Nightmare - The Claw

Nightmare’s claw design varies widely depending on which piece of art you’re using, and the model used in Soul Calibur 4 really likes to clip through itself for any fist-like gestures. What this meant was that I had some latitude to design a more physically possible arm for terrorizing folks.

For the early part of the build, I was playing around a lot with different pieces, and consequently didn’t document very well. The base I ended up with used a 1”x2” pine board with a half-circle of 5” PVC tubing screwed onto the end to give my hand working room. I mounted little stubs of ¾” pex (plastic) tubing onto the PVC as mounting points for the fingers, which are simple lengths of 1” vinyl tubing with notches cut into them where the fingers would bend. I ran some fairly heavy nylon rope up these and anchored them in the inside tips with nails bent into hooks.

It’s hard to articulate (get it?), but this is the most elementary sort of animatronics. When the cord loop is pulled, the notches in the vinyl tubing are pulled in closer, resulting in a curling function. You can also see here I added some EVA for profiles to show where the final claws would extend to. It’s worth observing that with how I built this claw, each stage got progressively less dexterous. At this point, you could actually cause injury just grabbing at someone because the fingers were so fast and responsive. I added in a short PVC length as a grip, held in place on a loop of zip-ties (I love zip ties). Well, I was anxious to try freehand-sculpting spray foam, so I took a run at it.

Yeah, not so impressive. Well, okay, we’d go the old-fashioned cutting-style sculpting route, then. I added a couple of webbing buckles to go along the upper arm and hold it in place, and then set about *covering* the thing in foam. Like so.

Dexterity: down to zero. This thing was a big goofy mallet to swat people with. Well, then came carving, and things got better:

But it was starting to look too normal. So, I made a packing tape cast of my arm, strapped it in, and then covered most of the exposed gaps and joints with some nice, stretchy pink nylon.

Why? Because we needed to finish hitting this with expanding foam, and it was the best way to be sure there was room for my arm. The fabric over the hand turned out to be unnecessary at that stage, so I untacked it after the rest of the forearm was shaped. A cut was necessary to get my arm into the thing, so I covered that seam with more fabric along with the finger joints. There are magnets embedded underneath the fabric here to keep it closed without the need for buckles.

I carved down placement spots for armor plates, and an indentation to have a piece of conduit tubing emerging from the upper arm and then running back into the hand. This was an ad-lib design, since most versions of SCIV nightmare have a nasty little forest of crystal spikes here. I didn’t see a good way to include this feature and not risk injuring people and breaking the outfit when moving through a crowd, so I skipped it. Yeah, boo hiss to screen accuracy.

Then I started coating the claw in a layer of black, paintable silicone caulk.

This was a terrible material choice, in hindsight. The stuff is softer and more flexible, but also much less sturdy than more standard “flexible” acrylic caulk. No weight was saved, and it was much more prone to damage. Still, it did the job. I used it to cover up and seal pretty much every gap and pit in the claw, with the exception of the places where the armor plates would eventually go.

Well naturally, this was where crunch time came up again. The armor plates are simple 6mm EVA foam attached with excessive hot glue, with an extra strip of 3mm foam to serve as edging and add a bit of zazz. I hit the whole mess with the same 50/50 mix of PVA and matte black interior paint, then shiny blue automotive spraypaint, and then the black, orange, and gray details with an airbrush. The golden edging had to go on by hand, though – I was actually doing that part in the hotel. Consider this the usual cautionary tale about budgeting your time.

Final result, though, was this menace:

Here is a detail of the organic, kind of crappy texture on the talons. The torso had the same treatment, but the harder acrylic caulk and non-flexing surface turned out much better.

And just so you know what I think of Yoshimitsu:

The claw weighs about 5 pounds, all told. This makes it fine for occasional wear, but holding it out from the body for prolonged periods (i.e. when you need to keep from tearing off your skirt-spike-things for a two hour tour in costume) is a bad time.

So between the claw and the torso, some lessons learned:


1. Expanding foam is terrible. It contracts irregularly and forms enormous gaps and holes below the surface.
2. Omit this if your outer layer is a different material. Carving it down can produce an excellent three-dimensional base for hot-gluing EVA to, for instance.
3. Caulk is generally not a good substance to use either, due to weight and the difficulty in shaping it. It *can* work for a semi-yielding, tough finish on an organic piece. I’m going to try some other (more professional) acrylic options in the future, but you can’t beat the $2.50/tube price tag.
4. Casting over body forms is an awesome way to cheaply build up a shape and know you’ll fit into it.
5. Make things lighter. I am reminded of this this every year, but I’m still having trouble achieving it.