Another reason I wanted to make Mercy is that I have never made wings before and thought this could be a great challenge. Also these mechanical wings look really cool. Here's the tutorial for the staff and the rest of the costume.
They also look heavy. And for my first iteration did not make the yellow feathers, which is not a problem as Mercy also walk around with the "feathers" turned off. But I did include the feathers for my upgrade before thte CSPLY.eu photoshoot.
The build
The first thing I did with wings was to make a simplified blueprint (outlined using vector drawing) scaled it up to my body size and printed it out. This blueprint would be my guide.
Then I had to think about how I would attach the wings to my body and flag pole holders embedded i the back piece was my solution.
The back piece for Mercy is not that big to begin with and I wanted to keep it as small as possible.
To add support I screwed the pole holders to a Plexiglas plate
And built the rest of the back piece around it. Starting with cardboard to get my overall shape.
Adding foam to build up details.
To make it sturdy to be able to hold the weight of the wings I covered in in worbla.
Painting. I used spray paint and it is still a little too shiny. Must remember to put on a matte clear coat.
I built both the wings and the back piece simultaneously to know that they would fit together. Here is a sum up of the wings.
I had my blueprints
Which I traced over to 10 mm foam board. Also known as Kapa
I used an electrical saw to cut out the pieces. (Still took forever)
Layout test
The attachment between the wings and the back piece was made from the rest of the flag pole (eg. an alu pipe). I drilled small holes down the pipe which I would press nails thought to get it to get stuck to the foam board.
Adding nails
Gluing the pieces together.
For the top part of the wings I needed a double curvature piece. To make it I took a PVC pipe and added ting foil and masking tape to build up my shape. If I had more time I would have made it smooth, but when in a rush this worked.
Then I added worbla over my mold.
New assembly test
To smooth out edges I used paper mache.
Started with painting
In the middle of the wings there are two other complex parts which also have a red light in them. I build the base out of 5 mm foam board and covered it with worbla. Then I carved out a hole for the lights and filled it with polymorph.
The finished wings, at least the first iteration until I make the yellow feathers.
Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus
Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus
Yellow feathers :D
To be able to move around I scaled them down a little. I used a 2 mm clear acrylic sheet (only thing that you can buy in the city center of Oslo). The feathers were spray painted yellow.
The final wings
Or maybe I will upgrade them with lights, because everything is better with more lights.
Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus
Phot by Kyman Cheng for the CSPLY.eu photobok project.
Photo: Håvard Staub Nyhus
Photo by Spoocks Photography
