Steampunk Tiki Part 3: Skull on a Stick Staff

As part of the evil fetish tiki, I envisioned the skull of an aviator from the airship crash stuck on a staff.  This was a very easy prop to make and utilized many cheaply bought parts.  First I bought a cheap plastic skull, realistic looking plastic eyeballs, cheap googles and a very cheap aviator's hat.  We also purchased some UV LEDs, a switch and a battery pack.

The googles were a basic silver color, so we spray painted them red to give them a bit of color.  To make it look like they had been in a crash, we hit one eye piece with a quick burst of black spray paint to simulate damage.
 

Cheap googles painted red

We drilled two holes through the skull that would fit a long wooden staff we had lying around.  The holes were drilled so the staff would go directly up through the center.

Cheap plastic skull with holes drilled for the staff

We then cut out holes in the eye sockets to allow the addition of lights later and glued some plastic eyeballs into the eye sockets.  These eyeballs are half globes, not full globes.  Since the aviator's cap needed a hole in it as well, I bought a really cheap costume one online.  It is very synthetic and would probably be terrible to wear, but for the skull it was perfect.

 

 

Skull with added eyeballs and cheap aviator's cap

To add a bit of a creepy factor to the skull, we cut a hatch in the back to allow the addition of electronics within the skull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hatch for electronics

 

We then added UV LED lights behind the eyeballs. The lights, switch and battery pack fit neatly in the skull and the UV LEDs shine right through the eyeballs.

With lit up eyes

Skull on a stick!

Steampunk Tiki Part 2: The Mask

After creating a simple dress and vest, the most important part was the giant Tiki mask.  Since I wanted it to be very big, but not too heavy, I settled on foam for the base.  I have never made a prop with foam before, so this was certainly a learning experience.

The easiest part was creating a paper pattern.  I simply drew out what I wanted.

Tiki Mask pattern

Once the pattern was done, I cut out a backing piece and each decorative piece out of EVA foam floor mats (the grey colored foam) and thinner teeth out of craft foam. To allow myself to see, I cut out the inside of the whites of the eyes from the base mat.   The pieces were then bonded together with Barge's cement. Note: this stuff stinks and must be done in a well ventilated place!

Mask pieces glued together

Once the glue had set, I contoured the overlay pieces with a Dremel tool.  This step made a complete mess of the shop, and required safety googles and filter mask.  To create the wood grain, I followed an awesome Youtube tutorial from Craft Alchemist.  I drew wood grain on the foam with a sharpie (Note to self, dont use red if any of the painting is white.....)

Mask with contouring and wood grain drawn

After drawing on the wood grain, you make a ton of tiny slices in the foam matching the wood grain lines.  It looked like nothing was happening with the slices, in fact they were basically invisible.  I then heated the foam with a hot air gun and the slashes opened up creating a grain texture.

detail of grain texture

To seal the foam and allow the foam to be painted, the mask was coated with 3 coats plastidip spray.

coated with Plastidip

The mask was then painted with basic acrylic paints. It took 4-6 coats for each color, and the red sharpie bled into the white a little bit. 

Painted mask with human for scale

Next, I added glued 4 nails to the inside top of the mask and stabilized the nails with a second layer of EVA mat foam.  The bones are cheap leg and arm bones from a Halloween skeleton from the craft store are then glued onto the nails.  I then wrapped cheap twine around the bones at 4 different heights, using glue to keep the twine stable on the slippery plastic bones.  This formed a framework to support the fake ferns.  I then wove the fake ferns through the twine and glued the stems to the top of the mask.

bone and fern attachment back

bone and fern attachment front

To keep the mask on my head, I used leather straps glued to the mask back.  Since the mask is so flat, I had to add a piece of foam to move the mask out from my face.  The strapping goes around my forehead, not at eye level.

Straps to wear the mask

Here is what the mask looks like worn and with the staff and knife, which I will cover in the next two posts.  There were so many steps to the mask that required drying overnight that while the mask was started first, the other two props went much faster!

Tiki props

Steampunk Tiki Part 1: plans and dress

This year, Gaslight Steampunk Expo had a theme of Tikipunk.  I really loved this idea, however, instead of thinking tropical shirts, I was reminded of the evil fetishes in Diablo who used to run at you with creepy masks and big knives.

Basically I thought what would happen if a Airship crashed and found the natives aggressive rather than friendly.  To portray this, I decided my Tiki fetish would use bones and bits from the crash to create a scary Tiki.  The bones would be used to create the top of the mask, the skull, googles and aviators googles would be used in a staff and a gear and pipes would form part of the mask. 

First I needed a simple dress.  I used some basic cotton gauze the make a sheath dress.  The edges are blanket stitched for decoration.  I used some scrap monk's cloth to create the fringed edging and knotted it to make a netting simple pattern.  In keeping with the found bits for decoration, I used some small gears and paula shell for fringe decoration.

Dress front

Sleeve detail

Bottom Fringe

Once I put the dress on, it felt too plain.  I decided to make a quick lace up vest out of some scrap leather.  This leather has a embossed scale pattern and a coppery color.  There was not enough to use a single piece for the front panels, so I stitched pieces together decoratively. 

vest back

vest front

The dress and vest took less than a week and were by far the easiest part of this costume.  The hardest part was the vest, the embossing and the copper coating made the leather really hard to punch through, yet it was still thin enough that setting the grommets was a pain.