The Piasa Bird - his first appearance!!!

 

 

OK - Southwestern High School had their first home game and the Piasa Bird was unveiled with a grand spectical.  It was really fun to see him in action and hear the comments.  It went over really well, especially with the boys about 7 - 11 yrs.  Since the Bird was on the field people couldn't get very close - except a mom and little boy that get eaten, you'll see.


Here he is running thru smoke and cheerleaders.  I was hoping he'd eat a couple but no such luck.

 

 

Looks great running across the field!

Quietly approaching...
 

AAhhh... the puny humans have brought a sacrifice...

I bet I can eat all three of them!

Bbuuurrrrrppp....mmmm

 

 

A couple of close ups. I think he turned out pretty darn good!

Piasa Bird - the Final Ending!

The journey in creating the Bird is over.  Would I do this again?  Absolutely!!  It brought in many of the skills I've honed over the years and some new ones.  It was great fun and an even greater challenge.
This mascot of Southwestern High School will be unveiled at their first home game at the end of August.  I'll be there. 

Here I am with the completed project - my new best friend.  I will miss him.  (I'm on the left)

Here is the final mascot costume - The Piasa Bird!  There is no person in the costume in this shot.

Piasa Bird - Tail Section

This is the tail before it is sectioned off and dyed.

Here is the tail completely segmented and dyed.  I used an artist brush and painted on the brown dye.  I think it came out pretty cool.

Here's a close up of the tail where it attached to the body.  You can see the ties of black fabric I used to segment off the tail.

Piasa Bird - The Wings

When it came to the wings, I was crazed!  I designed  and discarded 3 ideas.

What I finally settled on was to make the wings actually part of the body of the costume.  A pvc pipe is inserted into the casing at the top of the wing and goes all the way to the wearers elbow.

They are quite large, about 5 feet each wing.  The fabric is very light weight so it really billows.

The wearers' hand comes out the the sleeve and grips the encased pvc pipe right about where the claws are.  The wearer has complete control of the manipulation of the wings!  I think they turned out great!

Piasa Bird - face and body

Here is the body , the scales section, attached to the face section.

View of the body from behind.  There are fins running down the back

These 2 pics show the beard added.  The wearer will see thru the mouth.

Piasa Bird - the Face

Sorry, I didn't rotate befor publishing! 

These are the face.  It's sculped by my little ole' hands with a needle and thread.  You remember Cabbage Patch dolls?  It's sculped like their faces were stitched.

Piasa Bird

This is upclose of the stitching that goes around the head of the beast.

I forgot to show you the teeth installed!  They look great.  I drilled a hole in the jaw for the wire armature to fit thru, twisted and tied the wire and used sylicone (?) to secure the terrible teeth in the jaws of death!