Sunday, December 22, 2013

Giant Origami Crane Hallowe'en Costume (2013)

For Hallowe'en this year, my girlfriend gave me an awesome idea for a costume: to dress up as a gigantic origami crane.  I immediately fell in love with the idea and began thinking on how I could execute.

We discussed the idea for a bit and initially thought of using fancy printed paper.  However, there were two problems with this approach: large printed sheets are hard to source, and when you find them, they cost about as much as a small island.  Thus, we went to plan B and settled on making a white crane, thereafter to stamp it with a traditional-looking pattern.

I began by purchasing a few sheets of white poster board at my local dollar store, defending them from the cashier who was on his way to folding and creasing them into a small bag.  I then taped a few sheets together, cut the whole thing into a square, and folded a standard crane:



A standard, if slightly large, origami crane.
I made a much smaller model out of regular origami paper and cut it up to figure out how I was going to fit the large-size model around myself.  Then, I cut out the center of the huge crane and started working on creating a coffee stick armature to stiffen the model:

Trying to figure out how to make this thing rigid when there's a gaping hole in the middle.

Why, hello!
Adding bracing on the underside.  You can also see a brace at the base of the wings.
There is a long wooden dowel in the tail.
Another dowel braces the neck.
Top view; you can't see any of the armature.
We then selected a pattern and cut it out.


My girlfriend sculpted it out of a potato as a test:




Finished potato stamp.
I then made a second version of the stamp out of EVA foam:

The two stamps.
We promptly proceeded... not to use the stamps at all due to time constraints.  I did get the wings attached to my wrists using invisible wire though:


Flapping the wings.
A small coffee stick piece was painted white and used as a fishing line anchor inside the wing.
And that, as they say, is that!  Here is a timelapse of the whole process, from raw poster board to finished costume.

2 comments:

  1. Fred, j'adore ton costume et je suis fasciné par ton inventivité!
    Où voulez-tu apposer le tampon? Et pourquoi ne t'en es-tu pas servi?

    Hubert

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    1. Hahaha, merci beaucoup :D On voulait en fait estampiller la grue au complet, pour faire comme un genre de papier traditionnel, mais on ne l'a pas fait en bout de ligne parce que le projet a pris pas mal plus de temps que prévu et j'étais déjà rendu aux petites heures du matin la veille de l'Hallowe'en. Une prochaine fois peut-être! :D

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