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Hebrew🇮🇱
Hebrew🇮🇱

⊰ The Symbiont ⊱

The symbiont is a prop for a LARP character.

The person it was made for showed me a concept he had developed with AI. I really loved it, and he also asked for lighting in the eyes and between the back plates, which added extra work, but I immediately wanted that too.

To preserve the symbiont’s wow effect, I was also asked to make a large gugel (hood) to hide and protect it most of the time.

After connecting the lighting, I understood what effects I wanted:
The back plate lighting pulses, rising and falling gradually in a breathing effect. The eye lighting responds to the wearer’s speech via a microphone (located at the front, at the split of the shoulder tentacles). This required a bit of logistics, mainly sourcing the components while there was a war going on around us.

I’ll write about AI’s involvement in this project in a separate post, for those who are interested.

I worked on this project during Operation “Roaring Lion”.

Once again, we all moved to my in-laws’ place, where there’s a Mamad (an accessible safe room). It took me a few days to settle in and carve out a workspace for myself and the symbiont-in-progress, with occasional breaks for alerts and sirens.

In the photo, you can see an improvised soldering iron holder, from the days before I brought over the equipment I was missing.

While working on the symbiont, I worked on several different parts in parallel.
I selected a few representative images from the process:
Back-plates, tentacles (head, shoulder, near-eye, and long ones), eyes, body base, electronics (Arduino), and the gugel.

⊲ Steps in making the back plates [6] ⊳

  • After wrapping

  • The plates before wrapping

  • The inner part with the lighting and masking

  • Back plate lighting

  • Attaching the LED strip

  • Planning the plates

⊲ Steps in making the tentacles [8] ⊳

  • Tentacles attachment points on the body

  • After filling them with acrylic, I used nuts as weights.

  • Before sewing

  • Planning the tentacles

  • Tentacles pattern pieces

  • Head tentacles, before and after wrapping

  • Shoulder tentacles after carving and sanding

  • The base for the shoulder tentacles

⊲ Steps in making the eyes [4] ⊳

  • With a frosted plastic layer

  • With red transparencies and kiwi-style pupils, we called them “poppies.”

  • Frosted spray for a cloudy look

  • After increasing the spacing between the LEDs

⊲ Steps in making the body [5] ⊳

  • After wrapping

  • After adding the eyelids

  • After attaching the eyes

  • Early stage of the body base

  • Cutting to fit the back

⊲ Electronic components [6] ⊳

  • Arranging the components under the plates and their pockets

  • Battery pocket

  • Pocket for the Arduino and straps for the MOSFETs

  • Hidden switch

  • Hidden microphone

  • The lighting

⊲ Steps in making the gugel [5] ⊳

  • The gugel after sewing

  • With buttons and loops

  • Covers most of the symbiont

  • Neck area before sewing

  • The gugel before sewing

Since this is a LARP item that someone would need to wear on their back for several days, comfort was very important to me. At first, I thought I’d need to add elastic, straps, and more, until I decided that the tentacles reaching forward would serve not only a visual purpose but also a structural one.

I walked around the house wearing the symbiont parasite to make sure it was indeed comfortable.
My daughters said to me, a bit nervously: “Hey, Mom…”
I replied: “Hello to you, children of G***.”

One day, I went outside to sand, took an extension cord, a Dremel, a mask, and a bench, and was quite pleased with myself for putting the creature on my shoulders — which didn’t stop me from forgetting where it was and searching for it outside, unable to figure out how or where it had disappeared to, much like looking for your glasses when they’re already on your head.

When I called it “the parasite,” the person it was made for corrected me and said it was actually a symbiont, with a mutual relationship. I replied that’s exactly what a parasite would say. During the process I also called it “the creature” (shorter and more general), and toward the end my daughter gave it the unexpected nickname “Roger.”

In the photo: Roger settling into his forever-home.

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