Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Both Horns Ready To Go

Last night I finished shaping the other horn.  So now the part that I thought was going to be the hardest, is complete.


Next I need to get some foam and shape the points of the horns.  This shouldn't be too bad.  


I've also been thinking about how I'm going to attach the horns to the helmet (which I don't have yet).  I need to make them very secure because the horns aren't exactly light and I want to make them removable so that the costume is easily transported.  It will be a bit of an engineering challenge, but I'm looking forward to it.


I leave for vacation in two days, so I won't get any work done for about a week and a half.  Stay tuned.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

The Horns: Second Try

I tried again, but this time with 1" pipe. I packed the sand as tight as I could get it. It worked very well. No crimping in the pipe. So I now have the base for one horn all set to go. Next I'll do the second horn, and then I can start figuring how to attach it to a helmet.


I purposely left myself some extra room on both ends. Since I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to attach the horns to the helmet, I left plenty of extra so I can figure it out. I also left room at the other end because I need to taper the horns to a point and I'm not yet sure which way I will do that either. One step at a time.

The Horns: First Try

I got 1.25" PVC pipe from Home Depot, cut it to length and packed it full of sand. The idea is that if the pipe is not empty inside, it should hold its shape as it is being bent. I used end caps to keep the sand from coming out.

The first thing I did was draw out the template for a horn. Since both horns will be identical, I only had to draw one.

Then I cut out the template.


Then I placed the template on an old board I had laying around. I mounted screws into the board to act as a guide to hold the PVC as it was being shaped.


I originally tried to heat up the whole pipe and bend it all at once, but I guess my heat gun wasn't hot enough to allow the pipe to stay soft all at once. So I ended up having to concentrate the heat on one area, bend that area and then move on to the next spot.


The result was okay, but not as smooth as I wanted it. I think I needed to pack the sand a little tighter. Hopefully that will stop the pipe from crimping up so much.


It was a good start, but I need to try again and see if I can refine my technique. Tasha thought the 1.25" pipe was too thick, so I'm going to get some 1" pipe and give that a try.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

First Step: The Horns

Loki just isn't as impressive without his horns. In my opinion they will make or break this costume, so I'm starting with them. They will be the hardest part (to get just right) so I might as well dig in.

I originally thought about creating a mold for the horns, that way I could get two identical horns. But I started pricing the materials to do so and all said and done it would probably cost $200-$300 just for the horns. That's a bit much. I know this costume is going to be expensive, but that's more than I want to spend on just the horns.

So I'm investigating some alternatives. I've been watching some YouTube videos on bending PVC pipe. I think I'll play around with that. PVC is very cheap, so if I screw up a few times, it's no big deal.

I'll take lots of pictures of my attempts and be sure to keep everyone up to date on my progress.

The Design

Over the years Loki has had many different costumes. The Simonson version is a classic. But I felt there was too much spandex. They look great in the comics, but in person it's not so impressive.

So I decided to go with the version imagined by Esad Ribic from the 2004 miniseries "Loki".



This version has lots of metal, leather and fabric. All much more believable than spandex. It's going to be a very difficult build, since I want to get it to look perfect, but I'm up for the challenge. I have to learn leather working, but I'm always excited about learning new skills.

Previous Costumes

AIM Agent



Snow Trooper


Dr. Strange


Knight Templar
(Hand-made chain mail and helmet)

Captain Cold

Speedball


The Goal

Over the last few years I've been getting a lot more into costuming. Each year my group of comic friends has a Halloween party and we always dress up as something geek related. This year I finished up my Snowtrooper costume and joined the 501st. It took me a long time, but I'm very satisfied with the results.

So my wife and I decided to go to Dragon Con in 2011. We have a friend in Atlanta who has been eager for us to attend. Now naturally you can't go to Dragon Con without a kick-ass costume.

One of my favorite Marvel characters is Loki. His costume is just bad ass. So that's what I picked. My wife will be going as The Enchantress. That means we have 10 months to create two incredible costumes so we can really show off at the convention.

Time to get started.