Howdy Toonsters! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here to welcome you to… (Cue sappy music)…A Very Special Odd Review!
Now, if this were a regular Odd Review, I’d make sure you understand that my job is to find stuff you may not know about and then tell ya why it’s cool (or why you should avoid it like the plague). Then, at the end, I roll a pair of percentage dice to pick a random number to rate it with. You know, so this column looks like a legitimate review!
Well, I’ll tell ya how it is, folksies. I had this idea to tell ya all about Backyard FX, a show over at Indy Mogul (at indymogul.com). Now, Indy Mogul is a site devoted to helping independent filmmakers, with shows about the behind-the-scenes “how-to” stuff, and other shows to help showcase indie films. Now, I’m particularly interested in the “Backyard FX” show, which shows you how to achieve various special effects for cheap. Usually they show you how to build special props, sometimes they show you how to achieve certain make-up effects, sometimes they show you how to build and use your own green screen.
Now, in one of the very first episodes Eric Beck (the show’s creator and former host) shows us how to build a jetpack! And it was a really cool jetpack! He even made it so you could put a small fire extinguisher inside, pull this cable to set it off so it would look like smoke was coming out of the thrusters as the jetpack started up! Much later, Eric got SO busy with other parts of Indy Mogul that he felt he could not devote the proper amount of time to the Backyard FX show, so he held open auditions where anybody could send in a test video of them building a project. One of the entries was a fellow named Mike Smith (he had a cool robot sidekick named Tec!), and he made his own jetpack! …His didn’t have a fire extinguisher, though he did set it up so he could insert dry ice in the hopes of the steam coming out of the thrusters. But he didn’t do that part on camera, so I don’t know if it worked or not.
Anyway, it’s a really cool and informative show, but I thought if I was gonna talk about it, I should build something from one of their tutorials first. This became such a project, that I thought it would be neat just to tell you about that. So I will! And then I can devote the proper attention to Indy Mogul and Backyard FX in a later Review.
So, I think I’ve been watching too much web-TV. I’ve been watching things like “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”, “The Guild”, and “Captain Blasto”, and I’m anxiously awaiting the upcoming “Mercury Men” series and “Flash Gordon” series. And I’ve got a groovy idea for a web-series with a plot that incorporates all the cool special effect props that I want to build! And yes! One of them is a Jetpack!
Well, I’d been thinking about it for a couple of months, and collecting potential parts, and finally the time had come to build a Jetpack! Bwah-haha-ha-ha! (You HAVE to do the maniacal laugh, so people know you mean it!)
From the very beginning here, I want to say that I figured it would be incredibly easy to build. And it really was. Kind of time-consuming, but easy. In fact, I basically built the whole thing in one day. However, I sorta wish I had used a few alternate materials, to make it a little less flimsy. But I’ll get to that later.
Step One: You need the idea and the desire to build a homemade Jetpack! Check!
Step Two: You have to figure out what you want the dumb thing to look like, what you are gonna build it out of, and collect your materials! Well, in the Indy Mogul videos, they basically build all of their projects out of everyday items, usually scavenged from thrift stores. I have a collection of small plastic containers, soda bottles, and various bottle caps that I use to decorate the miniature buildings I build for table-top wargaming. So I had some cool decoration-type stuff. But I needed something to use for the actual “backpack” portion of the jetpack.
I ended up with a plastic “bakery box” from my local grocery store. The bakery department uses these as containers for sheet cakes, breads, and other things. Mine was filled with croissants and they were scrum-diddly-umptious! In addition to this, I used two 2-liter soda bottles, two Renuzit air fresheners, two sour cream containers, one Cool Whip container, two liquid laundry soap bottle caps, one soap box, one toilet paper roll, two drinking straws, and one kid’s party favor compass. Oh and some of my Dear Old Mother’s ™ leftover plastic canvas. And paint and duct tape and white glue and hot glue.
See, my thinking was to do something that any idiot could do, without the need of fancy-schmancy tools or handyman know-how. Cuz, you know, I’m just any idiot and don’t have them fancy-schmancy tools or handyman know-how and I wanted to do it anyway. Just to show ‘em I could! Nyah!
Step Three: Build it! So here’s what I did. I took one sour cream container and slammed it onto the bottom of a soda bottle, then glued it with hot glue in the hopes that it will stay there. Onto the bottom of the sour cream container, I glued a laundry bottle cap. Then I took one of those air fresheners and pulled the top off to use it as a thruster. I removed the bottle cap from the soda bottle and glued the air freshener top to it.
