Oh Dear
I seem to have completely forgotten about this haven’t I. Since I last updated I have another costume to add to the mix and am currently working on another.
Dress Rehearsal
With just two weeks to Doktor’s debut I decided to do a full dress rehearsal. The sound isn’t very good and the camera seems to have really picked out my own unprocessed voice despite the processed voice being a hell of a lot louder. Anyway, here’s the test video!
I still need to find something to stop the hood sliding down and also the sling that carries the little laptop on my back slips off my shoulders so I need to do something about that too.
Performance notes are that I can’t see very much in there. I have a spandex hood over my face which has no eye holes. This means that the lenses are completely black which is very cool but means that I can’t see any details. Add to that some misting of the lenses and I can only really see enough to get around but I can’t operate anything. Other than that, the costume isn’t very hot, it’s light. The laptop weighs very little and doesn’t get in the way.
Electronics Complete
Doktor is getting closer and closer to completion. The LEDs on the side of the mask are now done!
Doktor the Alien Plague Doctor – Almost Complete!
With the mask, gloves, robe and tunic complete, Doktor’s look is almost there. There are some tweaks I’d like to make now that I’ve seen the costume on me but I’m really happy about how it’s looking now. This weekend I’ll be picking up the electronics and then I’ll do some video of Doktor in action. For now… photos!
Doktor the Alien Plague Doctor
Doktor
Doktor
Doktor
Doktor’s Claws
One of Doktor’s gloves is now complete. The other I’ll do tomorrow once the thumb claw has cured. The claws are simply slush latex cast pieces, painted black then dry brushed silver. They’re not glued on yet but they fit very snuggly and tightly over the finger tips and probably won’t even need to be. Despite this I will glue them with contact adhesive just to be sure.
Here are a couple of photos of the finished glove!
Doktor's Claws - Back
Doktor's Claws - Palm
Doktor’s Mask Completed
Today I finished off my sci-fi plague doctor mask. There were a few tasks left to do. One was to remove the left lens and reglue it as it hadn’t bonded properly to the rubber. I used a file to score the lens surface and the rubber to allow the adhesive to key better to the materials. The lenses are glued to the rubber with contact adhesive and then I’ve added in pieces of duct tape which I’ve found sticks to rubber very well. This is just to give it a little more strength.
I found some foam that had been used to pack a laptop and carved that into shape, padding out the beak of the mask.
I’d already cut open the vents on the beak and pushed the LED arrays into them. I cut more foam to hold them in place and stop the two sides of the arrays from touching each other. Finally I cut in a hole to mount the microphone.
The straps had been held together with safety pins so I quickly sewed them up and that completed the mask. The next thing will be finding a suitable hose to link the mask to the laptop on my back. It will carry the wires you can see in the photos.
I’ve also started work on Doktor’s hands. I’ve been struggling to find some leather gloves and remembered I had some old biking gloves. I painted up any non-black parts black and the result looks like this:
The glove needs a good going over with some dubbin to get it nice and black again then I’ll dry brush to make the armour match the mask and the claws that will be glued onto the finger tips. The claw model I sculpted, cast into a plaster mould and is currently full of latex.
I’m only going to be able to produce a claw a day so it’ll be a while until they’re done.
In the meanwhile I need to look at the robe patterns I have and see what needs making. I have a large amount of black cotton ready to turn into his grim-reaperesque clothing.
Doktor Electronics
This weekend I went up to Manchester and my friend Ritchie helped me out with the electronics for Doktor. What needed creating was a board to drive four banks for LEDs. The LEDs will fit into the slots in the beak of the mask. When I speak the LEDs will light up from the back to the front of the beak, sweeping back and forth with each word.
Creating the circuit took most of Saturday including a trip to Maplins to get various components. We wasted a few hours simply because the audio cable was faulty! Sunday included another trip to Maplin for even more components that we realised were missing. Only the LED boards got made up in time, the rest of it is still living on the test board. I’ll have to go back to Manchester to finish it all up but before then I should have the rest of the costume finished.
Here is a video of what we produced taken on Ritchie’s mobile so it’s kinda sketchy:
I really really need to find some leather gloves though! I’m thinking maybe some cheap motorcycling gloves might do. I’ll have to have a hunt around. I had a look in Affleck’s Palace but that place seems to be half empty these days. It was kinda sad.
Sound Test Successful
I installed Cubase on an old Dell laptop and managed to get the vocoder sounding fine despite a pretty nasty 0.3s latency. That is, when I talk there’s a 0.3s delay before sound comes out of the speaker. It shouldn’t matter as I’m not expecting to be making conversation in it and so long as it sounds ok, that’s all that matters.
The laptop has about a 4hr life on batteries so that’s plenty for any performance. It’s also not very heavy and produced very little heat so it should be find to sling on my back.
Doktor
The current status of Doktor is that the mask is almost complete. It’s cast in rubber and painted and has darkened lenses fitted. I need to sew up the strap which is currently held together with a giant safety pin!
I’ve bought 6m of black cotton to make robes from to give Doktor that grim reaper look. I’ve been hunting for a pair of lightweight black leather gloves but having trouble because summer isn’t the best time to find gloves. Once I get hold of them I’ll glue on the rubber claw pieces.
Today I’m going to try setting up an old laptop with Cubase to run the vocoder for the voice. I’m hoping that it’s going to run ok without clipping and such. I will need to make some sort of sling for the laptop to keep it against the small of my back and hidden out of view under the robe. I’ll need to do some tests on how long the battery will last so I know how long I can perform as Doktor before he loses his voice!
Other things I need to do is to get some foam. The beak is a little too squishy and I’d like to pad it out with foam and also put some foam to deflect my breath downwards. I did a test the other day for misting and there was a little but nothing that would stop me seeing properly.
On the subject of lenses, my eyes are still slightly visible through the darkened Plexiglass. I’m going to be making a lycra balaclava to hide any skin so I think I’ll have to put some nylons or gauze or something over my eyes to hide them.
I’m going to order the components for the electronics this week then at the weekend I’ll travel up to Manchester to put it all together with a friend who actually knows something about this stuff! The costume should come together pretty quickly.
There are some additional bits that I may or may not make. It’s been suggested that I make latex coverings for boots so that the toes look more alien. I quite like this idea but I’ll try this out after the costume is complete as it’s lower priority. I will need some kind of pole which the plague doctor will use to poke at his patients. Not sure what I’m doing with this yet. Finally I need webbing to hold medical bits and pieces.
A Place for My Costuming Stuff to Live
I’ve been wanting to have a website to stick my costuming stuff on it. I didn’t want to have to mess with designs and HTML and all that stuff because that’s what I do for work and I find it tedious. I intend to use this bit, the blog, to record costume designing and building and the performing bit as well.
In the pages section you will be able to find out more interesting stuff like how the costumes came into being and some nice selected photos of them as well as reference material. Let’s hope I can keep this thing up to date!
