Wesley Scoggins
Indy Mogul
Wesley's Weekly HOW TO: Futuristic Eyepiece
If you're a kid of the 90's like me, you're probably at least a little bit familar with the show Dragonball Z, along with totally overblown Anime-style fight sequences that would literally go on for days, the series also featured lots of neat gadgetry utilized by the characters. Probably one of the most famous pieces of equipment from the cartoon is the Scouter, an eyepiece computer that would give you a readout of the strength of anyone you were looking at. Well a few of you guys were interested in how to make your own, so I decided to try to figure out how for you.
Well there are two major parts to the build, the earpiece, and the eye screen. For the ear piece, I needed some kind of boxy shape that I could build onto, well I looked around for a while and found a pack of Sticky-Notes that was just about the perfect size, I picked them up for 2 dollars, and removed the front. But before we can continue, we've got to get started on the screen.
I got this plastic lid from a food container, but you could easier cut a piece of plastic out of any kind of plastic bubble packaging or anything you can find that has relatively thin, yet hard plastic. (I heard someone suggest using a Compact Flash Card Case for this, because they are tiny plastic flip out cases, just look around and improvise.
I cut out a piece about the size of my eye, the put a little fold on the edge. Then I mixed up some glossy acrylic varnish with just a tiny dab of green paint (you could use any acrylic color for the lens, just make sure to dilute it with plenty of clear glossy acrylic).
I used a cheap foam brush to paint it on, try to use nice even strokes in the same direction to reduce any smearing, or uneven coloring.
Next, I took the back part of a pack of plumbers epoxy I bought, and cut a couple of kind-of-crescent shapes out of the back to act as the bridge between the earpiece and the eye screen.
I then attached them to the front of the earpiece with some epoxy.
Next, I took a piece of craft wire, and bent it to the contour of my ear, then attached it to the inside of the earpiece with additional plumbers epoxy.
Then I cut a rectangle out of the rest of the cardstock backing of the Epoxy container, and attached it to the half-crescents with additional epoxy.
I then attached the eyepiece with some more epoxy, and put a white glossy paintjob on the body of the earpiece. You can stop here if you want, and modify it however you want, or you can continue to make it look even more Anime-ish.
I then cut up the back of the Sticky Notes packaging into strips.
Using Epoxy, I started layering them along the side.
After attaching them all on the side with the epoxy...
I then paint them brown, and cut out a hollow square of foam board..
And capped off the side of the earpiece with it.
Then I just sealed and smoothed out the edges with a little bit of air-drying clay, and finished the paint job. And there you go, your own futuristic eyecomputer.
This could easily be modified to look less cartoonish, with some dark silver paint you could make it look more gritty and futuristic for any kind of war sequences, or paint it with some bronze and copper paint (and toss a vacuum tube on top of that baby) and easily have some kind of steam powered eye computer for any kind of air pirate shenanigans.
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