Sometimes it takes one man and one great idea to make a world of difference and improve the life of someone who truly deserves it. Lon Davis is such a person and he’s on a mission to make sure that kids with special needs have a chance to dress up for halloween and enjoy the spirit of the season.
Initially, Lon started just building costumes for his son, who uses a wheelchair to get around, but his work gained such notoriety that he wanted to build costumes for other kids too. He started a company called Walkin’ & Rollin’ Costumes, with a goal to build free costumes for kids who want one, through donations of time, volunteers, and a Kickstarter.
Recently, he built an Ant Man and his faithful ant Antony costume, and it’s pretty awesome. He shared his method on Facebook, to demonstrate how much time and care he puts into each costume.
First, he started with a basic PVC frame around the wheelchair that will hold the legs, head and back of the ant that Ant Man rides on.
Another angle of the PVC frame.
You can see that he’s done it in such a way as to tie in the PVC to the frame of the wheelchair so it’s sturdy, making it a part of the chair itself.
The next step was to figure out a way to make the legs move, because why not?
He settled on an idea that used small wheels on the legs, and a cover on the Wheelchairs back wheels.
He decided on rollerblade wheels, that would run on the wheel, causing the legs to move. He secured those to a PVC endcap.
Then he cut out a masonite wheel cover for the back wheels, with a board on it as a bump to make the legs move.
Secured the wheel cover on the wheel with some trusty zip ties.
Then he built out the legs. Here are the pieces that make up one side of the Ant-Man Antony legs, with Roller blade wheels attached to each leg.
Here it is attached to the wheelchair. The legs are are attached with the Roller blade wheels resting on the masonite wheel cover, so as it spins, it will cause each rollerblade wheel, and therefore each leg, to move in succession.
That’s genius.
Next he built a front and back frame out of PVC, with styrofoam carved as Antony’s head and back.
Secured it all in place.
Then covered the carved foam in batting to smooth out the edges.
Black fabric was wrapped and sewn around the foam sculpted head and back end.
The eyes for Antony were made from a clear plastic ball that were spraypainted on the inside. The antenae (not shown here) were wooden dowel rods spray painted black and inserted into the top of Antony’s head.
Now the rest of it needs to be painted black.
While that was drying, he built the helmet out of foam floor mats.
So much detail, with so many pieces.
Then sealed everything and got it ready to be covered in silver paint.
Here’s the constructed helmet, just missing eye pieces. The rest of the costume is a store bought Ant Man outfit.
And the completed product: Ant Man with his trusty steed; Antony.
The amount of detail and thought that went into this project is astonishing, and Davis’ hope to be able to do this as a non-profit venture, at no cost to the kids getting the costumes, is so admirable.
This guy’s a hero!!
Here’s the costume in action. Pretty sweet, eh?
Source: Walkin’ & Rollin’ Costumes & Facebook
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