Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Make Your Own TRON Costume

Posted by michael on Sat Apr 03, 2004 08:30 PM
from the parents-don't-let-your-kids-do-this dept.
cottonbuds writes "Apparently someone used his imagination -- with plaster, some time, a drinking straw up his nose and vaseline, combining these four elements he created a fascinating Tron costume."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:33PM (#8759075)
    ...like that guy in the light cycle.
  • by Faust7 (314817) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:33PM (#8759079) Homepage
    Light that thing up and you wouldn't have to worry at all about being a road hazard when trick-or-treating.

    "Don't hit the program!"
  • Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)

    by loveisafist (766873) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:34PM (#8759085) Homepage
    Seems he built his webserver from the same materials...
  • by Anonymous Coward
    For someone reading Slashdot on a Saturday night... like me.
  • by Perseid (660451) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:36PM (#8759095)
    "Apparently someone used his imagination -- with plaster, some time, a drinking straw up his nose and vaseline, combining these four elements he created a fascinating - "

    And I can only thank God the sentence ended with "Tron Costume".
  • by plasm4 (533422) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:36PM (#8759098) Journal
    here is the text from the website, it was a really good read while it lasted:


    Server Error in '/' Application.
    Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
    Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
    Source Error:

    Line 18:
    Line 19: ldr = MCP.GetDR("SELECT tsDocuments.*,
    Users.userLogin, Users.userFirstName, Users.userLastName,
    Users.userEmail FROM tsDocuments INNER JOIN Users ON tsDocuments.docCreator = Users.userID WHERE docID = " & lintID)
    Line 20: ldr.Read()
    Line 21:
    Line 22: 'Update User Location
    Source File: D:\WWW\TronSector\articles\article.aspx Line: 20
    Stack Trace:
    [NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
    ASP.article_aspx.Page_Load(Object Sender, EventArgs E) in D:\WWW\TronSector\articles\article.aspx:20
    System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +67
    System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35
    System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +731

    Version Information:Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.573; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.573
  • by MaineGuy (626525) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:39PM (#8759116) Homepage
    link [216.239.41.104]
  • apparently (Score:5, Informative)

    by nuckin futs (574289) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:40PM (#8759121)
    someone used a link by BaumSquad from the Real Akira Motorcycle thread to create something "newsworthy".
  • Article Text (Score:5, Informative)

    by xSquaredAdmin (725927) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:40PM (#8759126)
    I started out with the one element I knew would take me the longest, the helmet. I should mention that any time I have to work on a helmet or loose-fitting full-head mask, I use a bust that I created just for this purpose.

    The bust began with a standard life-mask made with plaster impregnated bandages available at craft and medical supply stores. As you might have guessed, I sat for about half an hour with pieces of drinking straw up my nose, while my mother wrapped my Vaseline coated face in plaster bandage. After the bandages had set, the cast was carefully removed and the breathing holes patched with small pieces of bandage, and more Vaseline applied to the inner surface of the mold. I then poured plaster of paris into the life-mask, let it set, and carefully removed the finished life-mask. I sculpted a bust around the life-mask, all the way down to the beginning of the shoulders. This involved taking measurements from my head and comparing the bust to them, until the basic geometric requirements had been met, and then using a bit of "finesse" to make everything fit together properly.

    The original helmets used for the film were a style of hockey helmet in use at the time, extended slightly at the back to hide the hairline. Since I couldn't lay my hands on one on short notice, I began sculpting it in oil-based clay over my custom-made bust. I used paper templates as a guide to insure that the sculpture maintained it's goemetric qualities, and to make sure the side details would remain symmetrical. Finally, a plaster mold was made, and a positive cast made with a cellulose-based material called Celastic. If I had it to do over, I would have cast it in polyester resin and fiberglass, since Celastic must be dissolved in acetone (which is relatively toxic if not handled properly), and must be sanded and filled before being painted and finished. Alternately, I could have broken the original up into sections and vacu-formed it, but we live and learn! The finished positive, after having been filled and sanded, was painted with a cheap, white, oil-based primer (which has yellowed with age - next time I'll use acrylics), and detailed with the circuit pattern. Lastly, the interior was padded to make it more comfortable to wear.

    In the images above you see some of the painted circuitry work being done by hand. I could have masked all of this off, but it was faster to do it "freehand". The "disc", is a glow-in-the-dark frisbee with most of the surface detail sanded off, and new stripes scribed in and painted flourescent blue. The shoulder and arm guards are formed from Celastic in much the same way as the helmet, and attatched to the leotard with small pieces of elastic glued to the pieces and sewn to the costume body.

