Sunday, March 23, 2008

Day 28 - Custom Mannequin

To help facilitate fitting the armor (both the paper mockup and the real one), I'm making a custom mannequin of myself out of paper tape. I used the kind that they use for shipping boxes, so you have to wet the adhesive before it will stick. After you apply 3 or 4 layers of it, it gets pretty stiff once it's dry. Since it's impossible for me to cover myself with tape, I enlisted the help of my wife who did a great job so far on the torso. We started this somewhat late, so we'll have to finish the arms and legs another day.


On a side note, who knew this project would be such a multi-disciplinary endeavor? Sewing, shoemaking, vacuum forming, mold-making, and now mannequins...whew! Thankfully, the mannequin will be reuseable for anything else I decide to tackle (maybe not literally, since it takes so damn long to make one. Badum CHING).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

making your own mannequin is a wonderful idea. But I can't help but wonder, how long did it take to cut yourself out of it?

Hero said...

About 30 seconds. It's not very thick. I just cut it up the back like a wetsuit zipper. I plan to support it internally by filling it with expanding spray insulation foam that you get at the hardware store.

Anonymous said...

You might want to look at cannabalizing some football shoulder pads for the shoulders.

N/A said...

Sadly, it seems you've stoped making this. :( I really want to see a finnished product. PLEASE finnish