Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Bear Costume!

hey everybody it is comic-con time again San Diego comic-con and as you know I always have one or more elaborate costumes to wear out on the floor and this year is no exception except that it is an exception because it's a very different kind of costume yes this is a piece of the costume that I'm wearing no it is not a wookie I have already been a wookie a couple of times this will in fact end up being a 7-foot tall grizzly bear mm-hmm I have made some progress over the past few months I spent a lot of time to keep drawings of this before I constructed it I then did a lot of work on the interior construction if you look closely on the interior you'll see that it is completely hollow the entire form of my bear is made up of stainless steel corset boning that I bought online it enters through the back and it is incredibly lightweight which means it should also be much less hot and heat exhaustion generating than previous costumes of mine I will also have some cooling technology built into this but before we continue there's still work for me to do on this the final bit of work but before we talk about that let me show you where I've gotten so far kula okay let's talk about it as you can see I have a large amount of my bear character totally done he's a very rotund pot-bellied bear he's eaten a lot of picnic baskets I think of myself as a hard-edged model maker spaceships buildings cars that kind of stuff I can do all day long but character sculpting is not my forte so I drew a lot of different drawings of the kind of bear that I wanted to make I took a lot of different pictures I thought a lot about the structure of the bear and I also thought about how I wanted to build it I wanted the build to be really easy I also wanted to share this build with other people and I wanted it to be lightweight ergo it's hollow so there's no structure inside except for the corset boning and I'm very pleased with this body shape he's fatter than I thought he would be but I I dig it it's got some character to it I like the claws these are polycarbonate claws by the way so there they won't shatter I love this fur I picked up this three inch nap fur and I've been slowly trimming it a little bit like the arms are slightly shorter than the body hair that's per normal with bears I may still do some shaving it is shaping up really fantastically but there's one thing that I have not yet completed and it all kind of rests on that that's the head right you noticed it's not a bear head I'm wearing my problem is is that I want this to feel like a real bear I don't want it to feel like an anime character I don't want it to feel like a sports mascot I want it to feel like a grizzly bear so it all rests in that face I'm not gonna make it animatronic I'm not gonna give it a lot of motion but I want the face to read and feel like a genuine bear that's going to be the toughest part that's today's one day built all right so I'm gonna take this off and show you just one of the technologies that I came up with for this and that's the feet I'm really pleased with them ah the easy in-and-out is also part of the design I really like and similar to a wookie costume the more beat up this fur gets the more realistic it looks so I'm not being very precious about the fur hitting the ground or getting dusty or anything like that it just makes it look better so there's my bare body here are my bare shoes let's talk about these so the base of this is some one-piece molded super-lightweight Skechers I wanted the bare feet to be lightweight because I have a lot of experience with heavy costume shoes and they can really wear you out I wanted them to be easy to wear and easy to make I wanted them also to wear well like real shoes so I made the soles out of leather yeah so here's what I did I actually made a wooden form of a bare foot I wet molded heavy black latigo leather onto that form and then I stuck a shoe in it poured a be flexible foam around that to seat it in and then hot glued fabric over the top of that all while gluing in some polycarbonate cloths this is super lightweight it weighs only I think about 10 or 12 ounces it is super comfortable I can wear them all day long and that is a viable barefoot alright this is where I started with the Bears head with a rigid foam bear head I bought from a taxidermy supply online for I think about 30 or 40 bucks um this is a great thing about taxidermy supply there's lots of it the stuff isn't very expensive and it's often incredibly high quality in terms of its fidelity to the animals look so I've got a good big grizzly face here I then in order to make it really lightweight i molded this stuff over it this is a thermoplastic called Vera form va RA fo RM I bought it from my local casting place here in San Francisco the legendary Douglas and Sturgis I think their art stuff calm a rtst you f with 1f art stuff calm yes anyway they sell this stuff heavy and lightweight Vera form this is the lightweight stuff my first test of heat molding this oh right how does it work you simply get it hot with a heat gun or with water I think it's over 150 degrees and you can lay it over a form and press it and as it cools it stays in the shape of that form so I then use the heavier stuff to make this and it sits on a welding harness a welding helmet harness on my head there you go now you can see this is a really nice lightweight bear head I'm very pleased with it the ears by the way are vacuum formed styrene also bought from taxidermy supply very cool so I'm happy with this shape this shape is good it comes off of my head in the right way it's got a bear look to it but it's got to have it's got to feel like a bear so I need to cover it with fur Oh which I already did so let's take a look at that I have this is this is inside out my bear for my bare face pattern now it actually is quite instructive to look at it inside out you can see how I built it you can see there's two pieces of fabric for the nose there's a wide piece for either side of the face a couple of long pieces that come over the top and then some pieces that come down the back and around the sides right here you can see I've taken some Vera form painted it black and this is how I'm gonna see out of the bear I'm gonna see through its neck I've hung some little spinned rolls of hair there that I can see through but you won't necessarily see me so I'm hidden now one of the reasons there's so many different pieces of fabric making up the Bears face I looked at some teddy bears and found that they're often much simpler in terms of their construction is because I wanted the hair the way the hair laid it snap as it were the direction the hair falls to be accurate to a bear and when I looked at bears what I saw was their hair comes down on the nose like this but on the rest of the face it all comes back from the eyes it's like they're built to swim or to be streamlined so I had to mark as you can see on the fabric the direction of the NAP of the fur on each piece and that helped me to understand exactly how these should be sewn together no let's turn this inside out okay so you can also see that I've been playing around with different lengths of bear fur it's very close around the snout like it is on an actual bear he does not have ears here because his ears are here there's just these little pockets actually let me just slip this all over and we can show you how this goes yours just slip on there like that then the thing I like about the Vera forum is it's very tough it takes a lot of abuse and it's very reliable okay so here is where we currently stand with the bear head and I'm very pleased with how it's going but the closer I get to finishing the more nervous I get because it's all about the character it's all about does this feel like a bear does he feel like a bear or just a cartoon of a bear I want the answer to be the former so it all rests on how I get those eyes right do they feel like they're staring at you does the mouth hmm have a point of view I think that's mainly what I'm talking about here I'm really pleased with how the ears look I'll glue those in soon the technology for looking through it it works pretty well let's take a look here there we go so I can see comfortably out the front of my bear structurally I'm really pleased with this from a character standpoint