Congratulations! We now have a rocket thruster! Then we do it all again so that we have two! Then you take the two rocket thrusters and glue them to the sides of the clear plastic lid of the bakery box. Now we have something that looks vaguely like a jetpack already and we’ve only just started!
Of course, I wanted the back to look cool and not just a big blank square. I wanted interesting stuff sticking out from it, and maybe even sticking into it. So I took the Cool Whip container and cut up the bottom to look like a cross-section with four big ol’ holes in it. Then I filled the holes with plastic canvas so it would look like some sort of exhaust or air intake, or even a fan housing of some sort. I painted the inside black, didn’t bother with a fan, then glued the Cool Whip lid to the Cool Whip container and then glued it to the back of the Jetpack.
Well that covers the “sticking out” part. Now I needed to come up with a “Sticking In” part. So I had this nifty idea for a little window where you can see part of the engine. Now the plastic bakery box lid is already clear, so if I just glue something to the inside of it, the bakery box can be the window…as long as I’m careful to NOT paint over that part.
So I grabbed a bar of soap from the bathroom and cut open the wide side of the box to form four flaps. I removed the bar of soap, of course. Then I took a toilet paper roll and cut a length of it that would fit in the soap box. But the roll was too big around, so I had to cut the back off of it. So now I had, like, one fourth of a toilet paper roll and glued that inside the soap box.
It was boring.
So I took two bendable drinking straws and cut them to fit in the soap box, too, making sure to keep the stretched out bendy part. I glued them in the box. Then I painted the whole thing black, and when that dried, I painted the toilet paper roll and straws with metallic colors to look like they might be part of the engine. Once I was done with all that, I glued it to the inside of the bakery box.
There was one little problem with this. I had cut the straws just a little too short and had to use a BIG blob of glue to hold them in place. It didn’t look good. So I cut a rectangle of cardboard out of a pizza box lid…which I forgot to mention was amongst my materials…and cut a window in it that was slightly smaller than the soap box. Then, I glued this on the outside of the bakery box like a frame, and it helped to cover those unsightly blobs of glue!
Well, I was mostly pleased, but there were still parts of it that were just too darn plain. So I took the two soda bottle caps and glued them onto the back of the jetpack, too. I didn’t like how plain the top was, so I cut a small hole and placed the bottom half of one of those air fresheners into it (stem down). Oh, uh, that scented gel around the center stem will dry up if you keep them long enough, then you just pull it right off the stem. You might need pliers to do this, or you might not.
My original idea was to have some sort of wings, but I was afraid of how wide that would make it. But it had to have some sort of stabilizer fins. So I took one of those sour cream lids and cut it in half and glued them to the soda bottles.
That means that we just need a cool paint job and some straps…preferably with some sort of control panel. Hmm…let’s do the easy part first. Painting!
First off, you need to cover up the parts where you do NOT want paint. I saved the parts that I had cut from the Cool Whip container so I could use them to cover up the black-painted plastic canvas. I also saved the cardboard that I cut out of the pizza box frame, and used it to cover the engine window. First I painted the inside of the air freshener thrusters with black paint, so it would look like it’s been used once or twice. Then I just painted the rest of it with a silver metallic paint…but you could paint yours whatever color you wanted to, really. Black, bronze, steel, pink, whatever you’re into.
And now: the straps! Hoo boy…the straps. Well, my very first thought was to find a small backpack that I could squeeze inside the bakery box, then I could cut some slots in the black plastic bottom of the bakery box to thread the straps through. I still think this is the best method, but I didn’t have a backpack, and I didn’t feel like buying a brand new one for this. Plus, I didn’t really wanna bother with thrift stores.
Instead, I made my own straps! I bought a roll of black duct tape to make them out of. It wasn’t hard, really. I pulled out about a yard of tape, then another. Then I placed one tape sticky side up and covered half of the length with the other tape. Then I just folded the exposed sticky side up over the length of the second tape, so there was only half of the second tape’s sticky side exposed. Then I folded that sticky side over.
I had to do that four times. Then I took one end of each strap and wrapped it around a pill bottle. Then I threaded the strap through the slot I had cut in the black plastic bottom of the bakery box, so that the pill bottle end was on the inside.
