Sibling Rivalry

If build progression was a race, poor Kang would have been left in the dust of his sibling. It wasn't by design, but we seemed to race ahead with the construction of Kodos during the last week and a half. Read on to see the disproportionate progress made.

In the last picture I posted, a feint outline of an eye is drawn on the Kodos. The first task was to figure out exactly how big we wanted it to be. Once this was determined, we set about making it. For this part of the build, we picked up a ball that looked about the right size and made a papier mache cast from it. This was done by layering half of the ball with strips of card (these costumes are sponsored by, among many others, Doctor Oetker pizzas, Old El Paso range of Mexican food, and Nature Valley oat and chocolate bars), covering them with masking tape, and then applying the papier mache. When it was dry enough, we pulled the cast off the ball and tapered it in until it was shallow enough to go onto the body. We also had to cut out the pupil, which was tricky; it had to be wide enough to see through, but thin enough that it represented the source material, in which it tends to look quite thin.

We then cut the corresponding eye-hole in the body, making it roughly an inch shorter in diameter so we would have a little surface area to attach it onto. When we were happy with the positioning of the eye, we decided to add eyelids to the body in order give it more texture and make it a bit more 3D:

We decided to adjust the shape of the mouth, so you might notice that it is quite different from its appearance in last week's post:

Once we were happy with how his various 3D features looked, we applied another layer of papier mache to the body:

 We proceeded to make Kodos a pair of ears, though we decided to glue them onto the body when both are painted, so they remain loose for now. The ear shapes were cut from soft card, topped with shredded newspaper, primed with masking tape and then, like everything, had papier mache applied:

The photos appear to have stopped short of the papier mache layer

We have almost gotten Kang up to speed, despite his spectator role for much of the week. We used the same techniques for all of his features, bar one: his eye. Given the size difference between the two, we needed to find something else to make a papier mache cast from. We couldn't find a ball that seemed to be the right size, so in the end I decided to have a go at making something myself that could be used to build a cast on. I used a solid cardboard base to build a wire frame on:

We wanted to make Kang distinct from Kodos, so we decided to give him more of a menacing/mischievous expression with his eyelids:

We now just need to finish the papier mache job and he'll have caught up with his gender-ambiguous sibling. After all that work we felt that we needed some seasonal treats: