jellyfish costume

Edit: 12 Sept 2007 - I got featured on the today's front page of Instructables.com! Neat!



Last year at Bestival, I built a big fortune telling machine costume to wear. I only just found this picture and blog post just now of what ended up happening to it after I left it at Bestival.

This year, I thought I'd get a bit more high-tech and try using some electronics in a costume. So, inspired by this book I bought, The Deep, I tried to replicate a deep sea bioluminscent jellyfish.



It's made from:
1 x washing up tub - £2.99, pound store
22 x kids LED light up necklaces @ £1 each - Internet wholesalers
1 x cheap sports helmet - £9.99, Decathlon
Hot glue gun
cable ties - any hardware store
battery pack, wires, switch and box - Maplin Electronics

Here it is, by day:

view from underneath - your head goes in the helmet bit

and here it is, at night:


and a video:

Direct link to YouTube

It was definitely the most fun I've ever had building anything - the materials were my favourite blend of ordinary objects, technology and loads of glue and cable ties. I spent about 8 hours over 2 days building it, and if I could somehow do this all the time for a living, I would.

The visual impact at night was amazing - from far away it really did look unearthly - but it wasn't as fun to be in as last year's Zoltar outfit. Mainly because it only works at night, by which time everyone is too far gone to really make the most of it. People's reactions are limited to staring, getting all their mates and dancing around you, having a fit, or asking very slow unintelligent questions about it. Best quote of the night:

"Jelly head man, in the rave tent you were freaking me out big time."

I plan to use it at bonfires and firework shows this winter to entice children towards me, where I will try sell them the leftover LED rope necklaces (I had to buy a wholesale batch of 72, so have 50 left). If you would like to buy or borrow this jellyfish head suit, let me know.

If you are interested in the technical details of how to build it, you can go to Flickr, or there is a full Instructable here.

bestival 2007 planning

We're camping here - top left hand corner of Green Campsite no 3:


and I'm going to deploy this flag, up a 5 meter flagpole, to mark our camp:


On Saturday, we're going to dress as bees and meet at 2:45 at the big top, to swarm somewhere. The more bees, the better. The rest of the time, I'll be dressed as an illuminated jellyfish, so please come say hi.

Afterthought - are there any other communications planners/marketing strategists going to this festival? There's already Faris, Asi and I'm also going in a car with 2 other planners...

zoltar fortune telling costume

Ages ago I posted about halloween costumes. I got my first useful comment on this blog - I had drawn a couple of sketches of an arcade machine costume, and a guy had replied:

The Arcade machine is a killer idea. I may just have to import that one to the states. I was thinking maybe a "Zoltar" fortune telling machine like from that Tom Hanks movie "Big"

That is why blogging and the Internet are so good.

So anyway this story is about my costume for Bestival 2006, a big music and fancy dress festival on the Isle of Wight. The agency I work for was taking us there for our annual summer party.

My costume choices were:

• UPS delivery guy(s)
• Putting a microwave on head
• With 2 other mates as the crow, kid, and dog from the Kia Ora advert (80's kids TV)
• A big cardbox box on you to make you a 'white good' of some kind, e.g. washing machine, fridge. I thought this would be cute as you would end up looking and walking like the milk carton in Blur's Coffee and TV. I just had a thought i would be cool to get a couple of mates as other appliances and you could all just make a kitchen together.
  

• Zoltar Fortune telling machine from the movie 'Big'
• With 2 other people as a dog show. I can't remember how this would work exactly, but 1 or 2 people would be obstacles like poles or the cloth tunnel, and another guy would be a crufts judge with a table, trophy and scorecards. We would then have a dog outfit which we would give to people and the handler would take them round our 'course'. Hmm.
• the Alessi knife rack that looks like a person
  

In the end the UPS idea won out - because it was easy, quick and is quite a fun thing to go round as - you can talk to a lot of people. The most fun about making it (aside from the fact that I got ANOTHER boiler suit! yay!) was making the tape stripes out of silver duct tape with yellow insulating tape on it.