Then I thought the shoulder straps should be wider, for comfort’s sake. So I took two more lengths of duct tape and sandwiched the thin strap between them. I did this for each side, of course.
Next came the problem of how to fasten the straps. So I cut a pair of buckles out of the lid of a plastic ice cream tub…which I also failed to mention in the materials. But that’s ok, cuz either I didn’t cut them right, or the duct tape is too slippery, or something. Cuz the straps keep sliding loose. I’m thinking of installing Velcro.
Finally, I needed a control box! I had this nifty idea of a strap that goes horizontally across your chest with the box on it, but that’s not what I ended up with. First off, the box itself is a small sewing kit box, like you find in your local department store or grocery store. I took a shallow bottle cap (from small water bottles works great) and a pair of needle caps from my Poor Old Mother’s insulin needles. I glued all these inside the box to look like a knob and a pair of switches. Then, I just taped a paper clip to the back, because I ended up fastening the straps in an “X” configuration anyway.
I added some duct tape “loops” to my straps, just to help make it look sorta bandolier-style. Then I took a pair of pill bottles and painted them silver to stick in the loops. They could be smoke bombs, or hand grenades, or emergency fuel canisters, or mini tool-cases, or just a place to keep your Tic-Tacs, gum, or change for the toll booths.
In my local dollar store, they have a party aisle. That’s where I found a bag of party favors that were compasses. There were five or six of them in the bag, and I thought they would make good gauges. It was pretty easy to pry the cover off and pull out the arrow, then you just cut a circle of paper to fit and decorate it to look like whatever gauge you want. It could be a fuel gauge, or a temp gauge, or an rpm gauge, or even a clock, or some sort of frequency dial! I made mine a temp gauge, glued the arrow and the cover back on, and glued it onto the bakery box, connected to the Cool Whip bucket. A little extra detail painting here and there, a few serial numbers, and even a corporate or faction logo and shazam! You got a jetpack!
Congratulations! We now have a rocket thruster! Then we do it all again so that we have two! Then you take the two rocket thrusters and glue them to the sides of the clear plastic lid of the bakery box. Now we have something that looks vaguely like a jetpack already and we’ve only just started!
Of course, I wanted the back to look cool and not just a big blank square. I wanted interesting stuff sticking out from it, and maybe even sticking into it. So I took the Cool Whip container and cut up the bottom to look like a cross-section with four big ol’ holes in it. Then I filled the holes with plastic canvas so it would look like some sort of exhaust or air intake, or even a fan housing of some sort. I painted the inside black, didn’t bother with a fan, then glued the Cool Whip lid to the Cool Whip container and then glued it to the back of the Jetpack.
Well that covers the “sticking out” part. Now I needed to come up with a “Sticking In” part. So I had this nifty idea for a little window where you can see part of the engine. Now the plastic bakery box lid is already clear, so if I just glue something to the inside of it, the bakery box can be the window…as long as I’m careful to NOT paint over that part.
So I grabbed a bar of soap from the bathroom and cut open the wide side of the box to form four flaps. I removed the bar of soap, of course. Then I took a toilet paper roll and cut a length of it that would fit in the soap box. But the roll was too big around, so I had to cut the back off of it. So now I had, like, one fourth of a toilet paper roll and glued that inside the soap box.
It was boring.
So I took two bendable drinking straws and cut them to fit in the soap box, too, making sure to keep the stretched out bendy part. I glued them in the box. Then I painted the whole thing black, and when that dried, I painted the toilet paper roll and straws with metallic colors to look like they might be part of the engine. Once I was done with all that, I glued it to the inside of the bakery box.
There was one little problem with this. I had cut the straws just a little too short and had to use a BIG blob of glue to hold them in place. It didn’t look good. So I cut a rectangle of cardboard out of a pizza box lid…which I forgot to mention was amongst my materials…and cut a window in it that was slightly smaller than the soap box. Then, I glued this on the outside of the bakery box like a frame, and it helped to cover those unsightly blobs of glue!
Well, I was mostly pleased, but there were still parts of it that were just too darn plain. So I took the two soda bottle caps and glued them onto the back of the jetpack, too. I didn’t like how plain the top was, so I cut a small hole and placed the bottom half of one of those air fresheners into it (stem down). Oh, uh, that scented gel around the center stem will dry up if you keep them long enough, then you just pull it right off the stem. You might need pliers to do this, or you might not.
