I may have outdone myself this year for Halloween.
It took me months of trying, failing, swearing, and trying again. I’m such a noob when it comes to animatronics and robotics. But I’m really pleased with how this turned out.
The headdress is two wigs, with a craft foam cap sandwiched in between, which provides support for an Adafruit Crickit board. This is a cool board. It has mounts for a Circuit Playground, which acts as the brain, and it provides plug-in spots for all kinds of things.. motors, servos, capacitive touch pads, and lots more. It’s basically everything you need to easily and quickly create some cool animatronics.
Well, not EVERYTHING. You also need an understanding of mechanical engineering, up to a point, and that was the hard part of this project. Servos just turn. Trying to translate that to the motion I wanted, taking weight and battery life into consideration, was the hard part. I need a Mechanical Engineering 101 book. It seems so simple. Levers, wheels, gears.. but the visceral part of me that gets stuff — I mean, really GETS stuff — doesn’t get this. I think the problem is that I was a girl and was given Barbies instead of an Erector Set for my 5th birthday.
However, that path did lead to intimate knowledge of sewing and clothing, so I can’t complain too loudly. Here’s the Medusa corset I came up with:
I ordered a corset from CorsetStory, and then just embellished the heck out of it. I found a $12 snake print sheer top at Target (yay, Halloween season shopping!) and then spent hours on Pinterest looking for ideas. I love how this turned out. The front piece is made from snake upholstery fabric with the same tubular crin I used for the snakes on the headdress, and a 3d printed Auryn that I spray painted gold. It’s glued on one edge and velcroed on the other edge, so I can swing it open to get the corset on and off. Then I just went crazy with the fabric scraps and E6000 glue. It turned out nice, don’t you think? Paired with my Eye of Newt necklace and the skirt from last year’s Witch costume, it really looks stunning.
I wanted to add a long snakey tail but ran out of time. I have to say the costume was PLENTY to manage on its own without a tail knocking things over, so it wasn’t really a problem.
I made a build tutorial over on the Adafruit Learning System.. check it out:
https://learn.adafruit.com/animatronic-glowing-medusa-headdress
And I’ll be doing a photo shoot sometime in late November or December, so stay tuned!
