The Making of the Robot
PHASE 1 : The Concept
It was very clear for me, that I won’t be able to create a perfect, shiny robot shell with my resources.
1. Because I wouldn’t even know where to start building.
2. Because I didn’t have the resources($$) to buy an existing one.
3. Because plan to film a transformation and will therefore need a Cyborg costume that uses of parts of the robot costume.
Therefore, it was more logic to me, to start building single parts that will together add up to both a Cyborg and a full robot costume.
So I would start by looking for different parts that I can slowly unite to a robot armor. I got protection gear for rollerskating, a knee orthosis for alignment from my friend who used to injure herself alot, a leather harness for the chest that can hold some weight attached, and big sheets of worbla.
What is Worbla?
This material has changed my life of crafting! You can turn it into literally anything! Worbla is a non-toxic thermoplastic sheet material made partially from wood pulp. Worbla softens at 150 degrees fahrenheit (65 degrees) which means you can usually mold it with your bare hands. You can cut the material with scissors and heat it up to adjust it to your body (careful to not burn yourself). You can roll it, twist it and glue parts together just by giving them the needed temperature. You can staple it, nail it, and sew it. You can buy it in different colors and thickness, depending on your needs. It’s fantastic material for crafting Cosplay costumes, model figures
The Downsides are:
- It is pretty expensive (73cmx48cm are almost 70 $)
- It is heat sensitive (don’t leave it under the sun, stored under blankets, inside a tent or too close to fire)
Buy Worbla
When you use one of our links to buy Worbla on Amazon, we will get a little percentage from Amazon. You won’t have any extra costs. This is a very easy way to directly support our project. Thank you so much for your consideration, and enjoy the limitless crafting possibilites!
…a melting robot?
The heat sensitivity surely was a big problem. We are about to film a fire dance movie. But I was too excited about that material to drop it. Therefore we needed some trickery to overcome this.
The Cyborg costume could only involve pieces, that aren’t melting on my body. And The scenes in which the robot carries fire can’t have much movement in them. This realization was also the impulse to create a transformation scene that involves animation, layers, and long time exposure.
The beautiful thing about film is, that we start from the idea “everything is possible”. After this, it is a question of
- How well you can prepare the shoot and its tricks to have an easy postproduction and
-
Money.
There is this common saying of “we’ll fix this in post production”.
DO NOT FALL INTO THIS TRAP!
Unless you have a beautiful big budget in hand and animators that aren’t busy, it is definitely better to prepare well beforehand and avoid the black holes of figuring out how to fix things in post production.
Stay tuned for Phase 2: Creating the robot helmet.
