Thread: Dilophosaurus JP Oldskool

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Well, wasn't planning on jumping straight in, but what the heck Halloween is soon approaching and I'm gonna need the head start.

Sorry, nothing really to show so far just some basic work. Reason for posting is to keep myself on track and hopefully get some much need input on the project.

When in year 4 at primary I once made a life size paper mache salt water croc for some assignment. Turned out the ace of spades if I remember correct. So how hard can it be right? A Dilophosaurus is just a bigger upright croc,with a frill isn't it?
Well kind of, the frill is a Spielberg interpretation, but for effect I'm going to work with it.

So the plan is, big croc, frill, chicken wire, paper mache and a whole heap of work. Oh did I mention I'm going to be inside it? Yeah that's right WHoopachaaaa!!! Chase those lil' kiddies right down the road.... Sorry had one to many coffee's.

This is what I'm going for.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdp...-children_news




So most would have seen the roaming dinosaur exhibits floating around, quite realistic human controlled, though general the occupants legs a exposed in black tights underneath. My hopes are to create a dilophosaurus, aka Jurassic park style including the mythical frill but with my legs enclosed inside the dino's not being visible.


Framed out a head, body and tail. I think I have worked out how the legs will pivot at the joints while walking also. I'll create a pvc/timber hip system to pin the legs to.

I am still to add a cavity in the chest where my arms will reside to operate controls.
I intend to operate cables run down the neck from the head, for left right, up down and jaw movements. I will also be able to make the arms move and "pop" the frill from there hopefully. I am thinking the frill will be spring loaded for maximum effect. I just hope my engineering skills equal my imaginative ones.


4m from snout to tip of tail atm the moment.

Here's what I have so far, not impressive yet, but need to get the frame right to bring this together well at the end.

I intend on updating this thread with progress.

Sorry for the attachments, I'll try and get a photo sharing account so I can link instead. Thanks for you patience and any advice/help would be appreciated muchly.


Off to build the chest/control housing.

Cheers,

Mitch.

Was hoping someone would jump on making something like this. I posted the baby t rex video not long ago here and I know many many people will be interested in your progress as well as I. :3

Looking forward to seeing how this develops. I have to admit though I'd be a little worried about getting into a full body costume made with chicken wire - that stuff is sharp! The one time I used it for a prop I cut my fingers to pieces!

Niiiice! How heavy is that bad boy gonna be???

kittyvibe- It's a big complex job, which definitely has to potential to flop, both literally and as a main event. Hopefully I can pull it off though as I am not bad with arts/crafts and my brother is an artist, so I believe the keys will be-

Fluid movements of appendages

A sound base structure

Realistic outer skin

With the grace of young minds the rest should fall into place. By the time (4pm) kids start coming around it will be starting to get dark, conveniently on my stretch of road, they seem to have forgotten to put a street light out front of mine and the adjacent houses. Oh and the abandoned federation house next door to me ads to the effect also.

Uruk-Hai- Inside will be lined as well, with either thin sponge foam or another medium. The thought had crossed my mind also.

MHooch- Time will tell. I have already made exceptions to design to reduce weight even at this stage. I would have preferred a double jointed tail system, where-in the tall sways on a pivot joint, where it attaches at the hip and also a secondary pivot mid way down the tall allowing the tip to sway as well. These joints have been scrubbed as after thoughts I do not feel them a necessity to the design.
One of the main objectives is to be able to fluently run at speed. I feel (though obviously am just guesstimating) anything over 10kg is going to bog it down and leave it as a walker. I want to chase the kiddies as fast as thouse lil' stumpy legs will carry them.


Thanks for the comments.







Managed to wire out the chest section where I will be operating upper controls.
Sorry about the shot, my DSLR is going nuts over the white background and the shadow the chicken wire is throwing, focus is on the wire, but the shadow makes it all look blurry.

Started paper claying the head. Still more details and skim coats to go before priming.

Wanted to know if I was on the right track, as was having some doubts how the head would come together.
Decided to Gimpout a shot of the paper clayed head/skull.
Added colouring, an eye, jaw set and crests. Not sure if I will run with the jaw set or colouring for that matter, just wanted to get something in there to see what it looked like.


Not bad hey?

looking good there! /thumbs up

Thanks KV, if I can get it looking half as good as the virtual then I will be a happy man indeed.

Managed to drop the head half cured and lost about 4 hours work. One sides cheek bone and eye socket completely gone, basically one side of the head ruined. Patched it back together in half the time it took the first time though. PO'd to the extreme, but chillaxed and fixed it.


Applied a fine skim coat to the base paper clay to fill out the cracks and give it a finer surface. The reason I went coarse then skimmed is to present a scale like finish.
Joyfully one would be looking to finish a paper clay project smooth which is very tedious, luckily for me the rough finish imitates the dino's skin to some degree with some finessing.

A long time ago I promised my significant other that I would not spend any money on my projects, as long as I can make as many as I want. She agreed and the deal was done. Hence my "paper clay" and "skim coats" are home made. I am current photographing my method of making paper coats as I go along, I hope at the end to present methods in the tut section on what I am applying here.

I feel over a short period I have had some significant breakthroughs in cellulose breakdown and re-constitution under different parameters. Many if I do say so, contradict some of the many online tutorials (not here, elsewhere). I am hoping my research now prevents the loss of copious hours later re-doing the job.
Really has been interesting work.

That skim is silky smooth, holds peaks wonderfully and sets rock hard. Kind of like whipped cream but paper cellulose based.








EDIT- Didn't want to double post. I think I just received a sign. :s Well damn it, I am taking it as a sign because it can't get much clearer than this.

Granted I am in Australia, we do have a fantastic squad of dinosaur puppeteers here in AU already on an active tour. None the less though, the chances of me seeing it amongst the thousands of pages I am ripping up astounds me.

Check it out, I randomly saw a Raptor picture and stopped ripping for a sec. Not really too much description n the title for the section. I flipped to the page mainly to see if it had anymore picks of raptors as the head is similar, and would grab the page for visual benefit.
LO and behold, the article is on constructing life sized dinosaur puppets. That's a bit crazy hey!!?? What are the chances? An aritcle on puppet dinosaurs was going to be used in the making of a dinosaur puppet.... Well flipped me out anyway....





Look at that detail she has put into the face/cheeks! I would appear they have pre-made animatronic eyes they place in then as the pic shows, work the details up over/to it. Interesting, I'll have to smack Google up for more pics of this squad. Nice stuff.

OK... That's it DB post, topic is still at the top, so i'm not atleast pushing others down. Sorry anyway.

I think my whole game plan changed, as I just defecated my pants.

Oh my .... Firstly, I can not believe, in my hundreds of hours of searching all things evil, I have never come across this vids, nor the others linked there in.



Please watch if you are interested in this build, as I feel an addition like this could make or break the project. When deceiving the eye of the young and easily deceived, one must attract attention to distract from the glaring obvious. In other words, if I add something like this that draws the eye, I can relax on other details.


http://youtu.be/AG1Nz2Fvrx0

The jaws alone make me want to look away.... Could I incorporate this into my dinosaur? I am at the correct stage, as I have not yet started the lower mandible.


Thoughts anyone?