I'm terrified but that's the task today I'm gonna make some eyes I'm gonna make some lips I'm gonna make a lower jaw I'm gonna get this all glued up and shaved properly the hair still needs some trimming and clipping and then I should have my completed bear costume seriously yeah seriously oh right I've also got to fix this nose I've got to give him a bear nose one of the things that's really lovely about Vera form that's this white stuff is that with hot glue it's pretty much indestructible so like the hot glue gets a really good grip on it you might not know this about me but I spent a few years working on Beach Blanket Babylon the San Francisco institution stage show here in the city back in the early 90s and Beach Blanket figures features all of these super elaborate hot big wigs and big hats and this stuff Vera form is the soul of a lot of those giant wigs it's super lightweight easy to form and not that expensive okay here we go one ear is in I'm putting some glue on the inside and some glue on the outside so I got to get his nose right and I have sample nose oh this is this is actually a bit of inspiration that I've got here it's a smaller bear skull it's an actual bear skull though this was a present given to me by a girlfriend in New York many many years ago purchased at the Chelsea flea market oh yeah I remember the Chelsea flea market I've had this is a very first skull I ever received in my collection of Bones so it sits on here for some inspiration as you can see I have some other bear parts that I've collected including a jaw an actual bear jaw if I want such a thing but I tend to think not here is a lower lip that I made this is using some fur and some kit leather so I'm going to tackle this problem in a couple of stages first will be the nose and the mouth there's a nose first will be the nose and the mouth it's actually not incredibly bad I might be able to do better okay so first is the nose then the mouth then once I get the mouth right then it's the eyes that's an order of difficulty the nose the eyes the mouth this is one where I know I like to say that I start with the most difficult part first but in this case I'm starting with the easier part because getting the character right is really really difficult I'm old Edisto s-- at of abs plastic over the rigid foam form I'd like to try another one this is actually Kydex this is a thermoplastic often used for knife and gun sheets it is thermally formed so I have a heat gun and I'm gonna try and form another nose out of some Kydex and see how well I do this is pretty soft let's see what I can do with it oh wow the stuff is hard to mold kind of really dig it just gonna take me a few tries to get this right I'm pleased yeah yeah yep oh that's great I'm gonna try a second one so I have something plated not quite as good try it again oh I like that I like that you know I like the Kydex much better than the ABS that's for sure it's time to get some reference material going loving how the nose is laying down it's distorted a little bit but I can I can come back from that problem that's a solvable problem I'm sad that the nose causing me so much trouble but we'll figure this out fabric over there but I kind of like this kind of like this he's a little off-kilter but that kind of makes him feel right you know now I'm doing most of this construction with a low temperature hot glue and that's because I want room to move I want room to undo things that I've done that I don't like like this nose I got to redo it it's not working no the low-temperature hot glue gives me a little bit of flexibility in that regard I like that I like it right there now how to get it to stay I like how Matt it is I like the size of the nose looks pretty good let that set now to trim these I just bought a really nice set of professional trimmers for shaving your head and it came with all of these attachments in a bag so I had to build the the savage trimmer box to hold it sit there and while all of that is setting let's take a look at the eyes shall we now these are taxidermy eyes for bears but I don't think that tells the bear story I want to tell that definitely not these evil beady eyed bear let's try gray huh no oh how about this joints yeah no that's totally not what I'm looking for yeah about there but I did pick up these black marbles I also have these safety eyes it looks like a llama I think for the eyes I'm gonna figure out their position and then I'm gonna cut a slice and then I'm gonna make an eye with an eyelid bears eyelids are a key part of them same way that I use this kit leather for the lip line I'm gonna do the same with that with the eye line and we'll see if that can't give me a little bit of character out of that thing because this is just cartoonish none of these feels quite right that bears eyes are bigger than that for crying out loud I mean now I have a good collection of eyes but see I think that's gonna be the right size I just think I have to set them back inside there all right so I'm working on the second nose actually ii use like v notes that i've made this one I'm very happy with I'm gonna try holding it on to the bear with some elastic I don't want to glue it on because I want some flexibility later so we're gonna try and keep me flexible for that yeah it's not under a high amount of pressure it's totally adjustable all right you know what to attach it to is the question yeah I'm tying the elastic inside this that allows me to hold the nose in place I'm sorry I can't show you but I can't even see in there there's only enough room for my hands okay all right bear bear is looking like bear oh I still have to put some more hot glue in there to cure oh oh all right there let's try this again all right let's figure out where the eyes go how are we gonna do that I'm going to set up a mirror sorry he just made me laugh does he he's looking pretty cool I'm gonna set up a mirror I'm gonna put on the bear mask I'm gonna use some black tape and figure out where his eyes position is the best hmm I've ended up with the eyes pretty much exactly where they are on the bear head I was working with they're gonna be a little bigger than I'm discovering something really really cool which is that I'm sewing around the eye through the Vera form and it's actually giving me a huge amount of control over the shape of the Bears face I've been able to give him some sort of old bear wrinkles under his eyes a little bit and I feel like that's very evocative from a character standpoint I didn't expect to be able to get so much out of just using a needle and a thread but that's what I'm doing here watch on this eye over here I want to pull this up a little bit so I come up above the eyebrow there with a little bit of thread I come back down and you'll see when I pull the thread disappears but I get I get a little bit of get a little bit of eye action there see that yeah that's really nice I think I think I've got a bear face there all right so one of the other things about bears is their hair isn't all the same color like my bear is right now their hair is many different colors and there's usually some dark around the eyes so I am going to give him just a little bit of spritz of dark of the eyes this is a staple of film special effects streaks and tips in a dark color now let's see if I can't give him a little bit of character just a quick spritz before I get too excited and start really dressing him I feel like we're very very close so I want to dress my bear up on the stand and do some final tweaks but I'm feeling very good about it dudes dudes he's a regal bear yeah all right so let's see the bear is pretty much done it's time to take him out for a spin you're wondering how I'm gonna stay cool in here well I've built it wide open on the inside actually like a mascot costume because there are systems for cooling down mascots and I'm going to try one I've got one right here it's a battery-powered chest pack so I'm going to wear that I'm also going to have a walkie earpiece in so that my crew can talk to me because we're going to take the bear out here in the Mission District we're gonna go on a little walk yeah test test test one two three all right Wow okay let's go on an adventure here we go oh it's awesome that was really really fun and this custom is not too hot I am I'm that couldn't have gone better comic-con here we come you

