I'm a huge Alice Cooper fan! If you have attended a fairly recent Alice Cooper concert you would have been treated to his amazing Frankenalice on stage:
My main plan is to recreate this for Comic Con next year. In the meantime I figured Halloween was a great way to test the frame out.
The FrameI start with a baby carrier backpack that has a rigid plastic frame:
Using a combination of nuts and bolts and zip ties, I started adding PVC pipe to the backpack.
The frame is offset so that my head is directly underneath the foam skull that will sit at the top. This is to align it correctly so that I can rotate the skull with my own head.
Continuing up with the frame, I attach the lazy susan with more bolts. I drilled two holes to accept a small piece of 1/2" PVC and glued couplings to both ends. There will be two pieces of PVC pipe glued into the base of the skull. The skull will then be attached to top couplings.
The lower couplings will have more PVC extending down for the head control.
The shoulders and elbows are created by attaching hardware to end caps and gluing them in place:
On the first test run the hardware worked loose:
So a little thread loc took care of that problem:
The arms are controlled by a 5' piece of PVC attached to the forearms. It's not pretty, but it does the job:
Now the basic frame is nearly complete it's time to work on the helmet. I drilled a hole in the top of the hard hat and another hole in the rear to accept another PVC frame. This is make of 1" PVC in order to slide over the 1/2" that is attached to the lazy susan disk:
The idea here is that if I slide the control frame over the skull pipes, I will not have to concentrate too hard on keeping my head at the exact height of the hard hat.
The completed frame, sitting on a table:
I created the hands by cutting 10 fingers out of PVC pipe. One finger at a time, I placed them into the bench vice and used a heat gun to make them pliable. Once warm, I could stretch and bend the fingers into shape. I cut a 'V' into the end and folded the inside portion (what would be the pad of the finger) in to make the tips. The fingers are screwed together at their base. I finally took a piece of pipe and after cutting a slot out of each side was able to heat and form it to the base of the fingers and bolted it into place.
The CloakI came up with this diagram for the sewing. The material was approximately 42" wide and I cut the front and back as one long piece at 19'. The center has a hole cut out for the head control. The arms are made up of four 6' long panels sewn together. In the diagram, sew the pieces as shown. Once done, fold it in half so the neck hole is at the top and then sew the bottom, blue line to blue line and green line to green line. I then cut along the red lines to make tatters.
Work the cloak over the frame. It helps to have the frame setting on a tall table and using a ladder. Follow all safety procedures for the ladder.
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