My original idea was to have some sort of wings, but I was afraid of how wide that would make it. But it had to have some sort of stabilizer fins. So I took one of those sour cream lids and cut it in half and glued them to the soda bottles.
That means that we just need a cool paint job and some straps…preferably with some sort of control panel. Hmm…let’s do the easy part first. Painting!
First off, you need to cover up the parts where you do NOT want paint. I saved the parts that I had cut from the Cool Whip container so I could use them to cover up the black-painted plastic canvas. I also saved the cardboard that I cut out of the pizza box frame, and used it to cover the engine window. First I painted the inside of the air freshener thrusters with black paint, so it would look like it’s been used once or twice. Then I just painted the rest of it with a silver metallic paint…but you could paint yours whatever color you wanted to, really. Black, bronze, steel, pink, whatever you’re into.
And now: the straps! Hoo boy…the straps. Well, my very first thought was to find a small backpack that I could squeeze inside the bakery box, then I could cut some slots in the black plastic bottom of the bakery box to thread the straps through. I still think this is the best method, but I didn’t have a backpack, and I didn’t feel like buying a brand new one for this. Plus, I didn’t really wanna bother with thrift stores.
Instead, I made my own straps! I bought a roll of black duct tape to make them out of. It wasn’t hard, really. I pulled out about a yard of tape, then another. Then I placed one tape sticky side up and covered half of the length with the other tape. Then I just folded the exposed sticky side up over the length of the second tape, so there was only half of the second tape’s sticky side exposed. Then I folded that sticky side over.
I had to do that four times. Then I took one end of each strap and wrapped it around a pill bottle. Then I threaded the strap through the slot I had cut in the black plastic bottom of the bakery box, so that the pill bottle end was on the inside.
Then I thought the shoulder straps should be wider, for comfort’s sake. So I took two more lengths of duct tape and sandwiched the thin strap between them. I did this for each side, of course.
Next came the problem of how to fasten the straps. So I cut a pair of buckles out of the lid of a plastic ice cream tub…which I also failed to mention in the materials. But that’s ok, cuz either I didn’t cut them right, or the duct tape is too slippery, or something. Cuz the straps keep sliding loose. I’m thinking of installing Velcro.
Finally, I needed a control box! I had this nifty idea of a strap that goes horizontally across your chest with the box on it, but that’s not what I ended up with. First off, the box itself is a small sewing kit box, like you find in your local department store or grocery store. I took a shallow bottle cap (from small water bottles works great) and a pair of needle caps from my Poor Old Mother’s insulin needles. I glued all these inside the box to look like a knob and a pair of switches. Then, I just taped a paper clip to the back, because I ended up fastening the straps in an “X” configuration anyway.
I added some duct tape “loops” to my straps, just to help make it look sorta bandolier-style. Then I took a pair of pill bottles and painted them silver to stick in the loops. They could be smoke bombs, or hand grenades, or emergency fuel canisters, or mini tool-cases, or just a place to keep your Tic-Tacs, gum, or change for the toll booths.
In my local dollar store, they have a party aisle. That’s where I found a bag of party favors that were compasses. There were five or six of them in the bag, and I thought they would make good gauges. It was pretty easy to pry the cover off and pull out the arrow, then you just cut a circle of paper to fit and decorate it to look like whatever gauge you want. It could be a fuel gauge, or a temp gauge, or an rpm gauge, or even a clock, or some sort of frequency dial! I made mine a temp gauge, glued the arrow and the cover back on, and glued it onto the bakery box, connected to the Cool Whip bucket. A little extra detail painting here and there, a few serial numbers, and even a corporate or faction logo and shazam! You got a jetpack!
Wait a minute! While doing this detail work I did find a dent in one of my soda bottles. I think I did that with the hot glue gun while trying to add a little glue to help make it more stable. I was hoping I had only caused the air inside to contract, so I poked a little hole in the soda bottle. Wouldn’t ya know? The hot glue gun had melted the plastic! I seriously could NOT do anything about it (short of replacing the whole thruster, which I did NOT want to do). And as if that wasn’t bad enough, now I had a hole in the side of it!
Well, the hole was easily fixed with the some yellow tape. I just drew some black stripes with a Sharpie and just like that I had some caution tape! Of course, I had to do that to both sides so it looked like it was supposed to be there and not like I was covering up an inconvenient hole. I’ve simply accepted the dent.
