christmas on infinite earths

Driving home to Houston one night–St. Patrick’s day night, in fact, early in spring break–I was listening to some Genius playlist on my iPod when 1921 from The Who’s Tommy came on, and I had a lightbulb moment. I had been thinking of doing a project based around a sort of costume/puppet, but also wanted to tell some kind of story and perhaps do a video. It struck me that I could make a rock opera involving robot costumes and cyborg elements, basically fulfilling all of my goals and then some. Of course it was going to be a lot of work, but I had faith I could get it done since this was the earliest I had ever come up with a project idea before. I set to work on conceiving the story and the tone to match the visuals I had in mind.

After the conceptual work was underway, I was itching to start working on a costume for the project. I had at this point decided to make a steampunk style mechanical man to play the Leaf Spring Thing I had constructed last semester, and I worked from some sketches I had on a mask/helmet for him. I knew I wanted him to be very mechanical and steam-punk and assymetrical, I wanted aspects of the costume to look decided non-human. Thus I gave him two eyes on the same side of his face and decided on a hunch-backed sort of backpack full of moving gears that would look like they were powering/controlling him.

I worked with cardboard in order to keep the cost low, and because it would allow me to give him a boxy, tank-like sort of look. I began with a narrow, step pyramid type shape for the face, and worked backwards from there, sealing the edges with hot glue, staples, and masking tape. The main eye hole is a toilet paper tube.

Gearman Mask, early stage

Gearman mask, early stage with fabric shawl

Gearman mask, cranium complete

Finishing the mask involved covering the entire thing in coats of flat black, followed by gold, followed by a coat of antique brass. The layer of brass was applied unevenly, and later distressed with random spots of flat black to look like soot. The rivets are made from brass “brads”, or fasteners. I still needed something to cover the lower part of my face and neck, so I used some fabric and made a pleated collar. This look was inspired by the expandable shroud on old cameras. I ironed in the pleated then ran stitches up the front and back and hot glued it around the bottom edge of the helmet.

The final touch (I thought) was to run the pipe (also spray painted) from a box at the front of the mask, around the back, and back to the front again. I intended this piece to look like a speech device of some sort, but it also looks like a breathing tube. I cut plastic lenses from a clear yogurt top but found these to be too blurry, so I replaced the larger lens with a circle cut from a CD case. I soon found out that the open eye holes had also been my breathing holes! After some deliberation, I cut a trapezoid from the bottom of the face and shaped some metal strips to resemble a vent, which I then darkened with flat black spray paint.

The mask is very tight and a little uncomfortable to get on, but I can breathe and see out of it, though the line of sight is very reduced. Naturally I can only see out of the right eye and only straight ahead, but this forces me to move my entire head to look at things, which sort of increases the robotic nature of the performance (I hope). Since my ears are under the fabric part rather than the cardboard, I can still hear fine. It is a little hot to wear, but the vent helps keep me from steaming up the helmet with my breath.

After getting the helmet at a good stopping point, I tried working on another costume for a separate act of the opera, the cyborg costume. After that ended with frustration, I decided to just focus on the costume I already had started (actually I spent a good while here trying to write music, butting my head against THAT brick wall). When I went back to work on the automaton, I started by fabricated some big gears out of styrofoam. This where my homemade hot wire foam cutter came in. I looked at the spare clock movement I’ve got laying around for inspiration for gear types. By bolting the cutter to a board and spinning the foam on a nail I was able to carve big circles out of the foam. The teeth and details are mostly done freehand, and thus are pretty sloppy. I then attempted to spray paint the things gold, only to discover that styrofoam MELTS when spray painted. This was a setback, but I quickly whipped up some elmers school glue with some water and acrylic paint (so I could see it on the white styro) and gave them each a coating. The spray paint didn’t destroy them, at least where I had painted the glue on thick enough.

I next made an angular cardboard shell for the backpack. I cut a bunch of slots in it for the gears to protrude from, and mounted them on the inside with piece of dowel. Before mounting the gears, I spray painted this flat black and then unevenly with antique brass. They can all spin but I haven’t figured out a way to power them yet. I miscalculated the size of the gears and found that they all hit my back, so I built an extension inside the pack that makes it stand out from my body more. Not knowing how to attach it, I just sacrificed an old costume vest I had and built it directly into the back. The back uses more brads and some gold painted “patches.” I added a smokestack made out of a paper towel roll with spiral slits cut in the top and compressed to make a round, bulb shaped vent. Finally, the paint is “aged” with a rust colored wash under all of the openings and around the raised features.

This is the piece being worn by a couple pillows.

I envision this thing having motorized gears and some lights, probably a red glow from within with light coming out the smoke stack and some glowing gems on the control panel. Adding a vented firebox that lights up on the side with the smokestack is another good idea I think.

The costume as a whole involves some other key pieces, but these are things I already had made from other costumes, so I won’t detail the construction process. Basically it consists of brown vinyl lace up boots, brown slacks, a black sleeveless t shirt, the vinyl sleeves from the jacket used for the vest, buckled leather armbands, gloves (not pictures), and a leather and metal shoulder pauldron worn on the left side (not pictured).

I brought all the components to presentation day, having never actually tried all of them on at once. I was unsure as to how the thing actually looked all together, but seeing the pictures other people took, I am actually pretty happy with it! Here they are:

From Dan’s website:

And my favorite from the whole bunch:

From Joey’s camera:

And here’s the movie Joey took of my presentation. The first few seconds where I’m wearing the whole thing are the best I think.

Looking at the pictures makes me realize that this costume can be effective. With the right posture and appropriate lighting, it captures the sort of creepiness I was after. Stumbling around on a brightly lit table ruins the illusion a bit, however. Overall I think this costume was a successful one, even though I didn’t have much confidence in it until I put the whole thing together in class. I can’t wait to actually use this piece in a larger project where it has meaning.