Time Travel Helmet

The theme for this year's Firelight Lantern Festival is The Time Machine, and Krista and I were going to put together steampunk-inspired costumes for ourselves (which is why the helmet's painted in hammered bronze), but, after shooting the announcement video (second video at the bottom of this post) I decided I'd look better with a lab coat, bow tie, and goggles for a generic 20th Century scientist look.

I'd previously built a jetpack as sci-fi costume accessory for stiltwalking purposes back in 2015, so if I were to combine this helmet, the jetpack, and my refurbished blaster and I'd have a pretty good, mostly homemade, sci-fi costume for...something...down the line...

Creature!

It sorta looks like a weird electronic sea cucumber or sea anemone from the top. More dieselpunk than steampunk; I like it. They were originally crystal clear plastic, but I sanded the insides and outsides to better disperse the light from the LEDs (which I bought, pre-wired, from the fine folks at Evan Designs (AKA ModelTrainSoftware)). Each of the cones has a 5mm flashing white LED and when they're activated (the switch is on the inside of the helmet) they flash in a non-synchronized and random manner (see first video below). I used tin foil and hot glue to fix the LEDs in the pre-existing holes in the helmet before expoxying the cones on.

Cones!

Those cones are actually meant for desserts of some kind. They came in packs with hemispherical bases that the points would rest in, giving you an upright cone to fill with...whatever. I used some on a previous FLF stilting costume in 2017 when the theme was Fire and Ice as the "ice" part of my staff (which also had LED lighting):

FLF 2017: Fire and Ice!

Bottles!

The two drug bottles on top are just for show, but the big one on the back houses the battery and can be opened (child-proof cap and all) to detach or replace the battery. I drilled a hole in the back of the helmet to thread the battery connector end of the wire from the inside –aside from that, all the other changes to helmet are cosmetic.

Hubs!

I used some extra wheel hubs for the greeblies on the two bottles on top of the helmet. They were already chromed, so I installed them after the bottles were painted (first black, then masked off (for the stripes) and sprayed silver).

Caps!

Funnily enough, the back bottle (centre bottom) looked like it needed something on its back end (originally its bottom) so I epoxied a bottle cap to it, not realizing that it has two caps now, one on each end. But it's okay, I guess.

Cute!

If you squint and concentrate on the two cones in front, then add the red and white bird decal, it looks like a cute creature with eyes on stalks (with silver-tipped pupils) and a tiny mouth. This is inadvertent.

Decals!

I used some spare decals from the Aoshima Food Truck model kit I transformed into the Small Pond Arts Puppet Wagon back in 2015. It was unlikely that I'd use them on any other model project, but they work here as texture. The eagle is from a boat kit (not built yet) and the "22 JR." is from a dragster kit which I've used as a donor for several model kitbashes. Etc.

Profile!

I think it looks especially pleasing from the side, as the cone placement gives it a sort of swept-back-for-aerodynamics look.

Short Test Video!

It's a little shaky, but I just wanted to see what this looked like on my head while I wore the rest of my costume. Those goggles are actual welding goggles, so I couldn't walk on stilts wearing them; they'll likely go on my forehead or just be slung around my neck.

FLF 2019 Theme Announcement!

This is animated as single-frames with lightning and sound effects added to the main pic Krista took of me hovering over her TARDIS lantern. 21 photos were used in total for this 10-second clip.

Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi...

Small Pond Arts Puppet Wagon (1/24 scale model)

I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co...

U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701-D (1/1400 scale model)

Seven decades after Kirk. I'd been hooked on Star Trek since I was a wee lad in the 1970s, watching reruns of the original series from the '60s, and I enjoyed the movies that came out afterward. When a new series was announced to debut in 1987, I was excited and interested, even though I felt the subtitle "The Next Generation" was cheesy. Nearly 30 years later, I've definitely gotten used to it (but "TNG" is easier to say and type), but I still find it kinda bland. Anyway, the show had fresh new technology and a spanking new design for its main ship, the U.S.S. Enterprise , NCC-1701-D, now the flagship of the Federation. Andrew Probert 's design took some getting used to for me; it had the same basic elements of the original Enterprise (saucer, neck, cylinder, and two cylindrical engines on pylons), but the shapes and volumes were distributed differently, weirdly. Everything looked squished and soft. The organic look of this new ship had me ...

The Naked Silo

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