Arr, the Kraken | Doctor Octopus Costume Page 3

Projects

The claws! Claws were nearly as "make or break" as the arms since they were featured pretty prominently in the movie. Of course I wanted articulated claws - or at least one claw - so they could serve as drink holders for the night. Don't want to hold my cup? Just have the lower right arm hold it for me. It wouldn't have been too hard to come up with a cam driven claw but the problem was mounting the motors and gears and whatnot inside the arm or under the jacket. No matter what I thought of it just wasn't going to fit. So static claws it was.

Wood and carpenters staples ended up working pretty well. Since I don't have any fine woodworking tools I just used a chopsaw and some guessing to get the angles and curves just right on the claws. It did occasionally take a big chunk out of the wood but it didn't matter much once they were all painted. The staples left a gap between each wood segment but that ended up working pretty well since it let the claws flex a bit if they ever got caught on anything.

A 4 inch hole saw cut out the disks to mount each pincher of the claw and left a nice hole in the center for eventually mounting the lights. Three of the four clwas are identical but I wanted the one above my head and looking forward to stand out so it's open. Just spinning the middle wood section of each pincher opened it up pretty well.

I tried to use screws or nails to mount the pinchers to the disk but that just succeeded in breaking some of my prototypes. Wood glue ended up working the best.

More metal spray paint and some nice bright red bulbs (not LEDs) from radio shack completed the claws. I found some end caps meant for the plastic downspout tubing, screwed the claws to those and those to the arms. They fit nicely inside and held everythign pretty well in place. You can see the screws if you look for them but they were hid in the black troughs of the arms pretty well.

Wire thread easily through the conduit in the arms, hooray for planning ahead.

All assembled and wired. With the added mass of the claws on the end of the arms they tended to bob around a little more when I walked but nothing too bad.

A cool old knife switch - think Igor and Frankenstein - I found around the house worked to control the lights. I ended up never turning them off and they weren't that bright but it definately added something to the costume to have them there. If anything I'd consider adding more but I didn't have any more bulbs and it was only a few days to halloween so this is what I've got.

Glowy.

The Doc in action: Pictures from party.

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Content copyright Zack Birkenbuel, Images copyright their original owner.
Though really, if you find something spiffy enough to use, use it, just attach my name - more hits when google ego surfing.