Well, the hole was easily fixed with the some yellow tape. I just drew some black stripes with a Sharpie and just like that I had some caution tape! Of course, I had to do that to both sides so it looked like it was supposed to be there and not like I was covering up an inconvenient hole. I’ve simply accepted the dent.
All things said and done, I’m pretty happy with the end results! It looks like a jetpack and everything! Of course, there are a few things I wish I had done differently. For starters, I think I should have attached the soda bottles to the bakery box with screws for better stability. I sorta wish I had used some hardware store adhesive like Liquid Nails instead of hot glue. It’s supposed to be stronger AND it doesn’t melt the plastic!
Plus, I later found out that the top half of the air freshener is actually two parts! The very top is connected to the stem that connects to the bottom half of the air freshener. If you knock this part out it leaves an open-ended cone that will loosely screw onto the soda bottle directly! That would help the thruster to NOT look quite as much like a soda bottle, plus I think there would be more gluing surface to keep it in place!
Oh well, it was fun to do. And you don’t have to end here! You can accessorize with souped-up dollar store goggles and water pistol, in matching colors! Careful painting those goggles though! I suggest you use a primer, then paint, and then follow with a sealer! …And make sure you remove the lens BEFORE you paint! Then, all you need is a jumpsuit and you’re ready to protect the local Comic-Con from the forces of E-Vil!
Plus, I later found out that the top half of the air freshener is actually two parts! The very top is connected to the stem that connects to the bottom half of the air freshener. If you knock this part out it leaves an open-ended cone that will loosely screw onto the soda bottle directly! That would help the thruster to NOT look quite as much like a soda bottle, plus I think there would be more gluing surface to keep it in place!
Oh well, it was fun to do. And you don’t have to end here! You can accessorize with souped-up dollar store goggles and water pistol, in matching colors! Careful painting those goggles though! I suggest you use a primer, then paint, and then follow with a sealer! …And make sure you remove the lens BEFORE you paint! Then, all you need is a jumpsuit and you’re ready to protect the local Comic-Con from the forces of E-Vil!
So, for inspiration and actually doing it, I say: High Points! For constructing it with everyday items that anyone can get, I say: High Points! I spent less than ten dollars on materials (for silver spray paint and black duct tape), everything else I had lying around or was garbage that I saved specifically for this project. …Of course, I haven’t bought the Velcro for the straps yet. I think it could be built a little sturdier, and if you have mad handyman skills you could trip it out with blinking lights, or make those laundry bottle caps spin like turbines or something.
Oh well, it was just supposed to look cool, and I think I accomplished that! Plus, my Twitty Nephew is visiting for the summer, and he thinks it is “Totally Awesome”… which is pretty much what I was going for!
But, I guess it’s not fair for me to just assign myself a rating, cuz that’s not how we do things around here! No sirree! We roll randomly to determine a score between zero-one, which means “run away, run away now;” and double zero, which actually means one hundred percent, or “I can dig it, I can dig it, I can dig it the most!” Now that that’s all cleared up, I’ll just give my dice a roll like this…
Oh well, it was just supposed to look cool, and I think I accomplished that! Plus, my Twitty Nephew is visiting for the summer, and he thinks it is “Totally Awesome”… which is pretty much what I was going for!
But, I guess it’s not fair for me to just assign myself a rating, cuz that’s not how we do things around here! No sirree! We roll randomly to determine a score between zero-one, which means “run away, run away now;” and double zero, which actually means one hundred percent, or “I can dig it, I can dig it, I can dig it the most!” Now that that’s all cleared up, I’ll just give my dice a roll like this…
And roll a sixty-nine! …Sixty-nine?! Stupid dice! Must have to turn it upside…no. Must have to read it backwards! That makes it a Ninety-six!
That’s right, folks! My nifty jetpack-building tutorial is rated a ninety-six! And there you have yet another victory for “blatant favoritism on the part of the judges”!
Well, that’s all I got for now. If ya care, I am planning to post a watered-down version of this on my own website, complete with pictures! Including a picture of your buddy Oddcube modeling the finished piece! But there’s no telling when I’ll get around to that. Right now I got to figure out what I’m gonna talk about next month! So you make sure to tune in next month to find out what it’ll be! Be there and be square (I know I will)!
-----Your Buddy, Oddcube
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