Jay's Technical Talk » mysterio

DragonCon 2010 Mysterio Pictures

Jay — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:07:21 +0000

In the Parade, I was wearing the plastic “safety” globe. Visibility out of it was about 2%. I basically followed a succession of brightly colored costumes (Storm’s white hair, wonder woman’s bright red cape, Zoo Hercules’ gold reflective bandoleer, etc).

Parade closeup by Amber Croxall

The photos below show the glass sphere which I wore in more static settings indoors and for photo-shoots.
Thanks to Chris, Becky and the photographers named in the captions for sending me photos from Saturday!

Photo outside by Tim Trepagnier

Mysterio (far right) standing with the Vulture and many other Marvel comics characters, photo by Dustin Fisher

Most photographers would take a snap or two and move on. Professional photographers would take a few pictures, and then start trying to take pictures without their flash appearing in the reflection (bouncing off of the ceiling, holding flash behind screens, separating from their camera by long wires, etc). Then give up on that, and just shoot photos of other people’s costumes as seen reflected in the globe. Women would also use the reflection to check their hair and makeup. [One in-character zombie was scared away by their own reflection.]

Mysterio Strobe Effects

Jay — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:13:39 +0000

I soldered together my Ramsy Electronics LEDS1 LED strobe light kit today. The plan is to make the “eye” motif brooches (on the cloak’s shoulders) flash blue light.

The LEDS1 kit comes with a 9 LED board, but I also bought a 20 LED add-on board. By cutting this 20 LED add-on board in half, I got two equally sized boards for the “eyes”. The final product is a bit underpowered (it does not over-drive the LEDs, and allows you to turn the “flashing” duty cycle up to 100%), but hopefully behind some frosted/etched plastic it will give a good effect.

Here is the pattern I’m going to etch/cut out of clear plastic:

Mysterio Business Cards

Jay — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 13:51:30 +0000

I’m in the process of making a business card to hand out at Dragon Con for Mysterio. I found the images at DragonHero.com but am having trouble contacting the site owner. (If anybody has an updated email address for dragonhero1@cox.net please let me know, it’s bouncing undeliverable.)

Mysterio Costume Update

Jay — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:51:00 +0000

I have been working on the cloth portions of my costume, as well as purchasing an alternate (plastic) globe from a reader comment. Above are two photos of the jumpsuit, boot covers, bracers, gloves, cape, and sphere (glass and plastic) being worn together. The first picture is the plastic globe (harder to see out of, safer, more gray than silver) and the second picture is the glass sphere (very reflective, easier to see out of, made of glass).

Mysterio Fog Generator

Jay — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:36:19 +0000

The grand plan for my Mysterio costume is to have a backpack worn fog generator using dry ice. (I’m not sure I’ll have time to get the fog generator or the strobe lights working, as I don’t even have the jumpsuit or boot covers finished yet, but I had the PVC parts so I started work on it.)

The Plan: Have warm water in the pipe–possibly with a loop of plastic tubing wrapped around my torso fed by a pump, which would have the dual effects of keeping my special effects water near body temperature, and cooling me off, which is important in Atlanta in the summer. I’ll have a basket of dry ice inside the tube that can be lowered using string, and a fan blowing air down the top of the pipe. The Dry-Ice Fog will billow out the sides of the T pipes and look really cool emerging from under my cloak. (How I wear the fog generator is not yet part of the plan, but I’m imagining something like a backpack, or suspending it from my cowboy collar.) It will be mostly hidden under my cloak, but since I had the emerald green spray paint left over from my color matching paint buying discovery, I decided it should be color coordinated.

Cost saving measures: I bought $5 worth of PVC parts (a 4″ piece of low pressure tube, a “knock-out” cap to seal the bottom, and a 3″ to 1 1/2″ 4-way adapter. By using the $1 knock out instead of a full 4″ PVC cap I saved several dollars and made the bottom of my fog generator “flat” instead of rounded. As it will not be under any pressure other than the weight of the water and dry ice, it should hold fine. [And if it doesn't, I always have my "Uh oh, I think my water just broke" joke all lined up.]
I also saved money (and bulk) by using a 3″ 4-way adapter, instead of a 4″ one. A 3″ PVC pipe will fit perfectly inside of a 4″ PVC pipe if you rasp off the small protrusions. (The fact that I was informed of this by a “plumber” also shopping in the Home Depot plumbing aisle slightly scares me….but since I’m not actually running pressurized water through it, and it saved me another five dollars, I decided to follow his advice.)

Paint color matching for a costume / Painting the Bracers

Jay — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:53:00 +0000

I drove to Home Depot hoping to find some spray paint to somewhat match the color of my gloves. As it turns out, even with an entire wall of spray paint, the only color selections with a “green” hue are limited to neon green, emerald green (which I bought, as it was closest to what I want, and may be useful in the future) and a leaf green. None of them were quite right, but I also made a discovery about the house paint counter.

Home Depot will sell you “sample” pre-mixed paints in 7.5 oz bottles to “test” a color for $3! If you have a fabric sample, you can scan it with the computer and get a small bottle of paint mixed for you! (Of course, when scanning cloth with a metallic look it may not be perfect….And they only had flat and eggshell finishes, no glossy.) But a custom matched jar of paint for $3 is hard to beat! The picture above shows my bracers after one coat of paint. I’m using a brush because I don’t have an airbrush or a “fill-it-yourself” spray paint can. I’m trying to keep the brush strokes aligned with the laser cut pattern. The pattern is still visible, but the paint hides it somewhat. I may have to fill in the pattern with some darker paint at a later point.

