Marty and Mike Wazowski - Laugh Canister Part 1 - Construction
The Concept
I have to admit, while the Ms. Marvel hand may have been a harder foam construction that took several months to complete, this Marty and Mike Wazowski costume is shaping up to be the most ambitious costume yet. It's no laughing matter.
We've officially codenamed the Laugh Canister the "Gathering Intact Giggles Instrument".
As a reminder, the goal was G wanted me to create something with light
and sound. She keeps wanting to raise the bar, and with each passing prop/costume we make she wants something
more. So I needed to figure out a way to incorporate both lights and sound into this new prop.
The very first step was determining the size of it. It's important to keep in mind that this can't be so large that I can't fit it into a suitcase. So while the actual canister in the movie ranges in size from 1.5-2x the size of Mike Wazowski to half his size, that isn't going to fly for this creation. My large suitcase had a max length capacity of 24 inches, and my small suitcase maxed out at 14 inches. In addition to the length, it was important to take into consideration the space inside the canister. I have two battery packs that I'll detail at a later point, but one is 8-AAs and the other is 4-AAs. The 8-AAs is about just over 3 inches wide. So that became the first limiting factor for inside space. Additionally, there is also a speaker for the sound generation. The speaker itself is 3 inches across, but with the housing it ends up being just a shade under 4 inches. So I minimally needed something with a four inch diameter. Steph and I tossed around a few ideas of things that are 14-24 inches long and 4 inches wide.
We thought about making it out of foam like we've done other projects to date. But I remembered how many issues we had with the foam and trying to maintain a shape when making the Ms. Marvel bracelet. I was also concerned it might not be rigid enough for what we were going to be asking of it.
We thought about deconstructing a bird house, but I was worried that it might be too flimsy. A thin soft plastic might have too much movement when I ran, and at the end of the day this is suppose to be a metal canister.
We thought about using some plastic tubing like you place on the end of your home downspouts. A little more rigid, but still has some movement to it. But I thought it was going to be difficult working around the ridges those things have.
Ultimately, we settled on using PVC pipe. It was very rigid, had good self support on its own, and I could find it in a 4 inch diameter. However, at first I was having difficulty finding the 4 inch diameter in a size I could use. They had small attachments that were 4 inches diameter, and they had a 10 foot piece, but nothing in-between. But after some digging through multiple websites, I was able to find a reasonable option at Home Depot (
link). So I headed over to my local home depot and picked one up... Or at least that's what I thought would happen. Despite having 7! listed as being in stock and another 25! available for delivery, they were no where to be found when I got there. After about an hour of walking around and picking up other supplies (which we'll get to later) I finally asked for some help. Problem was, the help wasn't helpful. Home Depot uses the shelving above the eye-level items as overstock. But the organization system is simply they overstock in the same aisle as the item, but nothing more specific. Well when the shelving is like 30 ft tall and like 100 ft long it makes for a headache when you're looking for a specific item. At the end of the day, despite that item apparently having a lot of stock as well as smaller diameters of 2 ft PVC, none of the overstock for them could be found. I'm convinced either their on-hand inventory is WAY off, or there was some other location these were being held since they were a unique shape. Regardless, I got home and ordered a 2 ft PVC from Home Depot and it was delivered a few days later.
The 2ft by 4in diameter PVC weighed in at 5 pounds. The dimensions of it proportionally to the tank from Monsters Inc was that it needed to be a little shorter. It also would help with the weight of it too to cut some off. I used an image of Mr Waternoose holding a tank to get some proportional dimensions. I uploaded the image to Powerpoint, then I created small box images of known length to get distances in inches units using a 10 inch length as the basis for end to end. So then if I wanted to scale up or down, I could just do everything off the base 10 value. Based on seeing the PVC in person, as well as the calculations from the proportions, I decided to go with an overall length of about 17 inches. Not too big, but also not too small. As you can see in the image above, I used some Gorilla tape just to tape off different portions of the tube to get an idea what it would look like.
