Creatrope

The Alien Costume/Halloween 2009

The Alien is featured on Instructables.com for its Halloween Costume Contest.
If you’re inclined to vote for it, that would be great!

http://www.instructables.com/id/HR-Giger-Inspired-Alien-Costume/

Halloween 2009 was a true challenge. My son wanted to be the original ‘Alien’ from Alien. This is the original H.R. Giger Alien, not the various other shapes it morphed into in the sequels.

Research Phase

I started by seeing what kind of costumes existed on the web. I found an outrageous homemade version of the costume, but very few others (listed in the appendix), leading us to believe this was not a common one to attempt.

I decided that the main effect could be achieved through a good mask, a chest-plate and backpack, and a tail.

The Mask

For the mask, I started with this image and blew it up so the scale would allow my son to put his head inside. For a young teen, this was about a 4x increase in both scales. An adult would probably need a 5x increase in scale.

I printed this out life-size enlarged to act as a template to match the wire-frame to build against it.  Since this is acting just as a plan, there’s no worry about quality. We taped the sub-images together and started to model a wire-frame skull out of coat-hanger wire.  Coat hanger wire was just the right thickness to take a gentle bend, yet hold its shape solidly.  Cutting coat hanger wire takes a fairly serious wire-cutter or preferably a bolt-cutter.  A small pliers is fine for bending.

Using the top, side, and front views, I modeled a rough wire-frame skull.  You want to get this fairly close as the head is the iconic shape of this alien, the rest is more forgiving.

After the frame was complete, I lofted long strips of chicken wire over the top and sides.  The chicken wire is super-sharp when edges are exposed, be careful.  I settled on a tin snips as the best tool in my arsenal to cut chicken wire.  I drew a fair amount of blood before all was said and done.  This steps involving the chicken wire are best done by an adult.

Although you might be able to go right to paper-mache here, and skip the chicken wire,  I wanted to ensure I captured the roundness of the top and sides and didn’t end up with an ‘angular’ alien.  I secured the chicken wire to the wireframe with twist ties. Once paper-mache’d, it will not move.

Every few minutes, we’d bring the frame in progress over the plan to ensure it stayed reasonably close.  Although I would have liked it to be perfect,  I was aiming for capturing the flow of the shape rather than pixel accuracy.

At this point, I started to puzzle out how the jaw might work.  I still didn’t have a solution,but decided to proceed anyway. To give myself some ’slack’ I left some extra chicken wire hanging out near the jaw portion.

As the jaw design started to firm up, I constructed a jaw from additional coat hanger and hinged it near where the range of motion felt right according to the illustration. The mass of tubes and skin near the original template make this a judgment call. The ends of the jaw coat hanger are folded over the main frame, but not tightly so it can move up and down freely.

I had a feeling the mask might tend to open up side to side given its length so I created a horizontal bar from chicken wire to pull the the sides together just below the jaw. This ended up coming in handy in a later step.

The paper-mache solution I used was raw flour with enough water to make it the consistency of pancake batter, with some salt to prevent mold.  I did some research here and the assertion was that raw flour made superior paste compared to the boiled water and flour I used before but does not dry clear (which was fine).  It does indeed make a strong structure requiring fewer layers.  We used only two layers. It is critical to let the paper-mache dry thoroughly between layers to avoid mold.

I was not quite satisfied I captured the creepy organic roundness of the top of the head, so I layered on a thick layer of lightweight spackle, let it dry then carefully sanded it off until the shape was round. To avoid inhaling this nasty stuff, I used a NIOSH dust mask. It made a beautiful rounded surface, albeit a bit fragile.  Again, if you use this material, this is a step for adults. Treat it carefully until you can protect it a bit.

An alternative to the lightweight spackle is creating a paste out of paper-mache.  I made this, but it was not satisfactory, I couldn’t get it to spread nicely.

I constructed a hat of foam and mounted inside the head.

I came back to the jaw, building up the shape with more chicken wire and then paper-mache.  My son turned out to be quite the task manager.  He liked the progress, but wanted to animate the jaw.

Challenge #1: Animating the Jaw

I came up with a plan to animate the jaw. I created a ‘jaw muscle’ with a rubber band that pulled the jaw close, then threaded a smooth string through the horizontal bar and down to where my son’s hands could pull it open. When he releases the string the rubber band pulls the jaw shut.

Challenge #2: The Tongue (with Teeth!)

My son now asked for an animated tongue. This stumped me for several hours.   This kept me up most of a night running through methods in my head.  Each possibility seemed more complicated than the one before it.  The method Sasha Feiner used seemed inelegant (and it isn’t clear he ever really got it working the way he’d hoped).   After a time, it seemed the simplest reliable mechanism favored moving a rack on a over a slow-moving gear, with the rack extending out the tongue as a stick.  I started to think how I might make and drive these parts when I spied my son’s Lego Mindstorms kit. It contained just enough rack parts, a technic stick, power cable, and motor. When combined with a nine-volt Technic power supply/switch, this moved the stick back and forth in just the right creepy motion.

I don’t have a good shot of the motor alone in action – I was so excited how well it worked I mounted it straight in the costume.  But this should show you how it moved.

Here’s a shot of the motor and rack. The gear is hidden, but just above the rack.

With the motion out of the way, mounting it inside the mouth was the next challenge. I wanted just the right angle, yet not have it be in my son’s line of sight for safety’s sake in case someone pushed on it.  At the end of the stick I mounted the additional teeth and enclosed the stick in a black stretchy cloth (old leggings, cut apart) attached at both ends – one end to the teeth, the other end around the motor housing. When the tongue extends, it stretches the cloth to great effect.

To get the effect of the tubes along the side of the head, I took a salvaged flexible corrugated washer water tube, cut it lengthwise, and hot-glued it onto the surface. But cutting the ends at a shallow angle, you get the effect of the tube merging into the head.  I also used a few smaller plastic tubes near the jaw.  Finding something ‘corrugated’ for between the tubes proved to be a challenge.  Finally, I settled on (somewhat tediously) removing both outside layers of corrugated cardboard.

The teeth are cut from the plastic housing the CD 50-packs come from, although any plastic would do. If painted on the ‘inside’ the outside retains a gloss. The teeth are hot-glued onto the upper and lower jaw, and the tongue.

The head is now almost ready for painting. Check for loose or damaged paper-mache. The head is painted with black gloss paint.   I tried both satin (flat) and gloss, and the gloss was much more convincing. Use several coats.

Finishing touches for the head is adding ‘drool/saliva’ from the teeth with hot glue.  Careful not to glue the mouth shut.

Visibility from the head is a real challenge. Note, there’s no eye holes!  However, you can see down and through the mouth.  I tried making small holes near the front for more visibility and it did not look good.  One must sacrifice for art!

The Body

I decided the body was best modeled as a vest. I modeled the vest using this image. I did this one by eye rather than trying to match it via an overlay.

This body was going to be awkward to wear, but that’s the price of fashion.  I proceeded to built a paper dressform.  My son put on a sacrificial t-shirt, and I used paper packing tape to make the  ‘form’.  I actually used the self-adhesive type from U-Haul, but I think the gummed tape would be superior and would prevented the tape from lifting in the later step(s).  After it was done, I cut (carefully!) through the shirt on the sides, then attached velcro to cut open sides after extending the sides a bit with overlapping tape. I enlarged the head hole, creating a large, very stiff, form-fitting vest.  Although awkward, he could take it off and put it on himself, a good feature.

Finding the material for the exoskeleton on the front took some doing.   I finally settled on 1/2″ and 3/4″ flexible electrical conduit. Unfortunately I had to buy about 20′ feet just to get the 3′ or so I needed, but it’s cheap.  I would have liked to use thinner corrugated plastic tubes, but I was unable to find any at the time I was making the vest. The metal tube can be cut with a saw or nibble through with bolt cutter. Securing it to the vest was clearly beyond a glue’s capability, so I fell back on zip ties through the vest which allowed the vest to flex.

On the back I build the projections from rolled chicken wire, covered in the paper tape. Each projection had it base cut in four pieces, then flared out for zip-tie attachment to the vest. The shoulders were more conduit, with tape running up to them.

The paper tape was the perfect material for creating the semi-rigid form, but it kept failing whenever the vest flexed.  The answer lay in black duct tape (pretty much the answer for everything, I suppose).  In areas where the tape pulled up, I added duct tape.

The duct tape (not shown) looked perfect, and I briefly considered just using that as the entire alien skin.

The vest was complete.

The Tail

The tail is formed by two interlocked conical pieces of chicken wire, then securely wrapped from tip to base in the black duct tape in the spiral pattern. Before covering, I cut out pie shaped sections of the cone to bend it into a gentle curve. The base was flared out.

I was stuck again for some time trying to figure out how to attach it to my son’s body. I was sure that the flared edges wouldn’t come off, but they weren’t nearly strong enough to keep the tail upright. My solution was to sandwich the flared out base between a base of masonite with a plate of Masonite above each edge.  The masonite pieces were pop-riveted together.  I don’t think pop-riveting Masonite is going to win any engineering awards, but so far it seems ok for a costume. By mounting the tail on a plate, the plate rests against my son’s back causing the tail to stay at the appropriate angle.  I wrapped a wide belt around the plate which closed by a long length of velcro for ease of (re)attachment.

The finishing touch for the tail is adding ‘vertebrae’ to the tail with duct tape. To make each vertebrae, I creating a tube of black duct tape over paper over a broomstick, cut the tube into 1″ sections then attached them at intervals onto the tail. You can see the vertebrae in the first image on the page.

The rest suit is ready for painting.  I used a gloss paint. I’m experimenting with more interesting finishes, but this seems to work well. This is a ‘test fitting’ before the teeth and tongue were added.

You can see the string for the jaw here, and the wire for the tongue.

Claws

I made the claws by wrapping duct tape around each of my son’s fingers, but inside out. Then I attached a claw from plastic, then another piece of duct around the outside.  The tips of the claws were masked off and spray painted white.

Materials & Tools

• Something that can cut a wire coat-hanger (bolt cutter)
• Pliers
• Hot Glue Gun
• Kraft Paper Gummed Tape
• Black Duct Tape
• Your favorite paper mache mix (flour, water, a little glue, salt) and newspaper/brown paper
• Corrugated & tubes hoses in various sizes (about 10 feet) and/or flexible electrical conduit
• Zip ties
• Corrugated paper or box for texture.
• Lego motor and Technics battery pack for tongue
• Black flexible cloth (an old stocking perhaps)
• Some thin flexible plastic for the teeth
• Black jump suit from some other old costume
• Lightweight spackle
• Masonite
• Pop riveter
• Black gloss paint

Other Homemade Alien Costumes

I’d be happy to add yours here,  send me a comment.

• alexthemoviegeek
• Sasha Feiner

Conclusion

This was a fun and challenging costume to make.

If you liked this project, you might enjoy my other Halloween projects:

General Grievous animated costume

Rocking Gravestone using K’Nex

PVC Halloween Mannequin

AVR Robot Halloween Costume

A Modular Halloween with Grid Beam