A small update; I've been thinking about doing a new big costume this year, but I feel like I should get at least two years out of the PacMan and Ghost since I spent so much time/money on them. I figure that they're due for some kind of update though, so I'm planning on adding EL wire to them so they'll "glow" in the dark. For those of you not familiar with electroluminescent wire, here are a couple of pictures:
I'm not sure if I'll only do PacMan or if I'll do both, it depends on cost. I've got to do a little bit of calculating and such to figure out how much wire I'll need, and how many/which inverters I'll need as well as batteries to power it all. Here is a really quick and dirty MS Paint example of my thoughts. Of course the other side of the ghost would be outlined in blue, or I've also thought about running red and blue on the entire thing and being able to switch between them. That will all depend on cost. For PacMan's mouth, the wire will be running on the inner mouth frame, not the main external frame. That way when the mouth opens/closes the glowing wire will move with it. The only issue that I might have in clearance since the tolerance in the mechanism is pretty tight. Depending on the inverter/driver that I find, I'm also thinking about making it be able to blink with music.
The other modification that I'm thinking about for this year is installing a door of sorts on each side of both costumes so that there's a way to get your hand out for drinks, etc... I've also given some thought to installing some sort of cup holder inside both costumes, but we'll see how the rest of it goes. This year I'll be renting a truck from Penske, U-Haul, etc... instead of trying to fit them in the bed of a pickup truck and having them fly off the back and almost go rolling down the highway.
My hope is to get out to downtown in time for one of the news broadcasts. One of the stations has glass windows behind the news desk that look out on the street and we'd go back and forth behind there during the broadcast :rolleyes: The thing I'd like to do is keep track of which bars/clubs are offering the best costume prizes and hit them up instead of doing my usual Rocky Horror thing. Each year you hear ads for big cash prizes, trips to Mexico, etc... and I think that these have a real chance at winning something. It will suck being crammed in with that many people, but totally worth it if we can win.
Anyway, that's my update. Do people have any thoughts/suggestions on the EL wire idea?
Amazing job!
