The Care and Feeding of Nerds: DC

Showing posts with label DC. Show all posts

This Week in Geekdom

Posted by Kel

Hi everyone. Woo boy. We're all still a bit worn out from PAX East 2016, but there's plenty of content to help push us through that post-con fatigue. No worries, you'll get all the goodness from PAX in the very near future! In the meantime, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.

Comics

DC has fired Shelly Bond, executive editor of Vertigo, and announces a not-yet-detailed 'restructuring of the label.

Games

Blizzard comes clean about their cancelled successor to World of Warcraft.

Video games are estimated to garner nearly $100 billion USD this year.

Meet Project Nova, the first-person shooter by CCP that's trying to establish a solid foundation for itself. Oh, and, by the way, it's an Eve game.

Sony hasn't come right out and said as much, but it has dropped some strong hints that the PS4 may be the last console it ever produces.

The Xbox 360 received its official death notice from Microsoft this past Thursday.

Kerbal Space Program gets 'Turbo Charged' in the first large-scale update since the game's release.

Red Dead 2 seems as though it is a very, very real (eventually playable) possibility.

Movies/TV

Somewhere on this planet there exists 39 episodes of a Star Wars-based animated series that we may never get to see.

The showrunners have confirmed that they are approaching the end of the narrative for Game of Thrones.

The latest companion for Doctor Who has been revealed.

Science/Technology

Is it possible that the entirety of the known and unknown universe is actually just an elaborate computer simulation? Neil deGrasse Tyson and some of the other brightest minds in science concede that there's a chance this could be the case.

On a similar note: is it possible for scientists to prove that a multiverse exists?

The potential physical states of water are some of the best known in science, but, given the results of this study in the latest edition of Physical Review Letters, there may be a whole lot more to the molecule than previously believed.

While we're on the subject of water and the amazing things that we're just discovering it can do, researchers at Kyoto University have managed to isolate a dimer of the substance using a technique called molecular surgery.

Image credit

A robot monk? China's Longquan Temple now counts a mechanical member among its monastical ranks.

Vulcanologists are adopting a new type of statistical analysis in their studies, one typically employed by economists.

Need a few moments of beauty? NASA has you covered with these videos of the Aurora Borealis as seen from space.

Obi-Wan may have believed them to be an elegant weapon, but lightsabers would actually be far more dangerous in real life than their cinematic depiction would have you believe them to be.

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are producing AI Squared: an AI protocol capable of stopping cyberattacks.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

This Week in Geekdom

Posted by Kel

Happy Sunday everyone. Yep, I'm right back in the studying swing of things, but even the specter of another exam won't overshadow PAX East next weekend. Unsurprisingly, PAX crept up faster than I'd have preferred given everything else that's been going on this year, so it's not likely that there'll be any cosplaying from me this time around (unless I can whip one of my old costumes into shape in the next week or so). As this will be my only opportunity to cosplay in 2016 (more on this in a future post), it'd be great if I can make it happen. In the meantime, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom!

Comics

It was explicitly pointed out to us during the course of Episode VII, but we will learn exactly why C-3PO's arm was red in the film thanks to a new comic: Star Wars Special: C-3PO #1.

Image credit

Games

If you are a fan of both My Little Pony and Kerbal Space Program, you now have a new cause to rejoice.

The World of Tanks finals at this year's WGL Grand were mind-bogglingly dramatic.

Behold, the new world record speed run of Super Mario Bros.

Movies/TV

Netflix has confirmed that it will offer its services in ultra-high-definition 4K resolution to its premium subscribers.

We're more more than a year and a half away from Episode VIII, but the rampant speculation concerning the plot of the next installment of Star Wars abounds, thanks in part to J.J. Abrams himself.

The promotional buildup for the forthcoming live-action release of Ghost in the Shell is off to an...ehm...less than excellent start.

We will officially Fear the Walking Dead for a third season.

Deadpool 2 will feature the exact same cast and creative team as its predecessor. It's almost like they saw how successful the first film was and wanted to replicate it. Their common sense is tingling!

February 10, 2017 will bring us John Wick 2.

Thank goodness DC can occasionally possess a lick of wherewithal. Batman: The Killing Joke, slated to make its debut at San Diego Comic Con in a few months, will be rated R.

Ben Affleck can't get enough Batman. He's now slated to both star in and direct a standalone film about the caped crusader.

Science/Technology

Google is pushing forward with its crusade to bring self-driving cars to a road near you after filing these patents that will allow its autonomous autos to detect the turn signals of other vehicles.

