BATTLECAT! Xuan's Magic Wheelchair

A while back I posted about the build we did for Meredith's Skeletor Throne we built on behalf of Magic Wheelchair.  I mentioned a the end of that post that we actually ended up building two Magic Wheelchair costumes in the shop simultaneously while the Magic Wheelchair team in Portland, Oregon cranked out two more.  

I suppose I was feeling a bit cocky when I said, "Skeletor's throne will be easy.  Give me another one too."  But that one ended up being the Battlecat we built for Xuan:

To see how it came together and some photos of the happy kiddo after the reveal, read on...

When we were presented with the challenge of making Skeletor's Bone Throne, I got to feeling pretty cocky and told the Christine, who runs Magic Wheelchair, "thank you, ma'am, may I have another?"  

"Are you sure?" asks she, "I don't want to overload you."

"I'll hate me later for saying this now," says I, "but we can absolutely do a second build in time."

So Christine introduced me to the mother of Xuan, a lovely young lady who was a big fan of the Masters of the Universe.  We had a quick video conference where I got a chance to talk to her mom about what exactly she wanted and what kind of accommodations we'd have to make.  Somwhere in the background, we could hear Xuan happily cheering about the "big, green tiger!" So we had our marching orders and we set to work.

One of the main things that made this build easy was that the folks at Magic Wheelchair actually put us in touch with the design team at Mattel who were responsible for the digital models that were used to manufacture the actual toys.  This meant that we had access to all of the dame assets that the factory used to make the current action figures.  So we were able to get a huge head start on this build when they sent us all of the parts of Battlecat:

This was pretty amazing.  If we had bigger, faster 3D printers, notionally we could just scale up the parts and make a gigantic copy of the action figure to hang on Xuan's wheelchair.  But that wasn't exactly what we had in mind.  While this version of the Battlecat action figure was a lot more articulated than the one I had as a kid* I wanted to make a few changes.

First off, we were only going to make the front half of the tiger, his helmet, and the armor.  Second, we were aiming to increase the amount on articulation in the legs, so the wrists could turn and the paws could be posed a bit more.  Finally, we were going to make it hairy.

Once again, turned to Jeff Santos to adjust the models.  I started by explaining my scheme for articulation, sending him this sketch and a bunch of wild ideas:

Jeff made the articulations we'd discussed and digitally shaved all of the fur texture off of the skin.  Here's an early render showing how we intended to fit the parts onto a digital scan of Xuan's wheelchair:

Since we wanted to make the thing huge and lightweight, the decision was made to just go ahead and CNC carve the head, torso, and arms out of foam.  The armor, mouth, helmet, and paws would be 3D printed.

So I touched base with Christine at Magic Wheelchair again to ask if they had any connections that could do some large format foam milling.  I told her what we had in mind and she was a bit concerned...

"Aren't you worried this is going to be too much weight hanging off the front of the chair?" she asked.

"I wasn't," says I, "but now you're making me worry and I'll have to go back and do all of my calculations again."

"I'm worried Mattel won't be happy that you've swapped out their sculpted texture for faux fur," says she.

"Don't ask them," says I, "this kid is going to love the plush element of the build and I think everyone will love it when they see it."

Ultimately, I was able to assuage her concerns and she sent our modified digital models off to Monster City Studios in Southern California so their big robots could whittle out a giant foam cat body for us.  Normally the twelve-plus-hour round-trip drive to pick up the parts would've been a bit of a concern, but this coincided nicely with a trip I needed to make down to a noteworthy location in that same neighborhood for another project.

Here I am in the middle of that 32-hour mad dash to go there and back again:

I arrived at Monster City Studios the next day and they had a full foam cat carcass waiting for me.  The head fit neatly in my passenger seat:

The rest of the cat body filled most of the back of my Jeep:


Then it was time to blast back up the I-5 to my shop and the rest of the crew:


There we set about making the bones to go inside the foam parts:


The goal was to make the elbows poseable.  So we set them up with flattened PVC pipe sections to serve as bones.  These were epoxied in place when we glued the slices together:


Then the outside of the foam was given a liberal coating of Epsilon PRO epoxy from Smooth-On and hung up to cure:


While we were waiting on the foam carving, we'd gotten a bit of a jump on 3D printing some parts.  Here's the 3D printed mouth parts dry fit into the carved foam head:


Satisfied that we were headed in the right direction, I went ahead and cored out the eye holes:


Then I sculpted in new eyelids and attached Battlecat's battle snoot using Free Form AIR epoxy dough:


