Monster Sleeve Fabrication: In 5 Days on a low budget

Chris Legasse

I recently had to create a pair of monster sleeves for an ad shoot on an incredibly tight budget and deadline. The following is what I managed to fabricate completely from scratch in a period of 4 days, plus one day for painting and touch ups.




For my design I ended up sort of combining the above two initial sketches. Then it was time to hit up my local art stores and Target for a long sleeve shirt I could tear apart.

I was too busy to get much in the way of progress pictures but essentially I cut out muscle forms from upholstery foam and glued them down on to the sleeves of this white shirt. I carved the shapes with a combination of scissors, personna blades, and a hot knife/soldering iron for extra sinewy textural detail.

Chris Legasse

Here you can see I've begun skinning the sleeve using black plastic trash bags that have been stretched in all manner of ways to create extra surface detail.


Here you can see the first fitting of the fully skinned first arm. You can also see that I like my Rats'sRaw.




Here you can see the first hand has been fabricated and textured, out of small sheets of precisely measured and cut  1" upholstery foam. Extra detail was added using small chunks of carved foam glued on top, and more soldering iron detailing.

Chris Legasse

Oh, I have two arms now.


The length of the glove was extended to better control the seam between the glove and the sleeve. Texturing was done with layers of tissue paper and balloon rubber with black dye added. Parts of the latex that have cured got a dusting of baby powder to ensure that the latex wouldn't be tacky.


Here is the arm with some horns added to match the glove. The whole arm has been given a coat of Super 77 spray to allow my paint to stick to it better, as well as the air bladders I'm about to create..


Here I am soldering some intense looking shapes onto two sheets of black plastic underneath a sheet of brown paper (to keep the plastic from overheating or sticking to the soldering iron)


This is the shape I ended up with. I did this twice, once for each arm.

Chris Legasse

Unfortunately I don't have any progress pictures of the paint job, so here's the final assembled and detailed piece:




And here's a little video clip of the arms and bladders in action.

Chris Ellerby

Looks like some of those images don't like being embedded.   Video looks great!  Those are some serious monster arms!

/Chris

Chris Legasse

Hmm that's odd, they are all visible for me.

Thanks though!

Chris Ellerby

Think you may be logged into what ever service hosts them.