How do you go about repairing a critical chip or component while travelling through space? Well, if NASA has anything to say about it, the solution may involve bugs that have been engineered to both eat and excrete metal.

We've gotten somewhat adept at discovering planets that exist beyond the reaches of our solar system but that's apparently to be expected given that we've been doing so for nearly a century.

Feats of Nerdery/General Awesomeness

We've been big proponents of 3D printing these four years past, so it's only natural that we get a bit excited about the latest possibilities the technology presents: printable food.

Speaking of 3D printing, yes, your cat does need 3D printed battle armor.

This is the arguably most love a medical frigate has gotten since The Empire Strikes Back.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

This Week in Geekdom

Posted by Kel

Hey guys. It's been a while, I know, and for that I sincerely apologize. I'm about a month out from taking the first of the professional designation exams that are slated for this year, so the past few weeks have been all about the studying. Conversely, that means only four more weeks and we can get back to our regularly scheduled Care and Feeding of Nerds! In the meantime, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.

Comics

Here's the lowdown on DC's forthcoming Rebirth and why they really want you to think of it as being akin to the new Star Wars trilogy.

Games

If you've been visiting here for a while, you won't be at all surprised when you hear that I'm...ehm...something of a fan of the Civilization series so it's a bit special to partake in the 25th anniversary celebrations of that most excellent franchise.

Did you know that the software library of the Internet Archive contains over 2,500 entirely free, wholly playable classic MS-DOS games?

If you were among the legions of horror fans that were grief stricken following the cancellation of the reboot of Silent Hills you now have cause to rejoice: the reboot is back on.

Lead Mass Effect writer Chris Schlef is leaving Bioware to join the ranks of Bungie.

If you're still gleefully exploring the vast post-apocalyptic landscape of Fallout 4 you'll soon be in for even more of the same. The next three months will feature as many new DLC releases.

Movies/TV

This is a nifty little visual sample of the original negative of Episode IV contrasted with what a team of specialists have been able to coax from that fragile bit of film:

Science/Technology

Just how fast is the D-Wave quantum computer relative to, say your average everyday PC? This fast.

Speaking of quantum computing, a team of theoretical physicists from MIT have developed a novel method for error correction on a quantum level.

It's been a security flaw that's existed since 2008, but we're just now realizing the potential impact on everything derived from the GNU C Library.

Next month will begin the effective last scientific call for the discovery of WIMPs. What are WIMPs and why are they potentially so important? Read here.

She's made a career of studying 'zombie stars' and now Victoria Kaspi, Ph.D., is the first female recipient of Canada's Herzberg Medal.

The JPL mastermind behind the 'seven minutes of terror' that delivered Curiosity to the surface of Mars has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Solar eclipses have been regarded by humanity as alternately fascinating and terrifying, but imagine a planetary configuration in which such eclipses lasted three and a half years.

Jupiter's moon, Europa, hosts possibly the best conditions for life to exist on a non-terrestrial segment of our solar system, so why is it so hard to get out there to confirm that?

Image credit

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

Upcoming Awesomeness in 2016!

Posted by Kel

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that 2016 is already treating you well and that the year is off to a great start. Composing this post has become a fun tradition in itself both because it elicits a little nostalgia when I look over similar posts from previous years (speaking of, here are the entries for 2015, 2014, and 2013) and looking ahead to all the forthcoming awesome is always fun. So let's get to it, shall we?

New Site Stuff in 2016

It's no secret that the pacing of new posts has slowed in the past few months and that's something I think we can all agree isn't the best. The goal is to change that, but, not gonna lie guys, that's going to be tough to do in 2016. A good chunk of this upcoming year is going to be devoted to studying for (and taking) a handful of professional certification exams. If all goes well and I pass all the exams on the first try then this will be the only year that gets consumed in this not-so-fun way. Fingers crossed!

That's not to say that the Care and Feeding of Nerds is going on ice. Not at all! There will definitely be plenty of novel content and, hopefully, a few contests coming your way. It's just that there will likely be a bit less of both in 2016 when compared to previous years.

But there will be goodness! We'll be bringing you coverage from at least two conventions: PAX East 2016 and the Boston Festival of Indie Games. There's a very good chance that we may add a few conventions that have never been covered on the site before, which we're really excited about.

Comics

The past two years have seen some pretty massive upheavals in the comics world, but 2016 is shaping up to be a bit more tranquil as most major publishers appear to want to enjoy their new status quo. Here are 5 upcoming titles that we can look forward to in the very near future and a whole heap more spanning the comic, manga, and graphic novel realms.

