Make: Online: Halloween Archives

Archive: Halloween

February 1, 2010

How-To: Make a giant octopus

YouTuber bluworm took on the task of making a great big octopus puppet for stop-motion animation in a film by his friend Daniel Lennéer. Along the way he produced this informative and entertaining video describing the casting, sculpting, and armature-work that went into it, as well as showing off some of the finished animation (starting around 5:00). Besides the cool propcasting info, I gotta give it up to bluworm for his video editing chops. This is definitely one of the most watchable how-to videos I've ever seen, and I've seen a bunch of them. [via Propnomicon]

January 15, 2010

How-To: Light-up costume

Sarah James at Instructables has made this awesome light-up EL wire costume, and shares the process with us in her excellent tutorial.

January 5, 2010

Mummified alien hand prop

Supposedly from the personal wunderkammer of Austinite video game bazillionaire Richard Garriott. Some of the other items are NSFW. [via Propnomicon]

Desaturated Santa costume

No, they haven't been photoshopped. Brody S. made this awesome black-and-white Santa suit for San Francisco Santa Con 2009. [via Dude Craft]

December 30, 2009

How-To: Build a vintage diving helmet prop

Interesting tutorial over on Propnomicon, by Richard Bird, who built this vintage diving helmet replica prop for a recent LARP adventure for London's The Dark Door group.

December 28, 2009

LEGO minifig group costume

This LEGO minifig group costume has some amusing making-of photos, and the costumes turned out great! [via EMSL]

December 1, 2009

Lovecraft Elder Thing sculpt

From ConceptArt.org user Jiangzu (who says "I am so addicted to sculpting that I forget to eat half the time") this awesome Sculpey-and-wire rendition of one of Lovecraft's master baddies from At the Mountains of Madness. This thread includes more shots and details of this and other creature builds. [via Propnomicon]

November 15, 2009

Amazing Star Wars Tauntaun costume

Solid Works2
First Caulk
Seethru

Check out the amazing build log of this Star Wars Tauntaun costume, Scott (the maker writes)...

TaunTaun costume, 2009 for the Exotic Zone ball in Sacramento. I'm wearing the Luke Skywalker outfit for this shoot. On Halloween my buddy Brian wore the Luke outfit, and I was his spotter dressed as Han Solo. Sorry bout the shaky camera, my wife was walking and holding our daughter in the other arm.

November 11, 2009

Reductionist Jack-'o-lantern

An engineer's solution to the jack-'o-lantern problem if ever I saw one. [via There, I Fixed It]

November 9, 2009

Awesome kidnapped mermaid costume

From Instructables user ModMischief comes a great tutorial on building this impossibly clever one-person trompe l'oeil costume. As she says, "[w]hy choose between dressing as a sexy mermaid or a scary pirate when you could be both!"

November 6, 2009

Make: Halloween Contest 2009 - WINNERS!

We had a great contest this year, with tons of awesome projects, and frankly we had a heckuva time picking winners. But the votes are all in now, and with the scores finally tabulated, I am pleased to announced the winners of the Make: Halloween Contest 2009.

The envelope please....

Third runner-up: Everett Bradford's "Prometheus Device"

Everett has won an F1 Evaluation Platform (valued at $39.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

Second runner-up: Eric Kingston's "Silly String Shooting Pumpkin"

Eric has won a PICKIT 3 (valued at $69.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

First runner-up: Ian Fagan's "Ghostbusters Proton Pack"

Ian has won a PICDEM Lab (valued at $124.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

Grand Prize Winner: Jared Martin's "Mr. Bones and the Gourditos"

Jared has won a Microchip Starter Kit Bundle (valued at $600.00) which includes a PIC18 Starter Kit, a PIC24F Starter Kit, a dsPIC DSC Starter Kit, a PIC32 Starter Kit, a Memory Starter Kit, an F1 Evaluation Platform, and a PICKIT 3.

Congratulations to all our winners and, indeed, to everyone who entered! And thanks to our sponsor, Microchip Technology, for making the whole thing possible!

Happy Halloween!

Two-person AT-AT costume

From Photobucket user 8jarjar8, this video of a Chinese-lion-dragon style AT-AT costume with lighted cheek-lasers. Don't really know anything about the makers/wearers. Anybody with info, please feel free to comment. [via Geekologie]

November 5, 2009

Halloween on Berkeley's Russell Street

Our very own Michelle Hlubinka, MAKE's Educational Director, is quoted in this Daily Californian piece about the celebtrational insanity of Russell Street, in Berkeley, known for it's elaborate decorations and large, costumed crowds.

