Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2014/11/24/full-head-animated-latex-mask.html
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How does the wearer see?
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Through slits right near the top of the nose. The effect is really well-done, but the mask is extremely warm. I couldn’t wear it for more than a few minutes before needing to take it off this Halloween - I had gotten the Cyclops mask in the article.
During those few minutes at a time, got a lot of good response from the neighborhood kids, though. But as it was approximately the same as the t-shirts I wore the year earlier, I think I’ll go with the t-shirts next time as well…
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Well done; I can’t see them at all.
Incredible. How difficult is it to see through them? Not that it really matters to me–I’ve been known to stumble around in some of my more elaborate costumes.
Of course for those who don’t want to go for the full effect there are some pretty cool t-shirts. I like this one:
Not too hard - I could easily see where I was going.
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Y’know, the maggots app for the Rotten Clown Mouth mask would be fun just to have on my phone even without the mask.
“Hey, wanna see a picture of my kids?”
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Cooling system mod? How much room is there in it? Space for a fan, or maybe a water cooling system using plastic tubing like an Apollo suit? Paging @shaddack!
Who dares to summon the mad scientist of the legends?
…okay, booming voice off, please open the window the incense stinks and is not needed for the ritual regardless what the oldy moldy books say, and let’s get to work…
Yes, tubing with circulating coolant will do a good job here. However it is fairly complex. Either folded silicone tubes or thin-walled flat ones will do the job; the latter will have less resistance for the fluid flow.
A small air pump, blowing air through thin tubes with little holes, will also do a good job, especially in climates with not-too-humid air where evaporative cooling of sweat can take place.
In both cases, due to thin tubing, a fairly high pressure pump will be needed. Electrical one will be noisy and will eat batteries. A bellows, perhaps elbow-actuated, under the clothing can be used as either water or air pump. Or, if we accept longer coolant tubes, it can be hidden in a shoe. Or both shoes, for dual action.
A third option, for cases where the wear time is limited, we can use a phase-change material and line the inside of the mask with it. Or add it directly to the latex as a filler.
Or we can use heat pipes, to carry the heat from inside to outside.
Yet another option is gravity-fed cooling. Have some ice cubes in a pouch/bag on top of the head (insulated from the head itself so it won’t undercool the brain), let them melt, drain the cold water through channels or wicks in the mask, dump the spent coolant either into another pouch or let it drip out. Optionally drain it to the mask’s surface and let it evaporate (or even drip, if it fits into the mask’s theme, you can even color the fluid to be e.g. red as blood, though some opacifier, e.g. milk or some other emulsion (milk can get stinky if the maintenance is poor), would be good here too) from there; then we don’t even need ice and liquid water will do the job.
All these options, except the PCM-filler, however add thickness. Which may not be always desirable. The thinner the tubes, the higher the fluid-flow resistance. And flat foil-based tubes are liable to collapse under external pressure so they will need built-in spacers. Or impractically high internal fluid pressure.
A sixth option is adding a heat-conducting filler into the latex. A variant of that is a material that would wick moisture through and conduct heat, so the mask itself could sweat and then conduct the evaporative heat loss back to the face underneath.
the labcoat-clad demon perches in the middle of the pentagram and opens a book, amusing himself with lightweight rocket engineering while waiting for further instructions or a dismissal
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Cool! I could see using the eyeball app with an upside-down fish bowl to make a floating eyeball Pepper’s ghost illusion!
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