Building a Time Machine
One of the most iconic vehicles in movie history, is the “Back to the Future” Delorean. So building a wheelchair costume that captured the look and feel of this piece of nostalgia was a little daunting at first. But here is how we did it for 2 year old Noah.
The first step was to build a base for the costume to sit on that wouldn’t interfere with Noah’s ability to drive his chair around. Since his chair didn’t use armrests, there were limited places to attach the costume. So we used a 1″ x 4″ board running under Noah’s chair that rested on his footrest and over the axle of his back wheels. The board was bolted through the slits in his footrest to lock it down. Then a PVC frame was built around the chair and over the back of his seat. We also built a shelf in the back for all of the time traveling components. This PVC frame allows for the shell of the Delorean to be screwed into the PVC pipes and not into his wheelchair.
The shell of the Delorean was made out of 1/4 inch Bebond with an aluminum coating to one side. This gave the Delorean the stainless steel look while keeping the weight very low. We also added lawn mower wheels to the PVC frame, pointed down to give the illusion of the Delorean when it was flying in the 2nd movie. We could have used larger wheels to make the proportions better, but we wanted to make sure the costume would still fit through a doorway if needed. That determined how big of wheels we could use. Under the wheels, we added tap lights for nighttime effects, and blue cellophane for added blue lights.
The next step involved adding the shelf of black foam board in the back, and grey foam board cut and folded to make the back end of the Delorean. We also added the hood to the Delorean made out of the same Bebond as the sides. The grill and front end of the car were also made of foam board. The side panels and hood were the only parts of the costume made with Bebond to help reduce the overall weight of the costume.
Now that the initial shape and design of the costume were in place, it was time for all the details. The back fins were made completely out of black foam board and then hot glued together. They were shaped to simply slide down on top of the back end of the Delorean so they didn’t need to be glued to it. (This also allowed for the costume to come apart and easily shipped.)
Different sized black boxes were made for the back to give some depth to all the components in the back. The Flux Capacitor was 3-D printed and made for a great touch of detail. An old vacuum cleaner hose helped as well.
The next step were to make the graphics for the front and back of the Delorean. These were made in Adobe Illustrator and then printed as vinyl stickers to apply to the costume. They went on perfectly and added helped give a level of polish to the costume.
Next step was to add the details and lights. We used blue foam board to make the glowing panels in the front and back. Then we ran battery powered lights behind the blue boards and as the tubes of lights running down the sides of the Delorean. The tube lights were attached with black Command Strip hooks (not in the pictures below). That way it was easy to remove all the lights for shipping and storing, but the Command Strip hooks stayed in place to you always knew where to put the lights back. Old computer cables were used wrapped in the same glowing mesh as the tube lights and plugged in to different sections in the back. The more things going on in the back, the better.
The final costume with Noah and all the lights on. Noah made an amazing Marty McFly.