Thread: Wearable Peppers Ghost Illusion

Tweet

This is also posted in the costume forum since it is technically a costume, but I thought it might be worth putting here too since it's more of a prop idea. Mods, feel free to remove this one if it's not appropriate to xpost like this.


So it's time to start thinking about next years costume, and I've got a few ideas up my sleeve. One might be impossible/impractical, but it's been rolling around my head for a couple of days and wanted to get some opinions on it.

The idea is some form of wearable peppers ghost illusion (If you're not familiar with the illusion, HERE is a little video and explanation of how it works). The thought is to have the illusion run in front of my face to give the look of my head turning into something eerie. My head/upper body would obviously have to be encased in something, I'm thinking an electrocution booth or something similar. There would be lighting built in behind the glass to light my face, and when the system was triggered those would go out. I'm not sure if it would require any kind of scrim to hide my face or not, but at this point I'm just brainstorming. Event timing, etc... is simple and would be run by either an ATMEGA328P on a custom board, or just using an Arduino with a custom shield.

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing, and would it work?

I've never built a peppers ghost, but I've seen plenty of them. I guess the biggest questions are how the viewing angle affects the illusion, how compact can it be built, can it be built with an LCD instead of a CRT, and would it be durable enough to withstand a few nights of parties and contests.

This would be fairly easy to do. May cause a crick in the neck but if you make a shoulder mount to distribute the weight it may be OK.

Make a box over your head that has a 45 degree sheet of plexy running from top of head out towards chin with another sheet in front. Something like this> |\| During the black friday sale pick up a 8" digital picture frame for cheep and put that on top of the box facing down. Use MP3 player for the image that will "project" pepper style on the plexy in front of your face. I use something similar for my HM crystal ball illusion, instead of the crystal ball you are using your face.

An even easier solution would be to use a transformation illusion that was discussed in another thread. I'll see if I can find it and post a link. It involves using makeup and lights of matching color.

Found the thread
Transformation Illusion

Basically, yes the angle matters. The viewer has to be viewing your face straight on for this to work and you will have to make a box of some type to make this happen. You might be able to get away with making some sort of cage or something to hide the box. The basic trick lies in the angle of glass, the view angle and very important the lighting. Totally doable but it will depend exactly what you are going for.