Making Jar Jar Binks Costume Part One
11 Jul2014
I always thought that Jar Jar Bings looked a bit like a duck,
besides that he was not the most popular character from Star Wars
thats for sure, but you gotta love him for getting in to others
way. As crazy as it may sound it brings a bit of reality and comedy
to the movie. So when the time came for me to choose my starwars
costume to be,there where no doubt in my mind what i wanted to
build
My first faze was as always research,planning and drawing. After
first couple of sketches i realized that i could use an old bike
helmet that i had laying around as the base of his face. This way i
could see through his mouth or throte, and it lifted the whole
assembly away from my head, giving it better proportions, more
consistant with me movie.
The next big challage was to finde the right materials for
making the flesh and skin of this monster. For the flesh i decided
on using madras foam, it was soft and i had tools to trim it in ti
shape. Scissors and a knife.
For the skin i wanted to use some kind of stretchy textile, as
my budget was very limited it posed a threat to the whole project.
It was definitely a show stopper if i didn't find the right
material to the right price. To make the long story short i found
the right material in form of Velour. It was cheap only 30kr for
five meters,that's about five dollars and it had some stretch to it
in one direction
So what you need to do this? Here's my list
Tools
- Your trusty heat gun, and glue sticks
- Scissors
- Sharp knife
- Heatgun, for melting hardened glue sticks glue (nice to have it
is a life saver)
- Red, white and red rattle cans
- Red, black markers, for touchups
Materials
- Bike helmet
- Madras foam
- White Velour 5 meters
- Cardboard
- Gafatape
- Wood and screws for stilts
- Old shoes used for stilts as well
Now to the business at hand, lets build the darn thing (c:
I started out with defining the shape of his head and beak, by
cutting out a cardboard template and mounting it to the helmet with
gafatape
In retrospect it was not the best idea, the adhesive on the tape
was far from strong enough to hold down the foam. I was forced to
remove it all and start over,.. well some battles you just can't
win (c:
So i decided to take a break from the head, and made his snail
like eyes. The eyes were made from a plastic sphere from a
christmas decoration that i had laying around and strips of foam
glued together with hot glue
If you ask me it start mo look like Jar Jar, the dimations looks
right as well (c:
The next part is about skinning and coloring the head, read it here.