I just read the question that was asked earlier and I don't think the
member who ask it was trying to insult anyone. It seems that they
wanted some insight on the subject. The reply however I found had more
hard feelings than advice in it. (At least that's the way it sounded).

I personally don't think the stilt idea is necessary (your arms and
torso will be out of proportion), but it's really up to the builder.
Wookiees come in all different sizes and I'm sure Chewie wasn't 8 feet
tall from birth.

If you aren't interested in the stilt idea, I would source different
densities of foam. I know a fabricator who made gorilla feet and he
told me the hardest part was sculpting the foot.

He used a pair of converse canvas shoes and added over sized lifts
(made of foam) to the bottoms. It was a hard foam, the stuff used for
flip flops. Then he took those measurements and made a form that was
close to the size of the overall shoe/lifts.

He sculpted the clay foot on the form... molded and casted it. When
the rubber cast was done he then stuffed the foam inside and glued the
layers together. Then he slipped the shoe in (where it was a loose fit
he added fiber fill to bulk up the rubber) and glued the rubber foot
to the shoe (using shoe goo of course).

Then the hair was attached to the ankle (see how the person in Germany
did their wookiee foot hair). The thing to remember is make sure you
get a rubber that when dry is tough as leather. The cast of the foot
will act as the shoe. To keep the rubber foot sole from wearing out
glue a piece of leather or thin sheet of rubber to the bottom, this
will be the sole that wears against the ground.

Now like I said, this technique was used of a gorilla costume without
stilts. The person's foot slipped right into the shoe/foot. I haven't
tried it yet, but if anyone wants to take the idea and run with it, go
for it. I'd like to see if a wookiee foot can be done using some of
these methods.


--- In wookiee@yahoogroups.com, rfk4711@... wrote:
>
> I think its no different than any costume... all depends on the
quality lvl
> the person wants to obtain . I too am working on a wookiee but I
troop as
> Han Solo. I have seen many quality lvls of Han solo.., its to easy
to be
> critical of other peoples work. What I try to do is give the
costume a ver.#..
> (Example )This is my Han Solo ver 1.0... 2.0 is in the works. I do
not think
> making a difficult costume like a Wookiee is any different. We are
limited with
> the skills we have, and learn as we go. Some would say the wookies
that you
> see are a " Work in progress".
>
> I had the great opportunity to meet Mat down at Dragon Con this
year. He has
> one of the best Wookies out there, and yet even he will tell you
that he has
> plans for change. I know he was not happy with his mask and was
building a n
> ew one.
>
> So how difficult is making the feet you ask?
>
> All depends on the quality lvl the person wants to obtain. I know
most of
> these guys bust their butts to bring you what you see... and have
plans for
> upgrades.
>
> On a technical Note:
>
> If a person was good with clay.. they could sculpt the wookie feet.
Make a
> casting of the feet.... and use any number of products like Silicone
foam to
> mold the feet. There are many new silicone based paints to apply a
paint that
> will survive the flex that wookiee feet will cause. Once the feet
are pained
> there are many ways to attach fur/ stilts to the feet. There are
also many
> issues feet can go thru when stilts are being used .... because in
most of our
> cases.. we are not blessed with height like Peter M. was. So yeah,
feet can
> look really bad. I think maybe before saying anything about peoples
feet
> though, you need to look at the original costume that was used in
the original
> movies... the feet look like hell.
>
> I am sure you can see now, that there is more to feet than you realize
>
> In the end... we all do the best we can.
>
> Bob
>
>
>
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