Goomba Costume

[MuppetManAZ]

Hey everybody!

This is my first time posting on the forum, but I've been lurking since last Halloween. I love this place!

So, as a bit of an introduction, I have a history of doing over the top Halloween costumes — last year I built a fiberglass helmet of Bender (of Futurama fame) — and this year I want to totally outdo all previous efforts. So to that end, I'm doing an all out Goomba suit!

I'm a VFX supervisor for an animation studio in NJ, but all we do is CGI. I'm getting sick of staring at a monitor all day and have been dying to do more practical stuff, so this suit will give me a great excuse to start playing around.

As of right now, I'm planning on going big: a latex head with an animatronic facial rig. Nothing SUPER fancy, but I definitely want to be able to move the face a bit. I've got the same head casts of the original sculpts that Howlrunner had posted about a while back, and I'm planning on using those to make a negative mold to cast a latex copy.

I'm just now getting started with the planning stages of the build, but I'll keep posting as I make progress! In the meantime I'll probably throw some pictures up of my Bender build so you can see some of my past projects.

Hope to have some cool stuff to show soon!
~Andy

[Redstar]

That is awesome! I'm really looking forward to seeing what you can churn out. The principle of it seems simple, but the execution has to be very delicate if you want to get something that looks well-done.

Sure, go ahead and post those Bender photos. I'm curious to see what you can do! (It's a shame you're starting so late, otherwise marioblaster could have used the costume in the fan film he made a few months ago. )

[MuppetManAZ]

Thanks, Redstar!

I've been trying to start up a Flickr account today so I can post my Bender pics, but Yahoo keeps giving me an error every time I try to create an ID. Oh well. Tonight I'll either get it to work or start a Photobucket account instead.

[MuppetManAZ]

Alright, so here's an album roughly showing my process for my last Halloween costume. I wanted to go further with it but I ran out of time before Halloween.
http://s1216.photobucket.com/albums/dd363/RenaissanceManlyMan/Bender%20Bending%20Rodriguez/




I plan to blow this one out of the water with my Goomba suit. And speaking of which, some diligent auction watching got me a couple Super Scopes for my Devo gun today. I'm excited to get started on that..

And here's a pic of the head casts I'll be working from. I ask you, have you ever seen two more angelic faces in your life? I think not.

[marioblaster]

Wow man, a full size goomba project! I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

[Prime Evil]

The one on the left looks just like a newborn pig.

[Redstar]

Alright, so here's an album roughly showing my process for my last Halloween costume. I wanted to go further with it but I ran out of time before Halloween.

Love how the head turned out. It's so smooth it's almost like it's a render rather than a physical object.

I plan to blow this one out of the water with my Goomba suit. And speaking of which, some diligent auction watching got me a couple Super Scopes for my Devo gun today. I'm excited to get started on that..

marioblaster here has modded a few devo guns from Super Scopes himself, so maybe he'll be able to offer you any advice on how to go about the process.

[Phlibbit]

Hey, MuppetManAZ!

So glad you decided to post after so long--and what a great introduction!

I can't wait to see how this project turns out. Be sure to keep us posted--this may be the first actual full SMB Movie Goomba re-creation, so it'll be pretty special.

[SuperSmash3DS]

"Goomba! Walk tall; be proud! Go Goomba!"

[billbot85]

Completely missed this post. Awesome MuppetMan!! Definitely go for it! I've been wanting to build a goomba costume, too! But I would not exactly know where or how to start. However, I plan on trying to make a Dinohattan citizen costume this year with lizard skin prosthetics and such.

Anyway, here is a fan-made goomba patch that is up on ebay, it should definitely help out your costume:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... K:MEWAX:IT

Good luck man, keep us posted on your progress!

[MuppetManAZ]

Hey all,

Back with another update finally. Life has been busy lately, but now that there's less than 2 months left until Halloween I've gotta get cracking! Thankfully my girlfriend is pretty handy at sewing and has volunteered to help me with the actual suit.

So here's where I left off a few months ago. This is a video of the animatronic neck rig I have worked out. This will go inside of Toad's neck, and the skull mechanisms will ride on the top board. Right now it's controlled with a Wii Nunchuck.



In the last few days I've modified the code controlling the head so that the Nunchuck could control up to 7 servos (3 of which would be controlled by the accelerometer). I won't use it like that, but I'm trying to figure out the best control scheme for the head. Ideally, I want to use 2 Nunchucks, one running down each sleeve to my hand, so I can control the head with my arms at my side. One joystick would control the direction of the head, the other might control where the eyes are looking. Then the additional buttons would control eyebrows and jaw movement. But that would require buying another control board, because I can only use one Nunchuck per board. I'm not sure if that's money I want to spend. The other option is using a Wii Classic controller with the single board and taking advantage of its dual joysticks and multitude of buttons.

I'll post some pictures later of my other progress. I've got my final mold made of Toad's head, and one attempt made at a silicone skin copy. It's not going to work, but I'll show you what I got. Also, I've got my Super Scopes all ready to be turned into my Devo Gun.

@billbot, thanks for the tip on the patches! I ordered 2 of them last week and they just showed up. They're perfect!

[Phlibbit]

I'm thrilled to see you've made progress on this project. And using Nintendo stuff to control it--I wouldn't have it any other way! I can't wait to see what you come up with for the finished product; I'm sure it'll be amazing.

[Redstar]

Amazing work, MuppetMan! Very clever to use the Nunchuk as a control scheme. I hope that you can figure out the best method for controlling the Goomba as it'd be a shame if you had to give up on eye/eyebrow/jaw movement.

How much would another control board cost?

[MuppetManAZ]

Amazing work, MuppetMan! Very clever to use the Nunchuk as a control scheme. I hope that you can figure out the best method for controlling the Goomba as it'd be a shame if you had to give up on eye/eyebrow/jaw movement.

How much would another control board cost?

The boards are cheap. Like $30. Nothing super prohibitive, especially considering how much I'm probably gonna dump on the rest of this project. At the moment that's the route I'm planning on taking. I could also build a couple of joystick controllers for like $10 a pop that accomplish the same thing and use them both with the single board, but then I'm not using the Nintendo controllers which is no fun, and I'm also out of time to be building things that I don't absolutely have to.

For anyone interested in the control boards, I'm using an Arduino Uno. These things are so much fun and you can use them to control almost anything. Check them out on google or youtube for tons of projects that people are using them for.

[Redstar]

That's good. Doesn't sound like an area that will hinder the project too much, though it is a matter of time. I'm just worried about the head since there's no room for error in making that look and function perfectly. Hopefully you were able to discuss that with MEL.

[Serum]

I may be a little late to this, but welcome to the board, MuppetManAZ! You're Goomba heads are amazing! Keep up the awesome work!

[YoshiWrangler]

I was hoping to see a finished product... What Kind of coat would you get for a costume like this? Or boots, for that matter?