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 2,743,673

Rating: 4.9064074 out of 5

Keywords: adam savage, mythbusters, one day builds, one day build, comic-con, revenant, cosplay, adam savage one day build, tested one day builds, bear costume, adam savage bear costume, adam savage one day builds, one day build adam savage, adam savage bear, adam savage's one day builds, tested adam savage, one day builds adam savage, bear suit, san diego comic-con, tested bear, adam savage cosplay, adam savage tested, revenant bear, adam savages one day builds, adam savage incognito

Id: 0cQ91lO4pH0

Length: 30min 3sec (1803 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 03 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/theShatteredOne]

Something about him shaving the bear amuses me. Also of course he built a box to hold the trimmer guides...

[u/N22-J]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thDDUoYRWFg His completed costume is hilarious

[u/PolarBearIcePop]

First time I watched that video, I thought it was the bear from Bear in the Big Blue House.

[u/the_drew]

It's very cool but the scale of the head seems too small when compared to the body.

Great to see his craftsmanship though, and his determination to persist with the Kydex is impressive!

[u/felixthemaster1]

The face seems quite trim for a chubber.

[u/a5vastra]

As much as I like it, I feel like 'One Day Builds' is kind of a misnomer.

Love watching Adam work though!

edit: ah. 3 minutes in he says the one day build is the bear head/face.

[u/[deleted]]

I would love to see a Chewbacca build.

[u/kwmcmillan]

/u/adminsmithee GREAT USERNAME. iunderstoodthatreference.gif

[u/orangeyougladimhere]

don't forget that some feature are always moist and for the eyes i would try to aline theme as if they were looking at someone 10 feet away any closer would make the bear cross eyed not the effect you want plus do not forget to take into account the average people hight you will be looking at