January/February are often rife with mid-season premieres and introductions of fun new programs. Here's what we can add to our viewing queues in the next few weeks (premiere dates and times may vary based on your location and cable provider). Ahhhh...X-Files....Venture Bros!!

The Shannara Chronicles: (MTV) January 5th

Colony: (USA) January 14th

The Flash: (The CW) January 19th

Agent Carter: (ABC) January 19th

Arrow: (The CW) January 20th

Supernatural: (The CW) January 20th

DC's Legends of Tomorrow: (The CW) January 21st

The X-Files: (FOX) January 24th

The Venture Bros: (Cartoon Network) February 7th

The Walking Dead: (AMC) February 14th

Movies

As with most recent years, the trend in 2016 will be lots of reboots and sequels, with a bit of novel content tossed in here and there.

January	The 5th Wave - The Earth is devastated by successive waves of alien attacks. One girl asserts herself and bands with fellow survivors to reclaim the planet. Ip Man 3 - Donnie Yen returns to the title role and takes a stand against a band of crooked property managers and cruel gangsters. Synchronicity - A physicist invents a time machine only to have his work fall into the hands of a femme fatale.
February	Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - The film treatment of the wildly popular adaptation of the Jane Austen classic. Deadpool - The Merc with a Mouth gets to incite havoc on the big screen.
March	Allegiant - The cinematic version of the Divergent young adult novel series continues with this third installment. The content of the book bearing the name of the movie will be divided into two films, akin to what we saw with the Hunger Games. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice - The Man of Steel and Gotham's Knight square off first against one another, then against a novel Earth-threatening foe.
April	Gods of Egypt - An ordinary thief finds himself drawn into a divine conflict. The Jungle Book - The classic Rudyard Kipling tale will be the latest of Disney's animated films to get the live-action treatment. The Huntsman Winter's War - Chris Hemsworth returns to the role of the Huntsman and faces the wrath of not one, but two evil sorceress queens. Ratchet and Clank - The beloved title characters leap from the console to the big screen as they race to save the galaxy.
May	Captain America: Civil War - The tension wrought from the developments seen in Age of Ultron boils over into open conflict and threatens to tear the Avengers apart. X-Men: Apocalypse - The world's first mutant, Apocalypse, intends to obliterate all life on Earth; the X-Men band together an an attempt to stop him.
June	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows - The heroes on a half shell are back to defend New York City from a new threat. Warcraft - The monolithic video game franchise expands to a new medium. Independence Day: Resurgence - The extraterrestrials that first threatened humanity 20 years ago have spent the past two decades preparing for and plotting for their shot at vengeance.
July	The BFG - Roald Dahl's beloved tale is brought once more to the big screen. Ghostbusters - This revisiting of the 80s franchise features a mostly female cast. Star Trek Beyond - The next installment of the rebooted movie series has JJ Abrams' thumbprint all over it.
August	Suicide Squad - Some of Gotham's most notorious criminals are recruited to undertake black ops-esque missions in exchange for clemency. Pete's Dragon - A remake of the 1977 original in which an orphan flees from his abusive adoptive parents to the company of his pet dragon. Spectral - Supernatural beings have taken over New York City and a very special team of operatives are brought in to restore order.
September	Patient Zero - After humanity is decimated by a horrific pandemic that renders most of humanity into violent rage monsters, a lone survivor finds he's able to communicate with them.
October	Gambit - Not to be outdone by Deadpool, the Ragin' Cajun will get his own movie.
November	Doctor Strange - Benedict Cumberbatch assumes the title role as a ruined surgeon whose life is forever changed after encountering a sorcerer. Moana - The only daughter of a chief of a South Seas tribe sets off to explore the wilds of the Pacific.
December	Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - The first of the Star Wars spinoff films focuses on a group of Rebels seeking to steal the structural plans of the Death Star. Passengers - A spacecraft careens through the depths of space on a journey to distant planet when one of its stasis chambers malfunctions, causing a passenger to wake 60 years too early. Assassin's Creed - Michael Fassbender stars in this movie adaptation of the wildly popular video game series.

Board Games/RPGs

As mentioned in a couple of our round-up posts, most board game developers, even the largest ones, operate on a quarterly schedule for their forecasts and releases with the latter generally coinciding with major conventions. However, if all goes well we should see several of the games we got a chance to try during Gen Con 2015. Also, the always-excellent folks at BoardGameGeek have put together this compendium of what's slated to hit our tables in 2016.

Video Games

Video game releases tend to be a bit more precise than their tabletop brethren in terms of their release scheduling, but the volume of titles that will be available for PCs and consoles is gargantuan. Game Informer did a commendable job of gathering up all those dates into this comprehensive list.

