock" that was placed on top of that. The pattern is a variation of the dart, but I didn't take a picture of it. Sorry, you'll have to figure the exact shape out for yourself. To attach the horns to helmet, we simply drilled holes in the hemelt where I wanted the horns to go, corresponding to the tips of the delrin. Take your time here, since if you're off by a little a new hole nearby will have weak sides and a hole far away will need to be covered. Once they were drilled and attached (there's a fender washer on the underside where you can't see to help spread the force that'll be on the screw) there was one more problem: the bottom of the horns didn't match up too well with the top of the helmet. To some degree I'd not have minded, but these were pretty bad in places. So out comes the magic-sculpt again! I built it up somewhat at the base of the horns as cover, and it helps keep them stable too. The downside is that I had intended the horns to be as removabe as the eyes; now, if the screws ever came out, it'd be tricky indeed getting the horns into their little sockets.

Here's a kind of progress picture -- well, two progress pictures -- showing the head at this point. Everything that had been done was put together. The beak was sanded, repainted, and varnished to avoid scrathing; the eyes were installed, and even the horns had gotten a touch of paint at the base to blend the fabric to the mask better. I just had to think of what was next...

What was next was counterbalancing the beak. All that plastic was heavy. What I did was take some more laundry machine tubing (although of a slightly narrower diameter) and strap it to the top of the helmet with those plastic ties. I stopped the bottom with those caps that go on the end of chair legs, with another tie around the area as extra security. With the end plugged, i stuffed as much lead wire (1/4" diameter, I believe) into each tube. Remember to wear gloves if you do this, or wash your hands immediately afterwards. This is lead, after all. I then capped the top the same was as the bottom. This arrangement does add some to the top of the head, but that area will be under skin and hair anyway, and can be hidden with little effort. Indeed, the entire arrangement will be under skin and hair. It will help add some shape to the head, keeping the back of the skull from dropping off vertically where the hard helmet ends. The metal bar was strapped to the tubes to make all the tubes move together if they shifted. They're also harder to move this way. And it'll be a nice platform to add weight to, if we find we need it. But I plan on avoiding that; with the lead added on, the head weighs somewhere around ten pounds!

About now it was time to start working on the skin, which was tricky to do but easy to explain. I simply took some newspaper and taped it to the mask and cut where I thought it'd need cutting. After a few trial runs, I got a workable pattern. You can see the pattern lying on top of the cloth I cut it from to the left. The cloth isn't quite the right color, but it can be airbrushed to match better later. With the pattern cut, it was simply a matter of gluing it on. I simply used spray glue. Scotch 77, if I recall. That done, I had to get the ears on. I took a piece of the plastic mesh and cut it into a trapezoid. Using it as a bisic guide for size, I cut the same pattern out of the skin material, only about a half inch larger on each side and doubled. I folded the cloth and sewed it on three sides, making a kind of sock that I stuck the mesh into before sewing closed. I then poked a few holes in the side of the mask (sorry, Brook!) where the ears were to go with an awl. Folded losely on itself and secured at the base with another cable-tie, it made a nice, three-dimensional ear.

At this point the main step that was left was the hair. Unfortunately, Brooklyn has classic Big Hair that I couldn't find the material to duplicate. We looked in wig stores, but they were fantastically expensive, and due to timing there weren't any Halloween wigs available. So I decided the best thing for it was to make my own. It was a bit tricky, but I managed it. I used simple white fake fur for my base material; the burlap-like backing would be strong enough to take the abuse I was to give it, and the fur would give a nice layered look. The hair itself was 8" horsehair, bought at Hitching Post Supply for about $10/pound. I bought two and used half of it, give or take. A pound goes a long way. Rather than show you lots of pictures for how I actually made the wig out of this, and spend a lot of time typing, we just made an avi that you can download here. It's about a minute long and about 5.16 Megs.