Making Jar Jar Binks Costume Part One

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.