Centaur Halloween Costume Walking Test

SEE IT COMPLETED: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8aHu33LKxY

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I'm making a centaur halloween costume for my six year-old. This is the second leg design I've tried - the first involved metal rods attached to her ankles that would drag the rear hooves forward. This new design has bungee cord tendons that make the legs want to stretch backwards, and strings attached to her knees that pull them forward as she walks.

There's obviously several problems with it - the biggest one that the feet slide across the laminate hallway floor. I think it will work better on concrete, but I'm considering weighting the hooves and putting rubber treads on them.

More details at http://blog.trilemma.com/search/label/halloween

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• halloween
• centaur
• kids
• costume

[rebeccannoying]

Absolutely fascinating! :D I really like the simplicity of the mechanics and the effectiveness of the walk! I have two suggestions though: one, you should add the words "fursuit" and "taur" to your tags; there are tons of people who are interested in high-quality animal costumes and I bet you'd get a million more views this way. Second, you could attach a cord between the point where the visual spine attaches the harness and somewhere on the actual spine to take some weight off her hips :)

[trilemma2001]

@rebeccannoying Thanks for the keyword suggestion, I'll give that a try. If I understand what you mean about the cord, I don't think that will have the effect you describe. The whole harness is rigid, and rigidly connected to the horizontal 'horse spine', making a sort of L-shape. Running a cord from the shoulder harness to the horse-spine would just put the L-connector under pressure, not change anything in Morgan's experience. Or am i misunderstanding you?

[rebeccannoying]

@trilemma2001 XD i'm not sure; but what I'm trying to say is that it looks like the joint of the harness and the structural spine is forming a fulcrum, which might be placing an uncomfortable amount of pressure on her lower back (after a long time, anyway). I was wondering if you could alleviate some of the pressure by putting a second connection between the harness and the spine that could still be hidden in the overall body but place some of the strain at a higher point on the harness

[trilemma2001]

@rebeccannoying That has an intuitive appeal, but I don't think the forces would change as you describe. Imagine someone is carrying you in a bucket. Could you lighten their load by pulling on any part of the bucket?

[wolftwiligirl]

TUTORIAL PLEASE!!!! :D

[trilemma2001]

@wolftwiligirl Didja follow the link in the description?

[indianspice2011]

marching bands dont lift their knees anymore... they glide...

but this is cool

[jvry8c]

wow... very awesome. lucky kid.

[jonhayashi1]

Me again and I enjoyed the costume test! Great work! I forgot to mention you can see my hand drawn animated videos, THE WINGED SANDALS and THE COLOSSEUM with centaurs in them on my channel page on you tube! Since I animated centaurs in those videos I appreciate your costume achievement. You might find the videos fun to watch! Thanks for displaying!

[kitaronicus]

This is amazing! i love it!

Can you put details on how it was made?