Hi everyone. i’m currently working on 2 props for costumes for a con i’m going to. Jubilee and Gambit from the X-men animated series. i’m looking into making the palms and parts of the fingers on my gloves to light up in a rainbow of colors to simulate her powers ( she creates multi-colored plasma from her hands). since we are doing steampunk versions i’ve made her gloves fingerless. and if i can get them to twinkle or something that would be awesome. for gambit i’m making a light up playing card that glows pink when he completes the circuit. by sewing the power source in the wrist of the glove and putting something conductive on the tips of the gloves to complete the circuit in the acrylic card. any tips, suggestions, product recommends, really anything will be of great help to me. thank you!
For Jubilee : Obviously tiny little SMD LEDs, which would be a major PiTA to connect, come to mind. A simpler material might be FO Fabric, connected/driven by some RGB LEDs. Perhaps you could post some pics or links to pics (illustrations) of what her character should look like visavis her gloves.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12712
As for Gambit : You could do what you suggest but also add a cap to the card to keep the power on for a short time (? a second or 2 ?) after the card is thrown. It wouldn’t do just to have it go out immediately after released. If it were a magic show I might think about making them out of some kind of flash paper and have them disappear in a (burning) flash. But I suspect that would be frowned upon at any Cosplay con. Have you seen any edge lit acrylic (or glass) art ? There are some nice effects you can make using that concept. Connections via conductive ink might be the way to go, probably no need for “dropping” resistors if used.
Mee_n_Mac:
For Jubilee : Obviously tiny little SMD LEDs, which would be a major PiTA to connect, come to mind. A simpler material might be FO Fabric, connected/driven by some RGB LEDs. Perhaps you could post some pics or links to pics (illustrations) of what her character should look like visavis her gloves.https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12712
As for Gambit : You could do what you suggest but also add a cap to the card to keep the power on for a short time (? a second or 2 ?) after the card is thrown. It wouldn’t do just to have it go out immediately after released. If it were a magic show I might think about making them out of some kind of flash paper and have them disappear in a (burning) flash. But I suspect that would be frowned upon at any Cosplay con. Have you seen any edge lit acrylic (or glass) art ? There are some nice effects you can make using that concept. Connections via conductive ink might be the way to go, probably no need for “dropping” resistors if used.
http://nerdsontherocks.com/wp-content/u … ubilee.png
its one of the better pictures of her powers in use. her gloves i’m using are a teal color and fingerless instead of the rubbermaid looking gloves she actually wears. i was suggested fiber optics by someone else but was told they don’t show very well in bright light and photos.
this is the instructable i’m hoping to improve on a bit for gambit’s card.
http://www.instructables.com/id/X-Men-S … aying-Car/
and this is a thinner version someone made which is my main inspiration for it. i plan on using pink LEDs instead of red though. its mostly for pictures i dont think any Con staff would appreciate throwing cards especially acrylic ones
It would seem that the idea for Gambit’s card is pretty much what I was thinking of too. I might recommend you look at this implementation, just for another take on it. Note how it’s thinner than the one you linked to.
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2009/re … day-cards/
I saw one site where they ground down the 3mm LED to be about as thick as the 1/16 plastic sheet. The idea being to stop the light from “bleeding” onto the front and back of the “glass”. I would add that a 1206 SMD LED would be about the right thickness (although hard to “wire”). It might not be as bright though using several along 1 or more card edges would help and also even out the lighting effect.
As for Jubilee’s gloves being visible in daylight … unless the LEDs driving the fabric are high intensity, you’re correct. I note these people mention a “high brightness fabric”, of which I know nothing. Maybe they have an idea to steal ?
http://www.lumigram.com/catalog/page5.php
High brightness fabric:
this fabric can be used for all our AC powered items: tablecloths, curtains, custom panels,… The Fabric emits a light that is visible in daylight.
Short of something along the lines of the above, I can only think of embedding lots of tiny LEDs into the glove itself, a tiresome task and one that will look like lots of LEDs unless you use a diffuser of some sort.
that sounds like a solid plan for Gambit i’ll look into it. i plan on using acrylic for the casing. some people used a dremmel tool to etch the card symbol on the acrylic. we plan on using an ace card and cutting out the middle shape to help the light go though.
it sounds like the high brightness fabric is only usable with AC power which wont be much use at a con. it looks like i’ll have a lot of sewing to do. i was thinking of putting the lilytwinkle in the circuit to give it the firework effect or something similar. i’m not sure how many LEDs i can hook up to one unit or how much power i’ll need to use to power that many LEDs. would i be able to diffuse the lilypad LEDs with sandpaper like the regular ones?