It's already shaping up to be an excellent year! Here's to a very happy and healthy 2016!

This Week in Geekdom

Posted by Kel

Holy December Batman. Seriously, how are you here already? Apparent distortions in the space-time continuum notwithstanding, I hope you're all having great weekends and wonderful holiday seasons thus far. Before we all dive back into our respective yuletide preparations let's get down to the Week in Geekdom.

Comics

Neil Gaiman's landmark graphic novel, the Sandman, turned 27 on November 29th. Here is why said work remains in a class all its own nearly three decades after its publication.

The city of Cleveland has some concrete, or potentially Kryptonite, plans to honor the Man of Steel.

Games

Behold the first trailer for the Final Fantasy VII remake!

Movies/TV

We gave this announcement plenty of love over on our social media pages, but it's definitely worth revisiting. 2016 will see the return of Samurai Jack!

Speaking of returns in 2016, DC would like to remind us that Batman vs Superman will be coming our way in the not-so-distant future.

Science/Technology

Check out these incredible images/videos of Italy's Mt. Etna, which erupted in spectacular fashion earlier this week.

It's been a few weeks since we had some new images of Pluto from New Horizons. Well, if you're a fan of the dwarf planet it was worth the wait, as the latest batch of pictures are the sharpest we've seen yet.

When you think of commonly occurring elements in the known universe, you may think of Hydrogen and Helium, but would you correctly guess that this is the element that would come next in that sequence?

While we're...sort of...on the subject of helium, the ultralight element is proving to be the key ingredient in next-generation high-capacity storage drives.

We talked last week about the burgeoning 'war' of privatized space exploration, but here's a far less bellicose facet of the Blue Origins side of things guaranteed to make you smile: the reactions of the 400 scientists and researchers that worked on their firm's reusable rocket.

We've talked a bit over the past few weeks about the centennial of the publication of Einstein's Theory of Relativity but, if we get right down to it, what is spacetime...really?

For decades researchers have been stymied by the concept of cosmic microwave background radiation, as it has proven incredibly difficult to detect by direct means. The latest edition of Nature presents what may be the solution to this mystery.

Potentially commercially viable synthetic diamonds. Bonus: they glow in the dark.

Turns out that your appendix may not be a useless evolutionary vestige after all.

General Awesomeness/Real Life Superheros

In honor of 'Giving Tuesday' Jason Gidman, the host of 'DC All Access', launched a campaign to send 10,000 comic books overseas to provide some much-needed escapism and entertainment for actively serving military personnel. Want in? Here's how you can get involved.

Ever wonder just how much either of the Death Stars cost or just would have happened to the Galactic economy following the destruction of said superweapons? The School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis gave their best crack at coming up with a comprehensive response.

Mattel has brought back the Viewmaster in time for the holiday gift-giving season and the latest incarnation of this classic toy is a bit different than what you may remember.

This Lego-based kinetic sculpture of Sisyphus is both stunningly realistic and somehow very soothing to watch.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

Cosplay: It's All on My Belt

Posted by Kel

Looking back on all the previous costumes that have been featured on site, we've comparatively spilled quite a bit of digital ink on Steampunk Hawkgirl, so it's a little bittersweet that her series is coming to an end. If you're just joining us now, you can see how the corset, the leggings, the giant feathers, the mace, the Worbla components, the wing harness, and the wings themselves came together by following the links. This final installment covers a critical, if not-so-very-glamorous component of the outfit: the utility belt.

Wait, how could a belt be so important?

Because, you see, the belt in this costume does far more than act as a repository for your badge and hotel key. The utility belt is the primary resting place for your wing harness and thus supports almost all of the weight of the wings themselves.

But isn't the wing harness almost like a backpack? Why not just let it hang from your shoulders?

Even though the wings were designed to be as light as possible, carrying anything around for an extended period of time gets uncomfortable. The idea is to minimize that discomfort by having the weight of the wings be borne by as many different points as possible. Your waist and hips end up being ideal for this task, as they not only provide a fair amount of surface area, but are inherently designed to be load-bearing (after all, they carry your torso around pretty well). Your shoulders will end up helping out, but having them play proverbial second fiddle to your hips will do wonders for the stability of your harness and your overall comfort level while you're walking around in costume.

