Nickel - Tube Head - Katamari

Greetings humans! ;D This post shall go into the details of how I constructed the tube head for Nickel. I started exactly the same as I did for Prince and Princess, by creating a hole in the bottom of the tube for my head to go through.

My helmet had this stupid point at the back which needed to be sawed off... :P And so I did.

I added the blocks of foam so  that the helmet, and by extension the entire head, would sit at the right height and angle. This was especially important for Nickel because the head had to clear the shoulders of my box body.

We visually determined the placement, marked it out, and then glued it all in place.

I had my friend Ian do the soldering (and re-soldering) of all my LED circuits for this project. I ran out of time to do it myself. It looks fantastic! I will go into more details of how those were constructed in a later post.

The hubs that the LED's were put into in the red cylinders were made from a disc of foam core and a cylinder of illustration board. And lots of glue. LOTS.

I drilled a hole where each LED would go, evenly spacing the array. Then I farmed them out.

These beauties were returned to me! ;D

I then taped all the exposed wires so I wouldn't get a crossed wire and end up with an electrical fire. That would be very bad.

...Particularly because it is not so easy to get this costume off quickly...

Then I cut 2 foam core discs to go in the end of the tube. These would fit snugly and be glued into place.

Then I cut a ring/disc that I glued around the bottom of each hub, so that they now resembled a top hat crossed with a jellyfish.

Then I cut a thin ring of foam core to act as an inner support for my red cylinders, and a circle of a plastic binder to act as a frosted filter. The black rings were my only gluing surface for this entire cylinder.

Meanwhile, I had Alex add an illustration board outer layer to my head. (The sonotube had obtained numerous dings in the garage.)

Then I worked on the cylinders. Using clear tape, I carefully taped together strips of red acetate  and curled them around.

I had a friend of my mum's--who has access to a laser cutter--cut me 2 perfect circles in red plexiglass. These were glued to the frosting circle and then the foam ring.

Alex then glued the 2 foam discs in the ends of the tube. The eye slot and neck hole were also nicely cut.

Back in the land of plastic, I carefully glued the acetate roll to the black ring along the top edge. The end result is a bit fragile, but looks quite clean and I am very happy with it. Because of the multiple layers to the red acetate, it did not need a frosted filter.

Alex then spackled the joins in the illustration board and sanded them out to achieve a nice, smooth and almost seamless look! ;D

With the 2 red cylinders done I was ready to assemble. The top-hat-jellyfish were carefully inserted through the neck hole. Then the foam core discs--ones on each end of the tube head and their respective jelly-hat--glued together, making sure that the electrical hub was centered in the middle of the hole. The red cylinders--which were made to fit into the hole exactly--were slotted over the hubs and then glued into place.

The border on Nickel's face was finished with a rectangle of craft foam, glued on and painted grey. A fabric piece was attached so that Nickel's face flaps up like the rest of them.

Alex says: I LOVE GLUING!!!! D:<

...Which is her way of protesting against all things sewn. :P

 The antenna was glued on and so were the decorative nuts. ;D

The final step was to solder the switch and battery into my electrical circuit to make everything work!

Beauty!

An in depth look at Nickel's circuitry--including diagrams and calculations-- will be coming up in the next month or so, but I will be taking a bit of a break from all things Katamari for the moment. I am also planning on doing a tutorial on how to put together a simple LED circuit. Those will probably be up in september or october sometime.

Nickel - Pants & Shirt - Katamari

Alright here's a look at how I mad my shirt and pants for Nickel. Let's start with the shirt.

So I started by patterning the top off of a t-shirt, but I decided I wanted it to be more fitted so I added in seams at the front. I made the back in 2 pieces so I could put a zipper in, same as all the other Katamari costumes.

I sewed the front pieces together, then the back. Then I attached the front and back together at the shoulders and sides.

Yay! Then I put the zipper in the back so I could actually try it on. Not a bad fit. It just needed a little taken out around the arm hole. I didn't have enough fabric to make a full shirt, nor did I want to. The idea was that I would wear a tanktop underneath so that when I was hanging out in the green room I would be boiling.

Then I started to make the fitted sleeves. I took all the measurements and created a sleeve pattern with 1 seam at the bottom. This I then had to translate into a 2 piece sleeve pattern with 2 side seams so I could add in the thumbhole. This was so the sleeves would stay tucked inside the claws without riding up.

I sewed the sleeve parts together. Then I finished all my inner seams for the shirt.

Then I attached the first sleeve, and checked the fit. These kinds of sleeves are harder to put in because you have to attach a circle to a circle. Which means the circumference has to be perfect otherwise it won't fit. :/

Yay! So many pins! And look, somehow the seams on the front of the sleeve and the top matched up perfectly... not planned at all.

1 sleeve, 2 sleeves! :D

Then I measured where the thumb hole should be and picked that part of the seam. I finished the edges and tacked them back.

Then I attached the collar.

Dome fasteners added. And the shirt was done! :D

Now let's talk about the pants. This is only my second time making pants so there was a lot of guess work to be done here. I wanted to make pants with a seam up the front of the legs, but not in a million pieces, so to do that I had to make one piece a 1/4 of the width and one piece 3/4. Even then they still didn't line up quite right... >:/
 

I cut out the pieces and sewed up the front seam, then the side seams. Then I put one leg inside the other and sewed them together.

Pants! :D Except that somehow I made them too big... >:/  So I took them in a lot from here. Then I added a waistband and a zipper. Once they were hemmed, they were nearly done.

I sprayed some extra hex nuts grey and had a friend hand stitch them on up the front seams of each leg. The added detail helped bring the whole costume together. ;D

I love this picture! Thanks to whoever the heck took it, as I totally just borrowed this off facebook. :P