Then the upper jaw was epoxied in place and the whole head was given a healthy coat of Epsilon PRO, taking care to avoid the battle snoot in order to best preserve the sculpted texture:


Once the epoxy had cured, the battle snoot was ready for battle boops and Rachel got to work painting up the teefs:


While all of that was going on, we were also printing the various slices of the helmet:


The only reason it was printed in so many colors was because I was trying to use up whatever filament rolls were left kicking around the shop.  On more than one occasion I came very close to having the roll run out exactly as a print was finishing:


Somehow this level of "just enough stuff" is really satisfying:


With all of the parts printed, I put Madison to work gluing all of the slices together:


When it was almost all together, my nephew stopped by to try it on:


Then Madison got to finish assembling it and start smoothing out the seams:


She did pretty good considering the helmet was almost bigger than her:


Since this was a one-off and I wouldn't be making any molds, we opted to use more Free Form AIR to do the buildup at the seams:


Normally I'd use Bondo because it's much cheaper, but I've found it is a lot more likely to flake off of the ABS printed parts if there's any flex or impact at all.  We don't tend to have that issue with the Free Form AIR.

Here's the helmet being test-fit onto the head:


The same process was used to put together the first two armor plates:


Here they are being test-fit onto the body:


After a bit more filling and sanding, they were given a very heavy coat of filler primer:


Which then got sanded smooth:


For the basecoat I used a can of Dupli-Color in a shade of red who's name is not important:


It's not that it's not important, it's just that I used the tail end of four different shades of red when I found out I didn't have enough of any one color to coat the whole helmet and the armor.  So instead I made it a point to use all four on each piece.  Then the horns were picked out in an antique brass metallic paint from Rustoleum:


It looked pretty okay at that point, but the gloss clear coat really brought it to life:


SHINY!

Back in the dusty end of things, it was time to finish assembly of the main body: 

Somehow it looked particularly ridiculous when it was being coated with Epsilon PRO:


Still, it came together:


Then it was time for fur:

Most of this was done using the two shades of green faux fur shown above, but Battlecat also has yellow stripes.  Rather than try to paint the stripes. we decided the best option was to piece together the skin using yellow fur as well.  Here's Rachel making up cutting templates while the reference looks on:


Geri the Husky did not like wearing the fur:


In no time at all, Rachel had made up the sleeves to go over the arms:


Two of them:


Here she is showing off her cat sleeves:

Somewhere in there is where we figured out that the weight of the arms with the fur and the articulated paws on the end was too much for he planned shoulder articulation.  The plan had been to make a giant ball and socket joint with a doubled up bungee cord to keep tension on the joint and keep it from slipping around.  We ended up with using six lengths of bungee pulled as tight as it could be pulling the two shoulders toward each other to keep everything snug.  But even with all of that tension, as soon as there was even the slightest bump, gravity would pull the paws down and eventually they'd drag on the floor.

So we abandoned the poseable shoulders and pinned the arms in place in a somewhat aggressive charging pose.  At least the elbows and paws were still poseable.

With the sleeves done, she set to work furring the head for the cat:


This started by gluing patches of the various colors of fur onto the foam head.  These were then trimmed down by hand to give him his final look:


While that was going on, newly minted electrical engineer Nick Maley busied himself with designing the sound and motion circuit for the mouth: 

We also made a full wearable Teela Sorceress costume for Xuan to wear, but the only progress photo I took of that process was this pic of the head dress in primer:


That was painted and fitted with a wire armature so it could be fitted to Xuan's head when it came time to dress her up.  Rachel also sewed up some boot covers, bracers, and a top to complete her look.  Then it was time to head south for San Diego Comic Con.

The good people at Magic Wheelchair stopped by on their way down from Portland to San Francisco to pick up the cat parts.  When I got to my hotel room in San Diego, I was thrilled to find they'd unloaded the truck and packed everything in for me:

The cat's head was set on my bed like some kind of Eternia version of the Godfather:


So after the long drive and the late night arrival, all I had to do was stack the parts on the other bed so I could get some much-needed rest:


In the morning, Jeff Watamura stopped by with Xuan's wheelchair to help me with the final test-fitting.  He couldn't resist the urge to try on the helmet:

At this point, the fabrication was basically done with one major exception: the cat's body had no skin.  The thinking was that, while we'd been getting photos and measurements of Xuan's wheelchair from her mom, I'm never 100% confident things will fit together until I actually get to see the costume fitted onto the wheelchair.  