Since the belt had to do some not-quite-heavy lifting, it needed to be made from a very sturdy material. The easiest way to ensure that the belt can do its job is to start with a piece designed to do similar work. After a bit of research and a lot of combing through the virtual aisles of Amazon, I came upon this weightlifting belt that seemed as though it would be up to the task. Weightlifting belts are a good choice for this sort of sartorial role not only for their supportive capabilities, but because they usually come in both a variety of styles and very neutral colors. What they also tend to come with, however, is a bit of a glazed finish on at least one side of the belt. If the color or the glazed finish on the belt don't meet with your costuming needs, you'll need to chemically strip one or both of those things off of the leather. Fortunately, that process is fairly easy; all you need is a bottle of this, a well-ventilated area, some elbow grease, and time.

Once I'd gotten the belt to a raw, as-unfinished-as-possible state, I covered it with a mixture of acrylic paints to give it a deep reddish-copper color. If you're in the process of making this utility belt using these same methods, don't panic if it takes you 3-5 coats of paint to get the belt to the color you want. A layer of gold-brown fabric paint sealed in the acrylics and gave the belt a nice matte finish, as steampunk is generally all about mostly-muted surfaces.

After the belt was the desired color, I added two of these weightlifting hooks onto the broad portion of leather that sat across the back of my hips by drilling through the belt and hanging the hooks with four of these rope clips (two clips per hook). I used a drill bit designed to punch holes in metal for this, but ended up having to carefully expand/finish the holes using one of the sanding bits on my Dremel. Determining where to hang the hooks was largely a bunch of trial and error, holding the wing harness up to my back while wearing the belt and adjusting until I was happy with the position. As a last step, I installed two slightly smaller versions of the rope clips into the front of the belt to hold the ends of the shoulder straps for the wing harness.

That gave me a solid utility belt that did pretty much everything I wanted it to (I'd wanted to add small pouches to give the belt, but ran out of time). The wing harness rested easily on the 'shelf' of the two weightlifting hooks and got additional support from the pair of shoulder straps attached to the rig and anchored with the rope clips on the front of the utility belt. Between those two sets of contact points, the rig was definitely secure and there were only one or two points during the day when I had the costume on where anything felt even a smidgen out of place.

The last bit of utility in the utility belt is as a fixation point for the paracord that opens and closes the wings. It only took a few minutes of walking around the halls of the Indianapolis Convention Center to realize that almost none of my fellow con-goers wanted pictures of the wings while they were in a closed position. To cater to this (and minimize wear-and-tear on the wings), I propped open the wings by extending them fully, then threading the draw cords down through the corset to wrap once around the belt itself, then anchor in the rope clips at the front.

Whew! So ends the series on Steampunk Hawkgirl. She was certainly a challenge, but I'll almost certainly be using or working to upgrade almost all of the components for a future convention. Now, on to Halloween!

Making Hawkgirl's Wings: Part 2

Posted by Kel

We're almost done with our series on the making of Steampunk Hawkgirl. If you're just tuning in now, we’ve talked about how the leggings, corset, wing harness, mace, the Worbla bits, and the supersized feathers came together, but let’s keep digging into the piece that makes this whole costume so challenging: the wings themselves.

After doing some initial research ~~when I was in the thrall of a post-convention rush~~ way back when, I decided that an extending arm configuration would be the best way to go for this particular costume (I definitely recommend reading about said investigations to see why I came to that conclusion and if the same setup will also work for your project). Initial tests with a cardboard mockup of the wings proved successful, so it then became a matter of how to translate the mockup into sturdier materials.

For all the details on how that initial translation was completed, check out this guest post by my cousin, Mel. She and her friend James were able to take the dimensions from my mockup and turn them into aluminum 'bones', which ended up being the rough draft/foundation for the finished wings.

While that rough draft was being completed, I was teaching myself to use the metal-shaping attachments on my model 4000 Dremel. Related aside: you will only need a handful of attachments for the Dremel and maybe a power drill for this portion of the project. Yes, really. Once I had the rough ‘bones’ in hand, I found that some additional cutting and sanding would be needed to get the overall shape and motion that I wanted. To do this, I used these cutting wheels for the Dremel and made several passes through the aluminum to get a nice, clean cut. If you're using these same methods to make your 'bones' it's definitely a good idea to get at least a five-pack of the wheels, as they will absorb heat and warp during your cuts.

Each wing consists of five ‘bones’: a larger pair that are perpendicular to one another and carry most of the stress (X and Y in the diagram below), a smaller pair that parallel and support the first pair (1 and 2 in the diagram below), and the gently curving ‘bone’ that ties all the others together and gives the wing its shape (Z in the diagram below). [bone dimensions] This diagram will give you the of each bone relative to the others.

Ok, so that’s how to make the bones, but how do they fit together?

