Inspiration

For Halloween 2023 I was inspired by Bob at I Like to Make Stuff who took a papercraft template for a cardboard Optimus Prime Helmet and modified it for laser cutting instead of hand cutting and enlarged it so that it would be the size of Optimus Prime’s head if he was 22ft tall. This resulted in the wearer looking like a human bobble head or a funcopop toy. Hence FuncopOptiums Prime.

I bought the same template that was linked to from the video and modified the pdf file in lightburn to laser cut the cardboard.

Laser cut parts. The template had dashed lines for folds. I tuned the cut power to cut through the top layer of the corrugated cardboard but not the second layer.

Assembly

I used a lot of masking tape and PVA glue for the assembly. I got most of the way through assembly before thinking that hot glue would have made this process easier but I think the PVA glue will last longer. The template suggested using a creasing tool on the folds to get the corrugation to crease easier so I cut some wedges of scrap wood and used those to set the folds.

Finishing

The video suggested using drywall filler to smooth out the gaps in the cardboard. I haven’t done much finishing like this and I don’t think this is a great material for this because it has no flex but it was easy to apply, dried fast, and was easy to sand. It has survived two nights of use and doesn’t show much wear so maybe the paint tied it together well enough.

I sprayed it with a high fill primer to build up some thickness and smooth out any inconsistencies.

The high fill primer grabbed onto any fuzziness left from the cardboard and looked bad. It required some careful hand sanding to remove that. It felt silly to be sanding cardboard but it looked great once it was finished. Problem areas hi lighted below.

After sanding it looked much better.

I was going to paint it matte blue and grey like the cartoon but at the store I was lured in by metallic spray paint and I like how it came out.

Electronics

I had some cheap LED keychains that are intended to have a small acrylic tag with an engraving which will be edge lit by the LED. I replaced the stock tag with a wide hexagonal piece with etching and hot glued them into the eye opening and it makes easy convincing eyes.

Finished costume

I made some internal spacers and zip tied in an old bike helmet to make it wearable.