    YORI by IronWulf

    Visit IronWulf's TRON costume page for more pics and info.

    TRON by BaumSquad

    First thing to find was some armor. For this, I went to Play It Again Sports (the BEST place to get Halloween gear IMHO) Anyway, I picked up some Hockey gear, which looks amazingly similar to Tron gear. Some hockey helmets look almost identical to the Tron helmets. I found a GREAT helmet used for pretty darn cheap. Then I needed a chest plate because I'm a scrawny little guy and a plain tight T-shirt would have looked too wussy. I found a wonderful thing for baseball catcher's (maybe) and it was great. Had a big chest plate on it and some nice big round shoulder covers. Then I just got some Soccer shin guards to use as those things that Tron has coming off of his elbows. Just wear shin guards on your wrist, with your hand coming through where the foot goes, and the shin part running up your forearm, mocking the things that Tron has quite well. So that takes care of most of your upper body.

    Then at Play It Again Sports I bought an old weight lifters belt to wear, well, as a belt. It defines the look a little better, though drawing lines on the shirt would work as well. And then I bought some old moon boots at Goodwill (okay, goodwill is probably the best Hallowe
  • An essay on TRON Costume

    To delve deeply into TRON Costume is an exciting adventure. The constantly changing fashionable take on TRON Costume demonstrates the depth of the subject. Though TRON Costume is a favourite topic of discussion amongst monarchs, presidents and dictators, its influence on western cinema has not been given proper recognition. It still has the power to shock the aristocracy, who form the last great hope for our civilzation. Keeping all of this in mind, in this essay I will examine the
  • That's a fairly old page...while there are good tips there, one thing that nobody seems to have managed is getting the right green tint to the outfit. For someone wanting to try their own, let me suggest Krylon Fusion spray paint in the color they call Honeydew, shade 2335. It seems to be a pretty good match. Dying the bodysuit that color, of course, is a trick...and I haven't yet figured out how to attach ELwire to it directly.
  • Can anyone else see a little blue glowing man inside of the server pushing a giant wheel while being whipped by one of those red guards?

    Maybe I've just seen the movie too much.
  • Another (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aquasheep (681072) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:45PM (#8759144)
    Two other guys were linked in the article as having their own Tron [rit.edu] costumes [davidsilva.com]
  • by CoolGuySteve (264277) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:45PM (#8759148)
    Maybe somebody can clarify for me, but aren't the costumes in Tron just shoulder pads and 80's style hockey helmets with some weird effects and stylings? They sure do look like it when I caught it on TV the other day.

    I used to think they looked pretty cool until I realized that. Now it's just kind of funny. It makes you realize that it's really just a bunch of fully grown adults running around a soundstage pretending to be IN TEH COMPUTAR.

    Still a good movie though.
  • Tron game... (Score:5, Informative)

    by lukewarmfusion (726141) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:45PM (#8759150) Homepage Journal
    I recently got hooked on a Shockwave Flash game like Tron... enjoy.

    http://www.cybermonkey.org/html/game/swron/index.h tm [cybermonkey.org]
  • by AtariAmarok (451306) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:48PM (#8759165)
    Sheezh. All you have to do is get a St Louis Blues hockey costume and.... make it more blue. Viola. instant Tron costume.

    I will tell you this, once you do this, all chances of getting Anna Kournikova as your wife (a la Sergei Federov) are over. Keep it as a hockey costume to increase the chances of this from zero to nill.
  • by BaumSquad (632811) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:49PM (#8759169)
    I suppose my response for a wish for a tron Light cycle in the Akira bike thread kicked this off. Tron Light Cycle Thread [slashdot.org]

    Woops. But, yeah, I did make a Tron suit for Halloween a couple of years ago. Have worn it for each Halloween since. It turned out great, and I'm sorry to the guy at Tron-Sector that got slashdotted. It's a great site and I recommend it to all once it gets back up and running. Anyway, the full text of my description on how I made it is posted in here somewhere. My name in that is BaumSquad as well. I'm just sorry that you guys can't see the final products!! It's pretty damn cool, if you like TRON. If you guys are nuts to see it, someone with webspace can post an e-mail address or e-mail me at paul(at)thebaumsquad.com and I'll send you the pics from my version. Pretty rad.

    Anyway, thanks for enjoying the work! And honestly, if any of you are interested in doing something like this, it's not THAT hard. Just take a weekend or so and about $50 in materials, and have a pretty damn kick ass costume, if I do say so myself.

    The light cycle, however, will take a little more time and energy. (And no I haven't made one... YET!)