In order to have the wings articulate, the bones need to be able to pivot or hinge relative to one another. Mel and James did an enormous amount of research about the best way to make this a reality. When the rough draft of the bones arrived, Mel and James had already drilled holes in the bones at certain points, which I needed to adjust these slightly by using a 1/8" (0.32 cm) bit in my power drill. Once those were all set, I inserted small rods of nickel, brass, and aluminum through the holes and secured them in place with these brass collars. To make these rods, I purchased one of each of these from various local hardware stores (you can also order similar items from Amazon). Because the bones are ½” (1.27 cm) thick, and the collars are 1/8” (0.32 cm) thick, the rods needed to be long enough to pass through two of each. (2*0.5)+(2*0.125)=1.125" (2.86 cm). Again using the cutting wheels for the Dremel, I sliced up each of the rods into pieces 1.125” in length. The articulation points are highlighted in gold in the diagram above.

There’s not a huge difference between using aluminum, brass, or nickel for the connection rods since the rods themselves are fairly small and don’t do much in terms of adding weight to your rig. It’s really a matter of what you prefer to work with and what’s available to you. The brass seemed to hold up best in this configuration, but your experiences may vary.

The same rod-and-collar technique is what holds the wings onto the ‘backpack’ that allows them to be worn. Using the drill attachments for the Dremel, I punched 1/8” inch holes at the top and bottom of each of the swinging plates that themselves are hinged to the backplate. I then threaded 1.375” (3.49 cm) rods through each of the holes: (2*0.5")+(2*0.125")+0.25” for the width of the wood. A brass collar on each end applied as snuggly as possible allows the wings to extend while remaining attached to the hinged plates. The snugness part can’t be overstated; you want as little wiggle room as possible at any of the articulation points not only for safety’s sake, but to minimize the amount of stress that you’re putting on those joints.

In terms of getting the wings to open and close, that involved pinpointing the best spot to put the drawstring. For an extending wing configuration, there are two points from whence you can draw: near the articulation point on the top horizontal bone or at an identical point on the bottom horizontal bone. I’m sure there are points on the vertical bones that you could draw from, but the way I planned on adding feathers to the bones would not have allowed for that. The idea of the drawstring is to pull the wings to an open position, then allow gravity to work its magic when you want them to close. To discern the best draw point, I tied paracord to one potential location on one wing, then did the same at the other potential point on the second. After threading the cord through both sets of pulleys in the rig, I tested to see which setup allowed for easier use and generally felt more secure. The draw point on the lower of the two horizontal bones won hands down. This wasn’t too surprising, as this point provides a shallower angle of ascent, which, in turn, puts less pressure on the pulleys and rope. The same may or may not be true of your wings, so it’s a good idea to test all possible draw points if you can.

We’ll go more into how to keep the wings open while you’re walking around or posing in a follow-up post wherein I’ll tell you how I made the utility belt for this costume.

The bones seemed to be ready to go after this point, so it was then a matter of getting the giant feathers onto them. The post about the giant feathers details how lengths of aluminum screening are what attaches each feather to the other. The screening also acted like a humongous sleeve that I could slip over the top join point of the bones (where Bone Y and Bone Z meet). Once the sleeves were in place on their respective wings, I clasped them in place by threading floral wire back and forth through the screening at a couple key junctures. The aluminum portion of the sleeves was concealed beneath another sleeve made out of painted foam that was edged with Worbla.

Connecting the feathers to Bone Z (so they fan out) involved drilling three holes along the length of the bone with a 1/16" (0.16 cm) bit in my power drill, then connecting metal and foam with some high tensile strength fishing line. The holes and Bone Z itself were covered up by two of the foam feathers: one on each side of the metal.

This is by no means an easy or straightforward project, but it’s more achievable than it’s made out to be. A bit of planning, some experience with power tools, and a pinch of willingness to take risks will give you your own set of deployable wings! Best of luck on your costuming adventures!

This Week in Geekdom

Posted by Kel

Hey there everyone! Hope you're all having great weekends thus far, especially if you're one of the lucky nerds attending PAX Prime (if you're befuddled by our conflating 'lucky' and any incarnation of PAX, check out our stance on that particular family of conventions here). If you are at PAX Prime, pleasepleaseplease take one of these and tell us what it's like. In any case, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom, shall we?

Books

The Shepherd's Crown, the 41st and final installment of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series was released in the UK this past Wednesday. It will be available in the US on September 1st.

Comics

Who's up for some vintage DC goodness? You can now view the entirety of the 1982 official DC style guide online.

