Hannah Barnes: Week 10 Cardboard Ball

Concept:

For my costume, I wanted to create a bird mask emulating a species from The Legend of Zelda, known as the Rito. I decided to create the upper half of the birds face with only the top part of the beak, then I added thick feathers protruding from the back of the mask, as seen in the Rito reference picture. Originally, I wanted to leave the cardboard white then add colored cardboard for decoration on the mask. After some complications building the mask however, I decided to paint the mask and turn it into a hat instead.

Technique:

I modeled the mask in Maya. I wanted it to be simple to build, so I tried to limit the amount of polygons I used, which created a blocky look. I translated this to Pepakura to slice the mask into vector shapes. This took several tries to get right, but once I did, I imported the vector file into Rhino where I prepped the laser engraving file.

I got the mask engraved on eflute cardboard. The mask turned out to be too small, so I decided to turn it into a hat. I attempted to assemble the pieces using Locktite super glue, but this turned out poorly. Many of the connecting flaps on the cardboard were too small, and the super glue didn't have much to stick to when I connected the pieces. I also didn't realize that if you mess up on gluing the first time, you can't try and reglue the pieces together. I didn't have any hot glue, so I instead used tape to hold the hat together.

Lastly, I created a simple cardboard band that wraps around my head to secure the hat in place.

Materials:

I used eflute cardboard for this project since the hat was so small and had many pieces that were close together. I painted the hat with red and gold acrylic to add some color and make it feel more cohesive. I'm not pleased with the way the hat turned out, but if I had the chance to do it again, I would use colored cardboard instead of paint. Hopefully, that would give the hat more of a intriguing, stylized feel as opposed to feeling like a kid's mask.