Since the body was carved out of styrofoam, if we needed to make any adjustments to fit it onto the chair, we'd likely end up having to hack out more chunks of foam, making a big, pilly, powdery mess in the process.  It would be an annoying mess to clean up at the very least, but if the body was covered in fur, we'd almost never be able to get all of the dust out of it.  So we'd leave attaching the skin until after everything else was done and the test fitting confirmed that we didn't need to make any messy changes.

As luck would have it, everything fit perfectly.  Even with all of the weight hanging off the front of the chair, it was balanced well enough that it didn't fall over.  The entire assembly only required one strap around the backrest of the wheelchair to hold it in place.  It was perfect.

It was also hairless.

So Jeff took the wheelchair back to Xuan and her mom and I set to work attaching the skin to the body.  The plan was to adhere the faux fur to the hardcoated foam with Barge cement.  The only drawback, Barge gives off some pretty noxious fumes as it dries and the windows in my hotel room were fixed in place and unable to open.  So I cranked up the air conditioning to maximize air flow into the room and set about coating the foam and adhering the fur.  It wouldn't take me all that long and then I'd head down to the convention floor to check out preview night.  That was around 3p.m..

Some time later I was nearly done gluing the fur into place and feeling pretty darned good about life, the universe, and everything.  That's when there was a knock at the door.  My assistant, Rachel, was standing outside.

"Are you okay?" she asked, clearly concerned.

"I'm great," says I, "Why do you ask?"

"The fumes are so bad I can smell them from my room on the other end of the floor," she replied, "How long have you been doing this?"

"Just a few minutes," I replied, "I should be done with time to grab something to eat before we head down to preview night."

"It's 7:30," she said, "preview night's already happening."

"Damn," says I, "I've been in here for over four hours and it's past time for some fresh air."

So with 90% of the skin on the cat, I headed down to the convention to see what there was to see.  I don't remember any of it, but that's largely because I'd spent the previous four hours and change huffing fumes in my mostly sealed hotel room.

As the the glue-huffing buzz wore off, a group of us went out to dinner.  Returning to the hotel, we went up to our floor and as soon as the elevator doors opened we were hit with the unmistakable funk of Barge cement.  Strong stuff.  If you happened to be on the same floor as me, I can't apologize enough.

Still, I had to glue down the last few patches of the fur before passing out and getting ready for the next morning's reveal.

The next morning, we got a hold of Xuan's wheelchair again, ran it up to my room, and strapped on the Battlecat costume.  Now I've always made it a point to build these things so they can fit through a doorway, ideally without having to remove any parts.  This one was no exception.  What I didn't think about was the fact that it was just a tiny bit on the long side.

This wasn't really a problem until we had to ride downstairs in an elevator.  While we were able to fit everything in diagonally, when I shifted it a bit to fit a few more people in the elevator I heard a troubling "crack."  The only think I could think of that might make that particular noise was the PVC pipe we used for the elbow joints.  

Sure enough, the right elbow had broken and the paw was dangling on the floor.  So we rushed back up to my hotel room for a last-minute repair.  The fur on the elbow was sliced open, the broken joint was splinted, stabilized, and filled with expanding foam to make a solid connection.  Then Rachel set about stitching the elbow fur closed again:

Once we'd finished the repair, we headed down to the show floor for the reveal:

Even just sitting on the floor, Battlecat was pretty imposing:


But that's not what he was built for.  It was time to rig him onto Xuan's wheelchair so she could show off at the convention.  As soon as we took off the helmet, she started petting him and was all smiles for the next four days of the convention.  She insisted on getting her picture taken with everyone she met:




And got into every photo op setup on the show floor:


Over the four days of San Diego Comic Con, she would wake up every morning and start begging her mom to take her downstairs so she could cosplay more.  She was very well-received by the other cosplayers:


Battlecat got lots of attention too:


When the con was over we loaded him onto the truck for delivery to Xuan's home:


Later her mom emailed me to say that Xuan wouldn't let her put Battlecat in her bedroom.  Instead, she insisted that he had to be positioned in the living room so more people could enjoy him as well. 

As far as I know, he's posted up there to this day.

We'll likely be building more of these wheelchair cosplays in the coming year.  If you'd like to learn more about Magic Wheelchair and how you can support their mission, check out their website here: https://www.magicwheelchair.org/

*The original Battlecat action figure was cast from molds reused from Mattel's earlier Big Jim toyline.  The tiger was a solid molded plastic figure with zero articulation. The mouth, head, legs, and tail were all fixed in place an capable of only the one pose they were molded in.  Toys have generally gotten a lot cooler than they were when I was a kid.

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