  • four? (Score:3, Funny)

    by corian (34925) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:54PM (#8759192)
    Apparently someone used his imagination -- with plaster, some time, a drinking straw up his nose and vaseline, combining these four elements

    That's FIVE.

    1 - Imagination.
    2 - Plaster.
    3 - Time.
    4 - Straw.
    4.5 - Nose
    5 - Vaseline

    Not exactly elements either, are they?
  • Priceless (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok (451306) on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:54PM (#8759193)
    1. Used hockey helmet: $25
    2. 5 yards of blue lame fabric: $53
    3. Look on boss's face when you walk into the office Monday morning in full costume and yell "GREETINGS, PROGRAM!"..... priceless.
  • by KageMonkey (740043) on Saturday April 03 2004, @09:08PM (#8759251)
    "Why hello there, pretty girl. I have a level 60 Paladin on Everquest and he has a sword that does triple damage to Goblins and Orcs!!! OMG!!! And during my spare time, I made this really cool Tron Costume!!! Want to go out with me???"
  • by raygundan (16760) on Saturday April 03 2004, @09:21PM (#8759304) Homepage
    I don't know how "short notice" he was looking for, but I managed to find several dozen hockey helmets *exactly* like the ones used in the 80s to make the helmets in the movie on ebay when I made my Tron costume. Took about a week to arrive, and a few days to paint. I'm certainly not as hardcore as he is, but MAN are there easier ways than plaster-casting your head and sculpting the helmet from scratch.

    Still, props to him for going the extra mile...
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03 2004, @09:28PM (#8759339)
    plaster, some time, a drinking straw up his nose and vaseline

    What is CowboyNeal's normal Saturday night, Alex?

  • WORKING MIRROR (Score:5, Informative)

    by Three Headed Man (765841) <[moc.oohay] [ta] [nehc_reteid]> on Saturday April 03 2004, @09:37PM (#8759366)
  • ... to the people that get slashdotted to the great beyond, I really think slashdot should give them something to compensate these poor unsuspecting people...

    Maybe a T shirt with the catch line "My web site got slashdotted and all I got was this lousy T shirt"

  • W00t! (Score:3, Funny)

    by one9nine (526521) on Saturday April 03 2004, @10:01PM (#8759431) Journal
    Just in time for Holloween! :-)
  • MIRROR LINK (Score:5, Informative)

    by jdkane (588293) on Saturday April 03 2004, @10:06PM (#8759453)
    The site is slow right now under the Slashdot effect.

    Fortunately the content is old enough that it's available through the Internet Archive [archive.org]

  • TWO WORDS: (Score:5, Funny)

    by nomadic (141991) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (dlrowcidamon)> on Saturday April 03 2004, @10:57PM (#8759606) Homepage
    Girl magnet.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03 2004, @08:51PM (#8759178)
      Arghhhh! I hate the way anytime anyone does anything creative there is always some wanker who says "too much free time". What the hell do you do with your free time then? Sit and study algorithms?

      Imagine where the world would have been if there weren't more people with "too much free time".

      Loser 1: "Where's Leonardo?"
      Loser 2: "Oh, he's off painting some tart or designing his whirly-gigs again."
      Loser 1: "That guys has way too much free time."

      Instead of complaining try doing something creative yourself sometime.
        • I'm willing to bet Da Vinci spent a lot of time doing silly little projects that didn't turn out to be masterpieces of historical importance, and were quickly forgotten -- that's how you learn, by doing. And even making cardboard junk is a lot more creative than sitting around thinking up clever put-downs to post on Slashdot.
    • The type of trekkie that builds a life-sized transporter room in his basement.

      You mean something like This [webshots.com]?

    • I've actually had a cast of my face done like he did.. except we used plaster.. and not plaster gauze.. we built a box around our heads.. then used clay to build dams to contain the plaster.. stuck straws up our noses... sprayed PAM on our faces.. and poured on the plaster.. the trick is to pull the mould before the plaster starts to really heat up.. it could nuke your skin right off... it gets an extremely detailed cast of your face.. hairs.. eyelashes.. pours.. etc.. we used them for bronze casting...iron
    • Why wait until tomorrow: Here ya go [bluepencilpro.com], and there also Borg [bluepencilpro.com], Alien, Predator, even the Grinch.

      -cp-

      • WOW the quality of those costumes, Looks like SHIT... The guy in the Borg costume looks like he needs to take a crap, and most of the Predators costume looks like he used a really rough rasp to complete the final sanding on the pieces.

        I didn't bother looking at the grinch or the alien, I figured this person thought that the low lighting situations of trick or treating would be able to mask most of his CRAPPY workmanship. Sorry but I think I'll keep looking before I make anything from that guys site.

        If you