Halloween costume

 My son wanted to be Iron Spider for Halloween this year. 

(The photo is from our trunk or treat this year. I literally googled "spiderman trunk or treat" found an idea, and just copied it cutting out pieces from colored plastic table clothes)

Here is what iron spider looks like for reference.

We got an Iron Spider costume, but it obviously didn't come with the arms... So I started thinking how I could make the arms without also having him maim other kids walking down the street.

Then I remembered a last minute Halloween costume by Adam Savage from the Mythbusters,

So I got some 1/4" aluminum armature wire, and the insulation with adhesive on one side you use to insulate door jams. I stuck the insulation to itself on either side of the wire, then shaped it with some scissors, and spray painted it gold.

My wife then got an old backpack from a friend, cut everything off but the back pad, and the straps. She the cut a piece of wood to size, and drilled some holes with a jig to hold the arms in place. We fit the wood to the backpack with some screws (flat on the side that would be touching his back) then used colored duct tape to cover everything and fit with his costume.

He was pretty happy with how it turned out. 

Halloween 2023

I love making these interactive "games" for kids on Halloween. 

This year I used the "skibidi" battle from the game I just made and slapped a kinect plugin onto it. Kids LOVED it.

Biggest 3d print

 I love printing the "lucky13" action figures for my son, so I decided to try and print a 500% version. 

He loves it.

Plunger Game

 A little while ago, I went to a party for a 2 year old, and an older kid noticed my zelda tshirt. We started talking about games, and I mentioned that I like to make games for kids to practice using the Unreal Engine.

I asked if he could make any game in the world, what would he make. He said he'd make a plunger shooter.

This kid had no idea what type of game design I could do, so I figured I'd have fun a pull the rug out from him a few times. The first level is a simple looking cartoon 2d side scroller game, when you get to the end, you "fall through the world" into a Playstation 1 style 3rd person plunger shooter. When you get to the end of this level, you fall through again (this is a reference to the next level, which is inspired from a very popular "meme" video for kids his age named "the backrooms")

The last level is a first person plunger shooter with monkey's that throw poop at you. If you wander around, and follow the arrows on the walls, you find the boss, which is another popular meme for kids his age "skibidi toilet".

Here is the Plunger Game. (All of the assets/art are from other gamedevs, I just quick kitbashed this together in a couple days to make a kids idea reality.

Fully modeled prints

 This is the next level in progress, I took just the joints from the lucky13 action figure model and grafted on the real in-game model from five nights at freddys. This is the only version of this action figure, as I made it, and painted it custom myself. (using thew fancy paint pens I found recently "posca markers")

Im pretty proud of this one and how it came out. 

Painting prints

 My son has been asking for modified action figures that look like his favorite five nights at Freddy's characters. (Hes 5 so he hasn't played the game, he just likes how they look)

So I downloaded the models, sculpted them onto the existing action figures, and got some acrylic markers to paint them.

This is the base model all the other characters are built on. I just used blender to bolt on other models, or sculpt into shape.

My first attempt, I basically just copy pasted the characters' head (his name is Monty) onto the original robot. I also added a guitar from another model.

He loved it, but asked if I could make the legs and arms rounded on the next one. So I used blender and manually moved vertices to make the corners more rounded. This is Freddy.

This was great, but not rounded enough... So my next model, I basically just modeled from scratch and only kept the original joints so it would still work as an action figure. This one is called Puppet

Now these are starting to look better...

Here is what puppet looks like in the actual game: 

Next was a character with similar rounded arms, but he had baggy pants for legs, so I sculpted these from scratch as well.

This character has an "alternate" personality that I made a second version for as well.

I really like this process not only because I'm getting better, but also specifically because I'm getting better in front of him. He gets to see each version getting better and better, and it's showing him that anyone who is good at something, started way worse than where they are now, and its a slow process you have to keep up with.

Sharing prints

 We went to a diner close by, and the waitress was admiring a 3d printed toy Declan was playing with, so Declan then offered "My dad could make one for you" 

This has been one of my goals from the beginning with Declan... Instead of being proud of the talents me or Halley have, wanting to share them with others...

The waitress said if we did make them, they'd need to be the same so her sons wouldn't fight over them. 

So here they are.
 

We'll drop them off the next time we go there.