Naga Process

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COBRAS

SNAKE COLLAR

FOUNDATION

FITTING

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Cobras

Once the model was mirrored, I began to determine wher eI would slice off the front of the head.

The head is not sliced at a 90 degree angle.

This is the final position of the slicing plane.

Front view of final head, after mirroring and slicing

A print prior to removing the vertical supports

The largest snake head, sanded, fully pieced together, ready for attachment

The first print width was too wide, so I re-scaled based off the proportion of the eye-to-eye width in relation to the width of the body.

The large head, attached to the hood and primed with Flexbond

Detail:
the 'seams' of the large snake head, filled with Flexbond

All the gold areas of the large cobra, base coated in brown

Prior to drybrushing the gold, all the belly scales were painted beige

COBRAS

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Each of the seven cobra heads is 3D printed. I found existing 3D models of full-body cobras and modified them in Meshmixer, a relatively simple modeling program. The largest of the heads had to be sliced into 4 pieces per half in order to fit on the print bed. The two shoulder snakes took roughly 8 ours each to print. Each half of each side snake took roughly 11 hours, and the large head prints took a combined total of nearly 65 hours to print.

The pieces were all sanded, primed, painted, sealed, then attached to the hood. They have low infill density and so remained fairly light and do not present a significant weight/balance issue.

Snake Collar

This is a picture of the 'inside' of a shoulder snake. The strip you see is a boning channel that contains a 3/8" wide length of crinoline steel.

This steel bone is bendable and supports the snake as it leaves the shoulder as well as holding the shape of the collar.

The lower body of the snake is lightly padded with a layer of baby flannel to produce more thickness.

The leather belly pieces had to have the seam allowances turned under and edge-stitched down prior to flatting them to the fabric bases of the snakes.

This image show the base collar fully assembled with a partially finsihed side snake on the right side.

This shows the shape of the lower portion of the snake body where the snake 'twists' and we see the backside of the snake instead of the pale belly.

This portion of the hood had to be sanded prior to attaching the snake heads in order for the adhesive to hold

The snake heads were attached using a bead of hot glue and a heavy layer of Flexbond with acted as both adhesive and smoothing primer.

The backs of the shoulder snakes only have pleather to where the snake rears away from the shoulder (to conserve fabric and bulk).

These pieces were primed with Flexbond to make painting more feasible.

Fully painted pleather piece that covered the back of the shoulder snake hoods.

Detail:
This shows the shaping of the collar around the back of the neck and the shoulder snakes after the hood backs were attached.

Paint detail:
the snake bodies are painted solid brown then built up with layers of light drybrishing to produce an antique bronze feel. In certain light the snakes appear almost entirely brown, while in other the light turns them gold. The light texture of the snakeskin pleather lent itself well to this effect.

Detail:
Shoulder snake head, prior to painting the inside of the mouth

Detail:
Shoulder snake head and hood, prior to painting the inner mouth

Detail:
Along the gold on the inside of the hood, there is a lightly drybrushed line of black to provide more separation where the gold meets the unpainted pleather of the belly.

SNAKE COLLAR

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The snake collar has a twill fabric base overlaid with a pleather top layer. The base has a seam down the center front for fit, while the pleather layer is solid. The pleather layer was cut slightly too small and then stretched to attach it to the base.

Each shoulder snake has a length of crinoline steel, bent to shape, that extends from the chest up behind the cobra head. This provides semi-flexible yet strong support for these lightweight elements. The bodies of the shoulder snakes are lightly padded with a layer of baby flannel to produce a slightly more dimensional effect.

Foundations

This is the pattern of the large hood base. The boning channels are shown.

Hood Base:
originally I ran two vertical bones near the center of the hood, but these proved to be unnecessary and so I removed them.

I added two additional horizontal boning channels after the fitting for additional support at the shoulder line and mid-back. Additionally, the vertical supports at the edges were extended to the very top edge of the hood to support the snake head

Hood Base with Corset Mock-up:
Before the mock-up fitting the vertical bone channels ended about 8 inches below the top edge of the hood. I ultimately extended these channels to provide support all the way to the top.

Detail:
Top edge of the corset, showing the opening where the aluminum bars slide into the corset.

FOUNDATION

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The foundation for this entire costume is the sheer corset and the inner layer of the large cobra hood.

The hood is a double layer of utility fabric reinforced with horizontal lengths of curved crinoline steel and supported vertically by two aluminum bars that are bent to the curvature of the back and waist. The inner layer of the hood stops where it meets the top edge of the corset, while the outer layer continues the full length and lays over top of the lacing to conceal the back of the cor

MYTH EMBODIED

A Monograph Project in Costume Technology

by William Andrew Young

NAGA PROCESS