Movies/TV

Amazon will be taking up the movie-to-TV-series trend with their episodic spin on Galaxy Quest.

Vin Diesel is officially confirmed to return as the voice of Groot for Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2. The film is slated to hit theaters in May of 2017.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D will be getting the Lash treatment.

The minds behind Adventure Time are working on an animated series based on Castlevania III.

Are you planning on following along with Fear the Walking Dead? If so, you may want to keep an eye on AMC's website. The network is planning to develop a half-hour special covering the infamous zombie outbreak as it unfolds on a plane. This zombies on a plane bit will introduce new characters and content that will factor into the rest of Fear the Walking Dead. This content will air only online and AMC has not specified a release date, so keep an eye out.

Science/Technology

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...wait. It's really an FAA-approved paper airplane?

It's officially been over a month now since Microsoft released Windows 10 upon the PC-using populace. How have things been going since then? Here are the results so far.

Ever wonder why the Earth doesn't feature nifty rings around it like some of our solar-system siblings have? Here comes the science.

Earlier this week, the Hubble telescope brought us these images of a 'butterfly effect' within the Twin Jets Nebula and the results are absolutely stunning.

It's a public health issue that plagues researchers every year: selecting the strains of the flu virus that will be the most likely to crop up during the winter and using those strains to create the annual flu vaccine. On Monday, immunologists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced that they are considerably closer to the proverbial holy grail: a universal flu vaccine.

On Friday, NASA launched what will be its longest isolation simulation for those individuals who are aiming to be the first humans on Mars.

Believe it or not, this is Hawaii

Does a single Earth day cause ripples in the fabric of space-time?

We tend to lend a heaping helping of love to those individuals developing applications for virtual reality devices and today's going to be no exception. Meet James Blaha. If he has his way, he'll give us a way to use the Oculus Rift headset as a way to correct certain vision problems.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!

Guest Post: Making Hawkgirl's Wings, Part 1

Posted by Kel

We are almost done with our series on the making of Steampunk Hawkgirl. Only a couple pieces of the costume remain in the proverbial un-posted-upon dark, but there's a good reason for the wait: I wanted you guys to have the most comprehensive explanation for how the 'bones' of the wings came together, as they were the most challenging part of this project.

The 'bones' themselves were the result of two phases of construction, the first of which took place not in my little nerdy abode, but, rather, all the way out on the West Coast. My extremely talented cousin and fellow cosplayer, Mel, and her friend, James, generously lent their skills during the early parts of the build. Mel is joining us today to describe how she and James turned some strips of metal into the foundation for Hawkgirl's wings. So, without further ado, here's Mel!

Hi Nerds! I’m Mel and am here to share my contribution to Kel’s amazing Hawkgirl cosplay with you.

I love cosplay. The pride of figuring out how to make something new and the joy of participating in my favorite fandoms is such a rewarding experience and just plain fun. For me, cosplay is at its best when it becomes a team effort. I am lucky to have fellow makers in my life that will go down the costume rabbit hole with me simply to figure out if we can pull it off. Every costume we do usually presents us with a new skill to master and we try to help each other achieve a level of craftsmanship we couldn’t approach on our own. It also keeps things fun when faced with the more frustrating and tedious tasks that costume making comes with. Enter Kel’s latest adventure: Steampunk Hawkgirl!

Kel called me up to debate her construction options and I jumped at the chance to pitch in. First, Steampunk Hawkgirl is just awesome, especially when part of a group Steampunk Justice League cosplay. Second, the particular conundrum of articulating wing construction is something I couldn’t resist. One of my cosplay partners in crime, James, has always loved the idea of making articulating wings, and I just wanted an excuse to run around the house pretending I could fly. Kel had done a ton of research, which you can read all about in her previous post, and was debating which material to use: PVC pipe, wood or aluminum. All three would work, but they each came with challenges. Ultimately, we agreed that aluminum was the best route as it would be lightweight, durable, easy to operate, and aesthetically complimented her desired wing shape. The problem was that Kel lacked workspace and the necessary tools to get these done.

Having done some aluminum work with James on a pair of holster buckles for a Rule 63 Han Solo costume I'd put together for SDCC 2014, I decided to volunteer our assistance. James has completed a great deal of metal work out of his garage over the years so he could save Kel the cost of acquiring tools as well as the headaches associated with the trial and error of learning how to work with the material. As Kel and I live on opposite coasts, we agreed that she would send me her design details and James and I would make the structural components of the wings for her.

