Construction - Armor
As I looked over the numerous images of Yuuzhan Vong covered in Voduun Crab armor I thought to myself, "Damn, that looks twisted, uncomfortable, and complicated. Can't wait to get myself into some."
Actually, I'm not really a masochist and I knew that I'd be walking around for a few hours at Celebration III in this costume (perhaps even on multiple days). This armor had to be flexible, lightweight, and comfortable. I looked back at the pictures and heard the words of Han Solo: "Good Luck. You're gonna need it."
My first consideration was to look at the armor as a living thing that was clinging to my body. The only way to imitate this was through a body suit.
I knew I wanted the armor to be lightweight. It should be rigid to a point. I researched several materials to determine what would be the easiest to work with and afford me the greatest degree of control over the details. I settled on using plastic embroidery mesh.
To hold the curved shape of the armor I used 12 gauge flower arrangement wire. This gave me the base for the rigid armor. But I still needed a surface.
After some experimentation I decided that sheet of 1 inch thick fabric foam was the way to go. I could both glue and sew it to the embroidery mesh. By sewing it I created dimples in the material.
Long hours of sewing in every detail, ridge, and valley became the norm for months. The armor was attached to the body suit with large metal snaps.
The foam itself looked great, when I was done with each piece. But I wanted some of the armor to be hard on the outside as well as holding it's shape. I turned to "Sculpt or Coat" to make this happen. It worked beautifully.
Not everything could be hard on the costume. I wanted to have mobility and flexibility which required me to sew the foam directly to the body suit. I glued the foam to a felt patch and sewed the felt to the lycra of the body suit with a ball point needle.
In retrospect this was probably one of the best ideas I came up with. I'm seriously considering doing a few portions of the armor (namely the upper arms) over again using this method.
Yuuzhan Vong armor is covered with spikes. There was no way getting around this detail. Again, much thought and testing was done before I settled on the idea of carving the spikes out of styrofoam. Believe it or not I was hesitant to do this even though it seemed an obviously solution. I've always built things, adding on pieces or layers. Carving is the reverse. As Michelangelo said he didn't carve his statues he simply chipped away the pieces that didn't belong. To aid me in my carving I first made the spikes out of the oil clay from my mask sculpture. Boy did that help.
I blended the spikes protruding from the armor with the foam by using caulk. This is the same stuff you put around windows and tubs. It's water based for easy clean up, holds small shapes and contours, is paintable, and dries within a day. Brilliant!
Now to be honest I've skipped a step in telling you all that before this. I did that because this step is less about making the actual armor and more about general construction tools. So you can skip it if you're not interested
Duct Tape! It has a light side, a dark side, and it binds the universe together.
I knew this entire project would be crap if the armor didn't fit ME. And by ME I mean my body. So I created almost a full body Duct Tape Sewing Dummy. See Google for instructions on making your own Duct Tape buddy.
As you can see from the pictures the dummy allowed me to draw out the armor to fit my body size perfectly. (Actually I didn't draw the lines you see are multi-colored electrical tape. Easily repositionable on the duct tape surface.)
Besides scaring people into thinking there was a headless guy standing around, the dummy allowed me to attach buttons and sew the flexible armor in place on the lycra in it's stretched position.
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