It will be going to work with me tomorrow, and for at least a little while (probably during the costume thingy in the afternoon) I will attempt to walk around inside it. I've got some sound files on my ipod downloaded from various Babylon 5 sites, and if all goes well, I should be able to greet co-workers with cryptic electronic one-liners, as I will have a small speaker mounted somewhere inside the suit.
Why did I do this? Well, partly just because I am that big of a nerd. :P Partly also because I wanted to see if I COULD do it. And...partly because lately I've been wanting to do something engrossing that does not involve swimming through a sea of words. I'm kind of burned out on arguing these days and while I certainly plan to keep blogging and engaging with people in comments, etc., I have to say that it was really neat to do something creative and three-dimensional, and I definitely want to try more stuff like this.
7 comments:
making real things is incredibly satisfying, and I completely understand the need to escape from the excessively abstract.
Everybody should have a Vorlon in their living room. A dark corner, and a voice to tell you every so often"You don't understand."
Holy cow! It looks amazing! I love it! You are an artist for sure. I bet people at work will just be floored.
it's amazing.
outlawpoet said: making real things is incredibly satisfying, and I completely understand the need to escape from the excessively abstract.
Yeah. As much as I love the Internet, the darned thing is made of words, and sometimes my brain craves the tangibility of duct tape and cardboard as opposed to the ephemerality of language. :)
Catana said: Everybody should have a Vorlon in their living room. A dark corner, and a voice to tell you every so often "You don't understand."
....But you will! ;)
Marla:
Thanks. :) And while it was definitely a bit unwieldy, I did indeed have fun at work with the suit on. :) They had a costume contest thing -- I started making the suit long before I knew about the contest, though, so I didn't just do it for that, but nevertheless I ended up winning third place (and $10!) in one of the categories. And a bunch of people (fellow science fiction fans coming out of the woodwork, apparently) came up to me afterward and complimented the design. It was really funny initially because I had the costume in my cubicle all day until 2 PM when the Halloween thing was held, and initially when I put it on and started heading toward the cafeteria, nobody knew who I was! It was also neat because during the little Halloween skit thing they did, I just sort of got to sit there in a box (the inside of the costume was basically made out of cardboard) and peer out, without having to worry about clapping or smiling or anything at the appropriate times. It was oddly like being pleasantly invisible. And then when I popped out of the suit at the end some people were very surprised!
Ahora Que Hice:
Muchas gracias. :)
What did you make the shoulder-piece and helmet out of? When I did mine years ago (I made Ulkesh's encounter suit) I used a couple of layers of insulating foam that were shaved and sanded into shape, coated with a thin layer of plaster, and then painted and sealed. The down side of that was that it was uncomfortably heavy and difficult to balance on my shoulders.
The Doctor:
I made the shoulder piece out of two oddly-shaped pillows covered with layers of tape and paper towels dipped in glue-water (sort of a half-arsed papier-maiche). I made the head out of a combination of foam board (purchased from a hobby shop) and part of a 2 liter plastic soda bottle.
Overall I am really happy with how the head came out, but less so with the shoulders. If I'd been smart I would have made some sort of papier-maiche shell-type thing or at the very least used something lighter than pillows! Mine was also very heavy because of the shoulder piece; I actually got rid of the shoulder piece shown here (but kept the head and "shower curtain") and am planning at some point on trying a Version 2.0 of the shoulders using something significantly lighter!
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