Below is one of the yard decorations Michelle's family put together. Their theme was "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." I love the Dixie cups for monster teeth.

Halloween Revelers Flock to Russell Street

Adorable stoplight costume

David King built this stoplight costume for his oldest daughter. It's his first Arduino project. Besides flashing the expected red, green, and yellow lights, it incorporates an Adafruit WaveShield to play music. [Thanks, David!]

In the Maker Shed:

Arduino WaveShield Kit

November 4, 2009

Kid robot

2559-4074393770-E5604F9248-O
Amazing robot costume with an Arduino, MAKE Game of life kit and WaveShield! jerrya writes...

My wife and I are making a robot Halloween costume and I just finished the electronics design prototype. I wanted to wait until the costume was finished before revealing it but I'm too excited that I finished my circuit and coding. That's a video of it, and I want to describe it a little. It uses an Adafruit Wave Shield for the sounds, and an antique analog gauge I found at Gateway Electronics here in St. Louis. There's an infrared beam pair from Sparkfun, which will be watching the "candy input slot" on the robot's chest. The gauge displays the count, until too much candy is inserted and it goes crazy. Then after 20 seconds of no more candy, the candy count gets reset, to be ready to do it all over again at the next house. In the sketch, I used these AlphaBeta libraries: LED, button, TimedAction, and Scheduler. These made coding this sketch very easy. He even updated Scheduler with a clear() for me. Thanks again for that! The hardest part was getting it all to work together. I had been trying to use pin 9 for the gauge, and it crashed the sketch. I did more reading and found out you can't do PWM on 9 with the Wave libraries because of the timer. Pin 6 works fine though. The beep sound loop I found on my mac, I think it came from iMovie. The speech is recorded synthesis also from my mac, made like this from a terminal: say -o outputfile.aiff "thing to say" This makes an aiff file. Then I used iTunes to convert all the sound files to WAV with the right settings for the Wave Shield. The chaser LEDs are going to surround the Arduino in a shadow box sort of thing, so people can see the controller, and to punch it up so it isn't so boring. ;D

Detail shots of the electronic components in the robot costume my wife and I built. She did all the painting and papercraft, and I did the electronics. Systems include an Arduino with Adafruit Wave Shield for sound effects, and a proto shield that you see with all the wires and resistors. They are wired to the antique analog gauge on the front panel, which reacts to the IR pair from SparkFun in the Input slot. The speech is recorded synthesis from my Mac. Sayings are: "Candy, my favorite fuel," "Yum yum yum...," "You will be spared from the robot uprising, thank you human," and "Warning! Candy overload!" And on the front panel just for eye candy is a Game of Life kit from the Maker Shed/Adafruit.

WoW spellcaster costume with health and mana bars

Eric Lowry built this sweet WoW magic-user costume for his son. It has LED health and mana bars, LED magic power in the gloves, and an LED, er, "touch-sensitive fairy companion." There's one Arduino for the gloves and status bars, and another for the companion.

Transformers Soundwave costume

Pretty amazing costume build tutorial from Instructables user Incrxtc.

November 3, 2009

Functioning X-men "Pyro" costume flamethrower appliance

OK, my awesome meter has kind of overloaded on this one. Everett Bradford's "Prometheus Device" is a hand-mounted appliance that shoots, like, real fire. It looks, you know, dangerous, and all, but it's so cool I don't really care. And he's done a great job documenting the build, although obviously no one should attempt this who doesn't know what they're doing. Amazing work, Everett. Thanks!

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

There's still time left to enter the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Deadline is 11:59 PM PST, November 3rd. Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Alien twins life support system haunt prop

John Russell made this fantastic haunted house prop. In his own words:

Two aliens contained in suspended animation chambers. A central control unit monitors and sustains life support functions. The control screen is a looping flash animation. Every few minutes, a malfunction state is triggered. Sound and graphics announce the error, and a Make Controller board is used to trigger emergency flasher lights and a fog machine (simulates a cryogenic coolant leak).

The video shows the system going into its "malfunction state." Awesome work, John!

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

District 9 SPLAT gun replica prop

Instructables user msraynsford presents this detailed tutorial on how to build a prop replica of one of those District 9 guns that makes intelligent, loving, civilized creatures explode with a nauseating SPLAT. I want one!