Build your own steampunk chicken-walker mech

Step 6 False legs

The thing that makes legs look real is having bone structure in the right places, particularly the knee and pelvis bones. That's what makes the difference between a real-looking leg and a scarecrow leg stuffed with straw. Each leg consists of two dowels (representing the upper and lower leg bones) that are plugged into holes in a tennis ball (representing the knee cap). Since I wanted the feet to stick out at an angle I connected the dowels at a 120° angle to each other. I filled in the fleshy parts by wrapping the lower-leg dowel with a towel and padding the upper-leg dowel with a large bag of cotton balls, and tied both off with rubber-bands. Then
I stuffed the entire package into a white nylon stocking.

For the pelvis, I just used a piece of packing foam that had roughly the right shape, bent it a bit with a strategically-placed rubber band, and inserted the dowels into it. (Men may wish to augment the foam as vanity dictates.) I stuffed the entire thing into a pair of white pants that I had split down the back seam, starting at the belt line and stopping just before the crotch. I recommend picking a pair of pants with a slightly larger waist than your own, since you'll want the belt to be able to go around both the false hip and your own hips.

Wrap a rubber band around the bottom of the pants and stuff them into boots. The boots then get rubber-banded in place with the heel hooked over the PVC pipe at the bottom of the foot supports.

Comments

[KittyCanuck]

This is really a quite clever way of making the legs look natural! I might try something like this for Hallowe'en this year, but I was thinking of just making a duct tape double of my legs, which would also ensure they looked like real legs. ;)

[xxgearzofgrindxx]

thats a whole lot of duct tape...