L to R: Stuart and me. PACKAGE COMING THROUGH!

But I was still nagged that I really wanted to build Zoltar. It looked a bit impossible given the fact that I only had 2 nights to do it, but when I saw a perfect sized cardboard box outside work, I knew I had to try. So off I pedalled to B&Q (like Home Depot).

Zoltar Shopping List: you will need

• A big cardboard box - the base of the outfit
• PVC plumbling pipes about 30mm diameter - they form the struts and the internal frame
• Loads of duct tape
• Paint and decoration for the outside of the box
• Material for little curtains
• Mystic waistcoat of some kind
• bit of bedsheet for turban
• Crystal ball

Essentially, it's just a box, with a frame of PVC pipes that enable the 4 tall vertical pipes to hold the top of the machine. The only tricky thing was that I was going to have to be able to assemble the entire rig at the festival, using minimal (just duct tape and a knife), as it wouldn't fit in the bus we were going in.

The frame was put together first, using trial-and-error and a hacksaw to cut the pipes to the right size, and just taping the joints together using duct tape. I knew i was going to have to dismantle this, so I just used one bit of tape, and labelled every pole and joint. This took about one and a half hours.

Once I had built the frame, and then squeezed it into the box, I was really surpised at how strong it was, and knew I wouldn't have any worries about needing more bits of frame. It was still a bit flexy laterally, but with the box flaps taped down, things were super strong.

Then all that was left to do was attach the header card to the top poles, which i did just using duct tape.

This is where I ended up at about 1am - a ready to decorate Zoltar box!

Stage 2: Decorating Zoltar

As much as I could work out from the Internet, the Zoltar in Big looks a bit like this:

I could have gone for an uber-realistic effect, but the actual Zoltar isn't visually that striking. Aside from the fact it's a guy in a turban in a box, there aren't any strong visual clues to copy. Vic, who'd arrived with with a load of paints, material and glitter went with a panto-esque, friendly, lo-fi approach, which worked beautifully.

We worked til about 10pm and then packed it in. The next day I got up really early, pulled the whole thing apart, stuffed the cardboard in a bin bag, taped all the poles together, and got on the number 8 to work.

So, on arrival at the festival, me and stuart changed into UPS outifts and spent a pleasant evening delivering packages to people.

The next day I woke up, chilled for a bit and got Ed of whatwhat to help me put Zoltar together. I also made him draw me some signs, which we glued onto Zoltar, just in case anyone couldn't work out what was going on.

The next step involved taping curtains to the box, and hanging up the grotty-but-fab mirrorball, which would enable me to see into people's disco futures. By this stage things were looking good, and the sunshine was out.

The masking tape is just to hold the HE SPEAEKS YOUR FUTURE sign in place until the copydex dries.

rear view

I then packed some glowsticks and flashy LED rubber things, duct tape, a Stanley knife (box cutter), and some marker pens into a bag and set off into the madness. Met up with the gang but still wasn't feeling very Zoltar-like.

But then when we hit the main parade, I was inspired by all the other costumes. Some were very creative, some very professional and some just plain funny.

Lego guy costume

Box jellyfish head guy costume (my personal fave)

As well as a lot of shouts of "CAN YOU MAKE ME BIG!?", I was getting a lot of people come up to me and ask for their fortune to be read. About 50% of them would present me with their palms too. At first this threw me a little, but I got steadily better and sleazier as the day went on.

fortune: many people will stare at your chest, and your self-esteem will rise, then fall

The box really isn't very heavy and I could easily lug it around all day. Which I did, getting more and more drunk, until nightfall.

I then ended up in the dance tent, and decided to stick these horrible flashing LED lights and glowsticks all over the box. This turned out to be a dreadful idea as they kind of blinded and confused me as the night wore on. It was a huge attention grabber though.

It was definitely the most fun fancy dress I've ever made or worn. There are loads of pics here on my Flickr.

I'm going to try and add more to this post when I get a chance.

technorati tags:fancy, dress, bestival, 2006, costume, zoltar, tom, hanks, big, movie, fortune, teller