How to sew (costume) gloves (My Mysterio Glove)

Jay — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:54:05 +0000

The pictures above show my right-hand Mysterio costume glove, on it’s own and with the bracer.

A note: I do not recommend that you sew your own costume gloves. It’s a lot of work, and takes a lot of time, which you can probably better spend on other aspects of your costume. However, if you have decided that your gloves NEED to be made out of specific fabric to match other aspects of your costume (such as Mystero’s boots), here is how to do it.

I found the following websites to be valuable references:

Step 1: Referring to the above websites for the general pattern shape, trace out your hand on a folded piece of paper, and then cut a test piece out of muslin or some other cheap cloth you have laying around the house. Hand sew this cheap cloth up into a glove, making note of where you got it too small (likely) or (possibly) too large. Note the three pieces of cigar shaped cloth that will be sewn along the insides of your fingers to make your index and middle fingers have 4 sides, and your pinky and pointing finger have three sides. If you don’t understand how these pieces work, re-read the above websites!

Step 2: Make your thumb piece of cloth, sew it up one side. Cut the thumb hole where appropriate and attach the thumb to the glove. The picture below shows the thumb cloth inserted using my “real” fabric, as this fabric has a “right side” and a “wrong side” (muslin does not). Don’t forget to turn your thumb “right-side out” before you stick it into the thumb hole! The “right sides” must face each other! It may look backwards, but since you are putting the thumb “inside” the glove, once you turn things inside out everything will be correctly set up. Remember that the seam on the thumb should face the palm of the glove. If you made it big enough, the base of your thumb piece will have extra cloth which allows you to adjust the angle and fit different sized thumb holes. Arrange the thumb piece appropriately, pin it in place, and then cut the extra cloth off before sewing around the hole. Unless you have a specialized sewing machine, you will probably have to hand-sew your thumb to the rest of the glove.

Step 3: If you are happy with how things worked out, rip out all the seams on your test glove, saving the fabric. Transfer the pattern to paper by tracing around the pieces of cloth giving yourself 1/4 to 1/2 inch seam allowances. This is your chance to fix anything that was the wrong size on your test glove. Use these paper patterns to cut gloves out of your “real” fabric. Use fabric scissors or a rotary cutter and cutting mat if you can steal one from your wife.

Step 4: Sew the real fabric using the experience you gained from hand sewing the test gloves using a sewing machine or serger. Note that the glove will be inside-out when you finish. When you turn the glove “right-side” out, it will magically transform from a left-hand glove to a right-hand glove. Here is a picture of my completed inside out and right-side out glove for my Mysterio costume. The fabric I am using is not really the best for making gloves, but I was limited by the available colors and material selection at my local fabric store. The type of fabric, slightly large pattern, and seams inside the glove combine to give my hands a “substantial” super-villian look. You can get a close look at any of the photos in this post by clicking on them to zoom in.

Step 5: Make a second glove! (I haven’t done this step yet…did I mention that sewing gloves takes a lot of time?). When you make the left hand glove, make sure that you are making an “inside out” right hand glove. You can basically use the same pattern, but will have to cut your fabric on the other side.

Mysterio sphere, cape & bracers

Jay — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:05:34 +0000

Here is a picture of the sphere, cape, and bracers put together. Obviously, I need to work on the green jumpsuit, gloves, and boots.
After a bit more work on the sphere, I am now able to see out of it relatively well. I used a standard green & yellow dish scrubbing sponge to buff/scratch away some of the reflective coating from the inside directly in front of my face when wearing it. I don’t have a lot of peripheral vision, and the view is slightly dimmed, but it’s much better than before. If you look very closely from the outside you can see that the “viewport” portion of the glass sphere is slightly less reflective than other areas, but because it’s dark inside the sphere I get the same effect as a one-way mirror. I have covered all of the rest of the interior of the sphere with packing tape as a poor-mans tempered glass substitute, but I will still be very careful walking or navigating steps while wearing the costume.

Sculpy Mysterio Hooks

Jay — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 01:38:51 +0000

Today I sculpted some fillets onto my mysterio bracers using Sculpy (An oven baked modeling clay). This gives the “hooks” a more three dimensional appearance, a bit more strength, and smooths out the connections between the hooks and the bracer itself. I only used 35g of Sculpy per bracer, so the hooks are not extremely wide, but I’m glad I added them, even if it will end up taking me 5 extra hours of work.

In the picture, the bracer on the left has the Sculpy, and the one on the right is pre-Sculpy.
Below is a picture from the back of the bracer.

Mysterio Cape

Jay — Sun, 23 May 2010 02:14:10 +0000

Today I started on the actual costume part of my costume (as opposed to the props) and found 3 yards of remnant fabric ( $1 per yard!) that is approximately the correct color for my mysterio cape. Because the costume needs something that is closer to a cape than a full cloak, I made a “half-circle” cloak, which typically falls over the shoulders but doesn’t completely close in the front. [A full circle cloak is MUCH more massive and would hide most of your body.] The trick to cutting an even half circle is to fold your fabric in half, have somebody hold a piece of string at the corner, and trace out a quarter circle (with a washable fabric marker if you have one). When you cut out the quarter circle and open your fabric back up, both sides of your half-circle match. Then do the same folding trick when you cut out a neck hole. Remember, you can always cut more, but adding fabric is hard. If you get lucky and find a knit fabric that doesn’t fray, you may not even have to hem the edges.