The helmet was not, strictly speaking, the first part of the costume that I started. Prior to working on the helmet, I also tried to dye some gloves and turtleneck purple. Those misadventures will be recounted elsewhere.

Last Update: Saturday, August 7, 2004

1. I started with a cheap, thin plastic pith helmet. The critical attributes about this hat was that it was made of thin plastic, and thus would cut easily, that it was cheap, so butchering it would not break the bank, and that it more or less fit me. It didn't have to be a pith helmet. A construction helmet or something else with those critical attributes could have been used just as easily.

2. I lopped off the brim with scissors.

3. Instead of just charging headlong into cutting foam and taping it onto the helmet, I made mock-ups out of newspaper first, to see how my design would fit together. This method allowed me to see flaws in my design and reach a better finished product. So here I have a simple partial oval of newspaper taped onto the core helmet. This partial oval will make a good base to tape on other things.

4. Here, I have taped on some more pieces of newspaper, trying to better approximate the boxy look of Spinister's helmet.

5. I have added even more newspaper, and the helmet is starting to take shape.

6. I added Spinister's crest. However, it does not show up terribly well in this picture, so I outlined it with the line tool in Photoshop for better ease of observation.

7. Here are my notes on the helmet dimensions. I realise that they are rather cryptic. However, I am the only one who needs to understand them, and I do understand them. Thus, as long as your notes make sense to you, gibberish is okay. From my notes, we also see that I measure in centimetres. I learned from my newspaper mock-up and the final dimensions that ended up here were better than the ones used in the newspaper mock-up.

8. Dimensions in mind, I got out my ruler and cut out the pieces that I would need from black foam. Technically, the stuff that I used is called "Foamies by Darice". It bends nicely, which is why I prefer it to cardboard, which tends to crease in unfavourable fashion. Most of it was 2 mm thick, but I ran out of that and had to use some thicker stuff for part of it.

9. I assembled the foam pieces, taping them to the helmet with black duct tape. The crest was pieced together with glue, Loctite household cement, to be specific, then glued to the helmet. I then left the helmet near an air vent, as Loctite household cement has bad fumes, and I wanted to get the thing aired out.

10. The helmet mostly done, I started work on the mask. First, I made a mask out of paper and saw how that looked (see the paper mask sitting on the floor). I taped that onto my face and saw how that looked. I then made a better paper mask, having learned from the first one (see the paper mask taped to the pink plastic frame, which is actually a wig stand - I was going to use a globe if I had not found that stand). Using the better paper mask as my model for lengths and angles, I cut out some pieces of stem wire using my wire snips and carefully bent the wires into the desired angles. Stem wire is a stiffer wire than the stuff found in pipe cleaner and holds its shape better. It is found in the floral section of craft stores. A different type of wire that was also fairly stiff could have been used instead. Once I had my lengths of wire, I taped them together with duct tape. (Yes, I have blue duct tape.) That mess of wire and blue duct tape in the picture would be the framework for my mask.

11. I then cut out a test mask from a scrap piece of fabric that I was not using for anything else. I pinned it onto the framework, to see how it would look. In doing this, I learned that I needed to leave a larger border when cutting.

12. I then cut out the mask from my good fabric and pinned it onto the mask. I then stitched it on by hand, as I would have to be demented to want to try stitching it onto a wire framework with a machine. Occasionally, I would end up shoving the needle through the duct tape, which I would not recommend doing, as it gummed up the needle so much that the needle had to be cleaned every time after that happened.

13. Here is a shot of the mask from the front, which shows off the shininess of the fabric. Shiny fabric was mainly a stylistic choice, as I tend to prefer shiny things.

14. I then hung up the mask on the pink plastic frame with tape and used 3d, shiny fabric paint to add designs to the mask. Yes, Spinister only has two cheek-slots on each side. I checked.

15. I then used a hole punch to put holes into one side of the helmet. I then taped some ribbon to the paper mask to test how that would look, threading the ribbon through the holes to secure the mask to the helmet. It came out too high, so I had to stab new holes into the helmet, as the lower spots were not reachable by hole punch. (To make matters more annoying, I had to get a new hole punch to punch the first holes, as my old one was inexplicably dull and would not even punch paper. This unforeseen event delayed my progress, which reminded me of how important it is to know that one's tools are working properly beforehand.) To stab the lower holes in, I used a pair of scissors. A knife or awl might have worked equally well, if not better. I tested the lower holes with my paper mask and was satisfied.

16. I then stitched ribbon onto the mask, again by hand. (Yes, the ribbon is leftover from those ornaments I passed out.) I applied a little bit of glue to the tips of the ribbon, to prevent it from fraying.

17. I tested out the mask in the helmet, and it looked good enough.