I-CON 27 Jawa costume part 4 - The Eyes
I will preface this by saying that if I had it all to do over again I'd probably do it just about exactly the same way. This just plain worked.
Part 1: Demolition
Obtained supercheap LED lights from Radio Shack. After much attacking with various manner of tools and many fits and starts and close calls with Exacto knives I found out that the best way to get them apart was to squeeze the bottom part under the lip and pry under the lip until you get two pieces that look like these here.
The battery/guts part is easy, simply remove the two screws holding the guts in the bottom casing and using the handy dandy screw tabs wire the entire battery/led hunk onto the mask. The metal strip on the left side of each assembly in the picture is the contact for the light. Try to avoid squishing it without some manner of diffusing lens over it unless you particularly enjoy temporary blindness.
The lens part is a bit hinkier but not by any means hard. The effective sections of the lens assembly (as shown here) are the clear plastic dome, the black plastic base, and the silver reflector. The clear dome is glued onto the black base so I found that the most effective way to remove the clear dome (and make the profile of the lid as small as possible) was to break that black rim off of the outside of the base. The plastic breaks very easily and naturally there if you grip the edge with a pair of pliers and bend it back and forth. The glue seal between the clear and black pieces will break easily as you do this and the dome should come right off. The reflective part peels off of the black pretty easily but if you have trouble getting under it you can pop a hole in it from the back (along the edge) and it makes it easier to get a grip on the foil.
Here is a pic of the underside of the black case-lid both with the rim broken off and without. If you mouse over the whole lid in the pic you'll see there is a note regarding the on/off mechanism. It is a small ramp shape which you line up with the metal contact on the light assembly. If you position it over the metal contact when you turn it one way it does not touch the contact at all, but if you turn it the other way it presses it down and switches on the light. The lid attaches via three tabs around the edges of the light assembly that click into slots on the lid and it is very simple to pop on and off.
I seriously couldn't have designed that light better for my needs if I tried.
Part 2: Construction
To achieve the eye color I glued one of the aforementioned glass blobs to the center of each of the lids.
The LED projects up through the hole a little bit, so to provide the correct spacing I put a ring of hot glue around the center hole of each lid and placed three black seed beads in the glue around the edge to provide a sort of spacer to raise it up off of the lid, this could be done just as easily with something like small pieces of toothpick. With the glue still hot I placed the glass blob over the center and then held the lid and glass together upside down for a few minutes to harden.
Once hardened I took a short piece of black ribbon and glued it around the base of the blob to frame the eye light and block light coming out of the sides. The lid still looked a bit shiny so I coated the top of it with white glue and glued sand down to it (miniature basing style) and then painted that and any exposed hot glue with black paint. It is helpful to have the light on while you're doing this as there does tend to be some light leak out of the sides via the clear glue.
The glass paint I used required a coat of some manner of (supplied) pre-paint conditioner so check to make sure nothing of this nature is necessary before you glue anything down. I actually did that step before anything else and let the conditioner dry while I was doing all the demolition and rebuilding. Once the lens was pretty well finished I applied a thick coat or two of the amber coloured glass paint to the glass blobs to intensify the colour a bit. It looked oddly green to me up close but the color seemed to work out perfectly in the mask.
Part 3: Detail pictures
Here is a comparison of the lid before demo and the lid with the glass and ribbon glued on. I think the only thing I would change is to glue some manner of fabric over the lid instead of the sand texturing to help blend it with the mask a little better which I could still even do now.
Here is a side view of the eye mechanism all together which shows a lot of the details really clearly such as the ribbon, the relative placement and scale, and the attachment of the mechanism to the mask. These were also extremely light and the mask did not feel like it was hanging or pulling my head forward at all.
Here is a closeup of the eyes from the front.
Here is the mask with the eyes switched on. From inside the mask I did not get any glare whatsoever from the lights and several times had to hold my hands up in front of my face to see if the lights were still lit.
Overall I'd call it a success.
Part 1: Demolition
Obtained supercheap LED lights from Radio Shack. After much attacking with various manner of tools and many fits and starts and close calls with Exacto knives I found out that the best way to get them apart was to squeeze the bottom part under the lip and pry under the lip until you get two pieces that look like these here.
The battery/guts part is easy, simply remove the two screws holding the guts in the bottom casing and using the handy dandy screw tabs wire the entire battery/led hunk onto the mask. The metal strip on the left side of each assembly in the picture is the contact for the light. Try to avoid squishing it without some manner of diffusing lens over it unless you particularly enjoy temporary blindness.
The lens part is a bit hinkier but not by any means hard. The effective sections of the lens assembly (as shown here) are the clear plastic dome, the black plastic base, and the silver reflector. The clear dome is glued onto the black base so I found that the most effective way to remove the clear dome (and make the profile of the lid as small as possible) was to break that black rim off of the outside of the base. The plastic breaks very easily and naturally there if you grip the edge with a pair of pliers and bend it back and forth. The glue seal between the clear and black pieces will break easily as you do this and the dome should come right off. The reflective part peels off of the black pretty easily but if you have trouble getting under it you can pop a hole in it from the back (along the edge) and it makes it easier to get a grip on the foil.
Here is a pic of the underside of the black case-lid both with the rim broken off and without. If you mouse over the whole lid in the pic you'll see there is a note regarding the on/off mechanism. It is a small ramp shape which you line up with the metal contact on the light assembly. If you position it over the metal contact when you turn it one way it does not touch the contact at all, but if you turn it the other way it presses it down and switches on the light. The lid attaches via three tabs around the edges of the light assembly that click into slots on the lid and it is very simple to pop on and off.
I seriously couldn't have designed that light better for my needs if I tried.
Part 2: Construction
To achieve the eye color I glued one of the aforementioned glass blobs to the center of each of the lids.
The LED projects up through the hole a little bit, so to provide the correct spacing I put a ring of hot glue around the center hole of each lid and placed three black seed beads in the glue around the edge to provide a sort of spacer to raise it up off of the lid, this could be done just as easily with something like small pieces of toothpick. With the glue still hot I placed the glass blob over the center and then held the lid and glass together upside down for a few minutes to harden.
Once hardened I took a short piece of black ribbon and glued it around the base of the blob to frame the eye light and block light coming out of the sides. The lid still looked a bit shiny so I coated the top of it with white glue and glued sand down to it (miniature basing style) and then painted that and any exposed hot glue with black paint. It is helpful to have the light on while you're doing this as there does tend to be some light leak out of the sides via the clear glue.
The glass paint I used required a coat of some manner of (supplied) pre-paint conditioner so check to make sure nothing of this nature is necessary before you glue anything down. I actually did that step before anything else and let the conditioner dry while I was doing all the demolition and rebuilding. Once the lens was pretty well finished I applied a thick coat or two of the amber coloured glass paint to the glass blobs to intensify the colour a bit. It looked oddly green to me up close but the color seemed to work out perfectly in the mask.
Part 3: Detail pictures
Here is a comparison of the lid before demo and the lid with the glass and ribbon glued on. I think the only thing I would change is to glue some manner of fabric over the lid instead of the sand texturing to help blend it with the mask a little better which I could still even do now.
Here is a side view of the eye mechanism all together which shows a lot of the details really clearly such as the ribbon, the relative placement and scale, and the attachment of the mechanism to the mask. These were also extremely light and the mask did not feel like it was hanging or pulling my head forward at all.
Here is a closeup of the eyes from the front.
Here is the mask with the eyes switched on. From inside the mask I did not get any glare whatsoever from the lights and several times had to hold my hands up in front of my face to see if the lights were still lit.
Overall I'd call it a success.