Kel’s design was great! She had not only researched and developed a working mechanism for the wings but she built a full-scale mock up out of cardboard to test operation, shape and size. I completely agree with Kel’s advice to do a small and full-scale test of complex cosplay elements out of cheap material that you can work with quickly. This is the stage where you can really refine the design and anticipate any major problems before you put your time and hard-earned cash into the real deal.

Kel passed along photos and the dimensions of her wings, which I used to draw a set of templates using Adobe Illustrator. James and I made our own cardboard mock-up so we could understand exactly what we were doing and what Kel needed.

James did some material tests and determined that we could slim down a number of components so save weight. If we were doing this out of wood the original size and shape of Kel’s design would have been perfect, but aluminum is much stronger so you don’t need the extra material. Since one of Kel’s goals was to keep the wings under 7 pounds, we trimmed wherever we could. After a thorough evaluation, we determined that we could slim down all but the largest piece (the large curved bone at the top of each wing), which gives the wing its awesome shape when extended.

We headed to our local hardware & metal store for materials. Here is what we picked up:

Aluminum Bars: 1” wide x ¼” thick x 96” long (2.54 x 0.64 x 243.84 cm)

Aluminum Strips: 3” wide x 1/8” thick x 6’ long (7.62 x 0.34 x 15.24 cm)

Du-BroDura-Collars: 1/8” plated brass #597

Jig Saw Blades for metal work

Back at the garage we pulled out the following tools:

Jig Saw

Angle Grinder

Clamps

Safety Glasses

Work Gloves

Drill

Pop Rivet Gun w/ Rivets

Scrap Aluminum Rod to fit the Dura-Collars

After tracing our template pieces onto the aluminum with a Sharpie, James began clamping the aluminum to a worktable and cutting the straight pieces with a jig saw fitted with blades specifically for cutting metal. (General reminder: make sure you wear eye protection! The last thing you want is a metal shard in your eye. There are lots of awesome characters with eye patches, but I don’t think you want to cosplay them everyday.) James cut slowly and steadily to avoid dulling the blade too quickly, but you do want to change the blade often. Metal work will chew right through sharp blades in a surprising amount of time. Buy lots of them and don’t be afraid to toss them frequently. Blades are relatively inexpensive and cutting with a dull blade can ruin your aluminum edges, putting you at greater risk for injury.

Next up, James cut the largest piece, which has a very distinct curved shape. For this he popped in a fresh blade and cut the piece out staying a little bit out from the marker line. This gave him some room to maneuver if he had a hard time going around a tighter curve or accidentally went off track a bit. Mistakes can happen when you are free-handing this stuff, so give yourself some room to course correct.

While James cut I began using the angle grinder on the rough-cut pieces. First, I rounded the corners of the straight bar pieces with the angle grinder and made sure there were no sharp edges. Doing this makes the pieces safer to handle and decreases the odds of the corners getting caught on any costume materials when the wings open and close. Second, I used the grinder to shave off that extra bit of aluminum that James left around the curved piece. This got the edge right to the marker line, ensuring an accurate shape. I then used some metal hand files to remove any lingering sharp edges.

After all of that, I marked where we needed to drill holes for fasteners and James took care of them with his mini drill press (a hand drill would work just fine as well but, hey, if you have a drill press use it!).

James did some thesis-level research on fasteners. Seriously, I think he could give a full dissertation on how to fasten two moving parts now. This is important because you don’t want to throw a typical screw and a nut on there just to find out that they will unscrew themselves every time you deploy your wings! This is exactly what would happen, by the way. The motion of those two rotating pieces will twist your fastener with it resulting in, surprise, disassembly on the convention floor!

James originally thought he could use nylon-coated screws, as they are known for being a good solution for this type of application, but they, too, failed us. After much googling he determined that a combination of pop rivets and collars would do the trick. We identified which joints would stay fastened forever, which got pop riveted, and then cut a short piece of aluminum rod that is long enough to connect the two aluminum pieces with a collar on each side. Make a little divot on the rod where you want the collar screw to stop and you now have a temporary fastener that allows you to remove them later with an allen wrench. The reason for this is so the wings can completely collapse for storage.

Ta-da! Giant wings! Right on Kel's weight target too: each assembled wing weighs 3 lbs. 2 oz.

After deploying them a number of times… for science… they got packaged up and made the journey to Kel. Because I was probably just as excited for Kel’s cosplay as she was I made sure I could personally present the wings to her on a most appropriate day, Christmas.

And there you have it. Since Kel did the heavy lifting by figuring out how the wings would work we only needed two afternoons in the garage to make them. This project is a classic example of how cosplay is a whole lot of planning and then relatively quick execution, so do your research and go make something great!