Ah~ Frenzy.
Like all costumes, Frenzy started with a dream. A dream to make a 1:1 scale model of one of my favorite movie characters. I started by finding every image that I could; from design specs to spy pictures to film stills, I have so many images it's crazy. Images of the movie prop, building the movie prop, CG images from the DVD special edition and beyond. I did end up using a set of images from the
designer's webpage as the absolute basis for my design (just like in the movies!). From there I went crazy and made a 3d model in Maya. That took a while as there are too many parts in his face to even look at let alone make from scratch.
Using a program called
Pepakura Designer I managed to convert my model into a printable and buildable object. If anyone wants a copy of my pepakura file, I will be willing to share it via email. It's a hard build and needs a lot of tweaking to get working. The floating parts needed to be held up with special parts.
Here's the face being built...
Once I got the scale going (I determined he stood at about 4'6'' ish) I made a chasis out of wooden craft dowels, hooks, and other doodads.
The CD was always in the tray for scale purposes.
Here is a close up on the final head to show the detail in the moustache and head internals.
I eventually rigged up an idea that I could get the model to become a marionette/puppet and worked that into the design. Even though the backside of Frenzy is nearly complete to the movie version, I still was able to encorporate ports for the legs, arms, and body to be supported by dowels attached to me.
For those of you who attended Botcon 2009 or saw the
Youtube Video here, you might have noticed that Frenzy actually talks!!!! This is thanks to the miracle of
The Thinkgeek.com Personal Soundtrack T-shirt. I ripped and modified Frenzy's sounds from the movie DVD and added them to the T shirt (which is under my overshirt) and was able to play any of them at a push of a button.
And so, the final result:
Head with boombox
Built over a period of 6 months, more than 1030 individually crafted pieces went into Frenzy. He has 4 LED eyes (with the appropriate eye markings), his own stand, room for one CD, full range of motion, and somewhat full sound. Built of Steel hooks, Paper, Foamcore, Wooden Dowels, Chopsticks, LEDs, Hotglue, Wooden junk, Random Plastic junk, and PVC for the harness.
Hardest part: Getting it done! Making that many parts on a pattern that is already made is difficult enough, but what if it has to be symmetrical! Making parts like that is like trying to be a human machine... =( fun, yet not fun.
Regrets: I really wish I could have made the head and neck articulate more. It's just not possible with the parts I made it out of. There are also 8 miniature inner teeth which he's missing, but no one noticed so no worries right? Also, due to the nature of the character, and the way the puppet sat, I tend to move a lot when the costume's on, hence the blurry pictures everyone has. Sorry ;___;
Questions, comments, complaints welcome.
Frenzy - Movie, How it was made (pic heavy)
