Necrogenesis
Member
Greetings fellow botheads!! 
The following WIP began two weeks prior to Halloween, when an open schedule finally allowed for the creation of my son's long awaited G1 Soundwave costume. We intend for the suit to be finished by BOTCON (late May/early June), and as there are many facets to this project it will probably take until then to complete. The major pieces did come together in time for the holiday, instead of posting 50 pictures outlining each piece's construction as worn on Halloween, I will be posting compartmentalized updates from here out focusing on each individual piece from start to finish.
For those of you that are unfamiliar, this is Soundwave; doing what Soundwave does best:
Soundwave is the Decepticon communications officer, and he has always been among my favorite Cybertronians. When Orion stated he would like to wear the mask of SW, I was ecstatic. The following sketch outlines our tribute to that most honored of Robots:
The original components, two weeks prior to halloween:
Throughout the Transformers cannon, Soundwave has relied on the use of 'Minicons', small Cybertronians that transform into cassette tapes for storage inside his tape deck. We did not have time to build any minicons for Halloween, but Laserbeak and Ratbat will be featured at BOTCON. We did however get started on the internal architecture to house the minicons:
Orion's little sister Roslynn was really excited about the costume, her demeanor and perspective on life would make any Decepticon proud lol. If this enthusiasm continues I am considering to make a minicon outfit for her to wear at BOTCON..
The weather held just long enough to strengthen critical pieces with the fiber glass / resin method, however there was not time before Halloween to add a bondo finish. We simply painted the areas that were smooth enough, adding a layer of blue poster board to the areas that were not. The effect was very nice, and when the weather breaks in the spring we will finish fiber-glassing the entire costume for BOTCON.
Phase 1 of the tape deck and helm, one week prior to Halloween.
For techno-junkies such as myself, simply creating an image of Soundwave does not pay apt tribute to his greatness. Therefore, Orion and I decided off rip that he should be able to play music in some capacity, adding two 9v 3.6 watt speakers to the original shoulder arrangement, supplied w MP3 via an old blackberry storm to be housed in the left gauntlet.. Great idea - for making your kid def lol.. So we decided to make the backpack into a speaker housing so as to project the sound safely away from his ears. As the backpack was already sealed up by this point we decided to exclude sound for Halloween. We did manage to get 5 of the led's wired in though.
Because of the parade rules <see below> we decided to wait on finishing the shoulder cannon, creating instead two shoulder pieces representing a dual compact disc upgrade. Hahaha, so far as the pic itself, lets just say no one in the Duran household is happy when the play station network goes down!! <PSN ID: Teslacron_Prime (for u fellow WFC/DOTM players out there!>
Halloween Parade!! Orion's school does not allow the use of props that resemble weapons, masks, or pretty much anything else righteous; therefore we could not attach the shoulder cannon, and in lieu of the helm he borrowed my aerospace headset for the event. None-the-less it was hands down the best outfit there and no shortage of kids nor parents came up to us afterword!
Side view of the Parade configuration.
The internal harness connecting the tape deck and the backpack broke right at the end of the parade, and in the hours directly following I rebuilt the harness at Joanne Fabrics. The new configuration mimics a low altitude parachute. <note: the pad assemblies were fine, only the D-ring assemblies and nylon webbing were added directly prior to trick or treating>
Pieces as worn on Halloween:
So that is round one of our Soundwave WIP, it was honestly my first real attempt at costuming, so any and all feedback is appreciated!
<additional pictures on Facebook (public album): Soundwave WIP>
Thank you for viewing, stay tuned for updates
v/r
JD
The following WIP began two weeks prior to Halloween, when an open schedule finally allowed for the creation of my son's long awaited G1 Soundwave costume. We intend for the suit to be finished by BOTCON (late May/early June), and as there are many facets to this project it will probably take until then to complete. The major pieces did come together in time for the holiday, instead of posting 50 pictures outlining each piece's construction as worn on Halloween, I will be posting compartmentalized updates from here out focusing on each individual piece from start to finish.
For those of you that are unfamiliar, this is Soundwave; doing what Soundwave does best:
Soundwave is the Decepticon communications officer, and he has always been among my favorite Cybertronians. When Orion stated he would like to wear the mask of SW, I was ecstatic. The following sketch outlines our tribute to that most honored of Robots:
The original components, two weeks prior to halloween:
Throughout the Transformers cannon, Soundwave has relied on the use of 'Minicons', small Cybertronians that transform into cassette tapes for storage inside his tape deck. We did not have time to build any minicons for Halloween, but Laserbeak and Ratbat will be featured at BOTCON. We did however get started on the internal architecture to house the minicons:
Orion's little sister Roslynn was really excited about the costume, her demeanor and perspective on life would make any Decepticon proud lol. If this enthusiasm continues I am considering to make a minicon outfit for her to wear at BOTCON..
The weather held just long enough to strengthen critical pieces with the fiber glass / resin method, however there was not time before Halloween to add a bondo finish. We simply painted the areas that were smooth enough, adding a layer of blue poster board to the areas that were not. The effect was very nice, and when the weather breaks in the spring we will finish fiber-glassing the entire costume for BOTCON.
Phase 1 of the tape deck and helm, one week prior to Halloween.
For techno-junkies such as myself, simply creating an image of Soundwave does not pay apt tribute to his greatness. Therefore, Orion and I decided off rip that he should be able to play music in some capacity, adding two 9v 3.6 watt speakers to the original shoulder arrangement, supplied w MP3 via an old blackberry storm to be housed in the left gauntlet.. Great idea - for making your kid def lol.. So we decided to make the backpack into a speaker housing so as to project the sound safely away from his ears. As the backpack was already sealed up by this point we decided to exclude sound for Halloween. We did manage to get 5 of the led's wired in though.
Because of the parade rules <see below> we decided to wait on finishing the shoulder cannon, creating instead two shoulder pieces representing a dual compact disc upgrade. Hahaha, so far as the pic itself, lets just say no one in the Duran household is happy when the play station network goes down!! <PSN ID: Teslacron_Prime (for u fellow WFC/DOTM players out there!>
Halloween Parade!! Orion's school does not allow the use of props that resemble weapons, masks, or pretty much anything else righteous; therefore we could not attach the shoulder cannon, and in lieu of the helm he borrowed my aerospace headset for the event. None-the-less it was hands down the best outfit there and no shortage of kids nor parents came up to us afterword!
Side view of the Parade configuration.
The internal harness connecting the tape deck and the backpack broke right at the end of the parade, and in the hours directly following I rebuilt the harness at Joanne Fabrics. The new configuration mimics a low altitude parachute. <note: the pad assemblies were fine, only the D-ring assemblies and nylon webbing were added directly prior to trick or treating>
Pieces as worn on Halloween:
So that is round one of our Soundwave WIP, it was honestly my first real attempt at costuming, so any and all feedback is appreciated!
<additional pictures on Facebook (public album): Soundwave WIP>
Thank you for viewing, stay tuned for updates
v/r
JD
