Johann Krauss - HellBoy 2 The Golden Army
Hi Everyone,
Here is my Johann Krauss costume from Hellboy 2.
Ive been working on this for almost 5 months, evenings and every weekend.
It has animatronic side flaps, working mouth parts, the dome fills with smoke, it ejects the smoke from its front vents under pressure and of course the compulsory finger smoke 
This build has pushed my skills to the absolute limit in many disciplines, from Resin Casting, 3D modelling and Printing, Animatronics, Arduino Programming and Leather work.
The most difficult aspect of this build was overcoming the engineering challenges of the costume.
In the film, the mouth parts, flaps and even smoke were operated by remote control and using off screen compressed air to produce the smoke effect from Johann's front vents.
But I wanted to accommodate all of these effects into a single costume without any obvious pipe work or gas bottles. So everything is contained within the helmet and pouches on the belt to retain the effects. The helmet has 8 individual servos activating the 2 front vents, 4 independent side flaps and both the mouth mandibles. There is an integrated DC motor in the mouth barrel that rotates the drum at the same time as the mandibles run their loop.
The mouth parts move when sound is picked up by an internal microphone. The gas ejection uses a CO2 cartridge in one of the pouches. This activates via a micro switch inside the finger tip of one of the gloves. Once pressed, a solenoid opens and the vents rotate allowing the gas to escape into the dome and out of the front vents, taking some smoke with it.
Once the switch is released, the vents close and the dome refills with smoke ready for the next cycle.
The side flaps are on a separate Arduino loop, so they don't need any input from me.
I believe that this is the only fully animatronic version of a replica Johann Krauss cosplay costume to date, and I can't wait to get to show him off.
His first outing with be at the end of May at the London MCM ComiCon.
Here is a build montage video showing the different techniques and the effects he can produce
Thanks for looking
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