DIY Majora's Mask

[BigV]

SonofV and I both love costumes. We enthusiastically celebrate Halloween, we have a great time going all out for SakuraCon, we just like dressing up, it's fun! This year for Halloween SonofV wanted to wear the mask from a Legend of Zelda game, Majora's Mask. I was happy to hear his enthusiasm and I told him I'd help him, with the emphasis on help. We started in August, and barely completed it in time for Halloween. That's much more about our pace of work than it is about the degree of difficulty.

Ok, to the pictures.

The plan for this mask was to create it from paper mache. It is so big, and has such an unusual shape that nothing else I could think of could be adapted. This would be a scratch built mask. Like most of my projects, this one turned out to be overengineered by a factor of two or more. Seriously, this wire frame just needs to hold up some wet paper. Balloons have done this successfully. But, being something of a paper mache rookie, I erred on the side of steel.

The plan was to make a frame for the rim of the mask. It is basically heart shaped, so we started with one lap of wire, bent into the shape of a heart, then another.



It's kind of a four-handed operation. The frame is still quite wobbly, but soon it will stiffen up considerably.



After three laps, we started making crossbars that would outline the surface of the mask. He also modeled where holes for his eyes would eventually need to be.



As we progressed with the crossbars/wires, we stopped periodically and put it on the table to see how "flat" it was.