I did some reading online and determined my best bet for cutting the PVC pipe was using a handsaw. Thankfully I had a few laying around from when we bought our first house in 2011 (as part of the deal of buying that house we bought all of the tools, ladders, lawn mowers, chairs, furniture too). Since we were new home owners having all this equipment was a big boon for us, and it was different times back in 2011 in terms of sellers/buyers. We were the first people to tour their home in over 1.25 years on the market. So when we came around, they were really looking to sell, and off loading some equipment was no biggie to them. I had a plethora of saw options, but ended up going with the one with the biggest teeth.
I don't have any clamps, and I didn't trust G to be my side-kick when cutting this off. So instead, I used some Gorilla tape and strapped the tube down to the table. Then I leaned the edge of the pipe off the edge of the table and went at it. I'm no sawing expert, but apparently it's easier if you angle the saw downwards and away from you. It was slow going, and for a little bit I didn't have a level cut. But I noticed before I got too far into the cut and corrected it. Once I got going, then it got easier. And within a few minutes of hard labor, I had a PVC pipe cut to desired size.
Now that the pipe was cut to size, the next item on the list was, "how am I going to carry this thing?" While my hand could fit around the diameter and I could carry it that way, I don't have the greatest hand endurance. My fingers and hand strength is pretty poor actually. So I wouldn't last long if I tried to carry it with my fingers splayed out. Which meant I knew I needed a handle. I looked over several handle options when I was at Home Depot. I considered drawer handles, door handles, and gate handles. The drawer and door handles ended up being too small. The gate handles were a better size. I took a few options over to the PVC pipe area and placed each on the 10 foot pipes. I was most concerned with, "Can my hand fit around the handle without touching the pipe, and will the handle attach despite the curvature?" Only one handle ended up satisfying both of these criteria. It was big enough to get my hand around without obstruction, and had a single screw hole on the bottom and top. It was this Everbilt 6.5 inch door pull (
link).
Added bonus was that it came in black, and it was comfortable to hold the handle. One drawback was that the screws that were provided were quite long. I didn't want to use the provided screws because then it may have made it more difficult to work inside the tube with the electronic components. So G and I searched through our "home purchased" tools and were able to find some matching width screws, but shorter. We were also able to find some nuts for added support in making sure the screws didn't go anywhere.
This left us lots of room for other activities!
I was very pleased with the handle choice. And a super added bonus is that when the canister is held in the vertical position, there's a groove at the top of the handle for my thumb to rest. So it really ended up being the perfect choice for this project. Next up, drilling a hole for the sound button!
For the sound button I wanted something robust so that it would be easy to push in the moment. Something I wasn't going to miss. I went with this 16mm Momentary Pushbutton (
link). It being a momentary button means that when I stop pressing the button down, it will come back up on it's own. Compared to a "latching" button which when pushed will stay down upon being pressed. For our purpose, we wanted a momentary pushbutton. It also came in an illuminating option that could have been powered by the sound board. However, the instructions on how to wire it weren't explicitly clear, and I didn't feel that was a challenge I wanted to take on for this project. Not necessarily hard, but not something I felt was necessary for what we were doing.
Based on the size of the pushbutton, I needed a drill bit that was at least an inch. So that was a new purchase, because I didn't have anything nearly that large. But now I've got several new drill bits from 1/2 inch to 1 inch in size. I'll admit, the 1 inch drill bit is scary to handle since it's so huge. But it did the job!
And I was able to place the button inside the hole.
The button comes with a washer and screw for the backside to help hold it in place where we're good to go. But we've got a ways to go before that needs to be finally held in place.
Lastly on the construction side of things, was beveling the edges of the canister. According to the online images, the canister doesn't have a flat top/bottom, but rather has a slanted edge. So I took out my trusty Dremel 4000 (
link) with rotary flexshaft (
link) and sanding bit and went to town on it. It's important to note. This is plastic and not something you want to be breathing in. So I wore a respirator as well as eye protection when I did this. It created an ABSOLUTE mess. But two images up you can see the slanted edge on the top of the tube. But yea, a mess!
I had to take a shower afterwards I was so covered in dust. I also threw away the mermaid sheet that had been acting as my cover to the table because it was just too far gone. So a lesson learned here. If I shave down some PVC again, it's happening outside!
And that brings us to the end of the construction part of the Laugh Canister. Next up is the lighting!
Next Post -
Lighting!
)
