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After spending some wasted hours on youtube, I stumbled onto some awesome homemade transformers costumes. My son saw it and obviously thought it was cool. He is lucky I loved it too and I thought to challenge myself by making our own.

The hardest part was trying to plan out how big make the costume. I seen too many costume where the child could barely walk. Their costume looke more like a transforming dwarf robot. Then some cosutmes were too small and the person looked like a turtle. Luckily I found some perfect boxes at work and here we go.

Stage 1: Cutup up boxes and create car cover.

This part was the slowest part of the whole process. It was scary deciding how big or small to make the costume. I had to make sure that the wearer was big enough to fit. I found some great handles that came in some monitor boxes from work. I just reversed them so that the handles are seen on the inside. That way the gauntlets will be easy to put on and take off. The feet still aren’t worked out completely. I was still having a difficult time figuring out how it can be worn without wearing out the bottom cardboard. So I thought to cut out some wooden panels at the exact height and width of the rear panels and attached with glue. I took some cardboard scraps and layed them on the inside, then stapling with heavy duty staples to the board. That way the original cardboard isn’t supporting the weight of the costume.

Stage 2: Primer and base yellow paint.

This is self explanatory.

Stage 3: Test wearability and design decals.

This was the fun part. I spent many hours on Google Images and researched the BumbleBee transformed mode. The Camaro is an awesome car by the way. I enjoyed studying it. First I measured every dimension of this costume, sides, tops and bottoms. I took that info and created a vector template with Adobe Illustraor. Using my previous photos I manipulated the decals onto the photo. That way I was sure of the design before it went to print.

The decals were printed and then with some time and effort, I was able to get the decals on perfectly.

Stage 4: TRICK OR TREAT!

It is done. With a weeks time we can finally show the finished costume. We gave the suit it’s first real test run and it passed with flying colors.The main goal was to get the car mode to look slick like in the movie. The robot mode had to blend with the store bought outfit underneath. Choosing to use the actual hands and feet for the bottom of the boxes worked perfectly.

It’s early Halloween morning and we are ready for the big night! My son was good enough to let me post these images and video online. He is also brave enough to enter into a costume contest this year. We hope to win! That would be icing on the cake.

Final Video:

BUMBLEBEE! Transform and ROLL OUT!

Find your product

First of all, you’ll need to log into your ProStores Store Administraor. Click on the Product link located on the left column. Browse through your catalog and open up the product that you want to edit. Once you find the product you can click the UPDATE button.

Edit Images Section

After you click on the UPDATE button you will notice that each of the product sections are editable. Open up the images section.

Remove the current Search Result Image.  One you can see that it is gone, click on the ADD NEW IMAGE button for the Search Results Image section.

Browsing Your Computer

A small pop window will appear. Hear you are going to click on the BROWSE button that is available.

Find Your Image

Simply find the image that you want to use for your product thumbnail. Click on the image that you want and then click on the OPEN button.

Upload Your New Image

After you click on the open button, you will notice that the browse bar will show some text indicating that you have successfully chosen an image to upload. After this is done, click on the SAVE button.

Product Detail Image

We are not going to use the Product Detail Image section. If you see an image here, click the REMOVE THIS IMAGE link located below the image preview.

Detail Image Cleared

Once it is cleared you will notice the thumbnail is now gone and the field is also empty. When you’re done with this step, go ahead and save all your edits. It’s always good practice to save your work once in awhile. You are not done with editing the product yet. So do not close this window.

Getting Ready To FTP

First thing we are going to do is to make sure that we have our images ready for our Details page and the image that will zoom out.

I made two images:

1. art_gal_des_lrg.jpg    (Zoom Image: This image can be as large as you want. Just make sure the filesize is not over 500mb. )
2. art_gal_des_med.jpg      (Details Page Image: The maximum width should not go over 300 px. The height can fluctuate if needed. )

The image being used in this example is a vertical rectangle. If you were using something that was more of a horizontal rectangle, the DETAILS PAGE image width still cannot go over 300 px. Try not to leave any spaces in your filenames. Use _ underscores or – hyphens if you want to visually seperate words.

Open Fire FTP

In your firefox browser, go to the TOOLS menu and open Fire FTP. Log into your FTP account.

The left side of Fire FTP shows your computer. Find your two new images that we just discussed above on your computer.

The right side shows your server.Click on the “Store” folder and then click on the “Catalog” folder. PLEASE DO NOT NAVIGATE ANYWHERE ELSE. Be very careful when you are on your server.

Transfer Your Files

There are two ways to transfer your files.

1. Select the two files. Then click on the arrow circled in red. Notice that the arrow points to your server meaning that the files will be transfered to the right side.
2. Or, you can click and drag the files over to the server side. The green arrow illustrates you dragging your mouse to the server side then releasing your mouse to start the transfer.

I suggest using the first method. It’s easier. The bottom of your Fire FTP program will let you know when the transfer is complete.

Edit the Long Description

Go back into your product editor and copy and past this code into your Long Description section.

<a href=”http://www.enhancingyourhabitat.com/catalog/filename_lrg.jpg”><img alt=”" src=”http://www.enhancingyourhabitat.com/catalog/filename_med.jpg” /></a><br /><br />Description:<br />
<ul>
<li>Bullet 1</li>
<li>Bullet 2</li>
</ul>
Another paragraph can continue here.

All you need to do is change the filename_med.jpg and filename_lrg.jpg text to your actual filenames that were uploaded. In this tutorial I changed them to art_gal_des_lrg.jpg   &  art_gal_des_med.jpg  .

Edit Your Description Text

I have started your description text with generic info. You can edit this text however you want using the basic tools in Prostores.

View Your Product

And we are done. View your info and make sure that are appearing properly.

Test the Zoom Feature

Click on your image to text your zoom feature. That is it, your are done. The first time is the worst but it will get easier.

SUGGESTIONS AND TIPS:

I would create all my medium and large images first

Then I would ftp all my images to the website server.

When I edit my products all I need to do now is make new thumbnails and paste the generic text above into my Long Description field.

I found in a TARGET an odd toy. I spotted a DC UNIVERSE toy that wasn’t packaged right. Here is what I can make of it.

• The cardboard is for a FIRESTORM figure from the WAVE 2 series.
• The plastic case is for an AQUAMAN variant
• The Gorilla Grodd right leg was not included
• This character has the hammer that belongs to STEEL
• The figure in question has rings on his fingers which look like a womans hand.
• The finger nails are painted pink.
• Each of the rings sport a different color.
• He wears a green mask with long hair.
• And he has a black body with long sleeves.

Yup you heard it. Conan is currently being planned to launch in 2009. Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain have been hired to rework Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer’s (“Sahara”) original script that was written for Lionsgate. No director has been signed and the film will be given an R rating for it’s Conanism.

This will not be a continuation from the earlier Arnold Schwarzenegger films. This movie is suppose to us the stories from the Conan comic books. I personally think that is the way to go. The comics were much darker and they were the only first comic books that were bearable in black and white. The old books were printed on Magazine stock and were always BW except for the cover. Every book had naked chicks, decapitated heads and scary monsters.

So get ready to see our Dark and Silent type hero come back to the big screen to fight off wizards, barbarians and make off with the hot wench.

“CROM!” This is going to be a good movie!

Now this story is getting better. We got to see the new A-BOMB (Abomination) show RED that he’s is much stronger that his earlier version. continue

One board the S.H.I.E.L.D Hellicarrier, we find out that the gun that was used to kill the ABOMINATION was made by shield. continue

That is a very good question. When I first saw the advertisements about this new book, I have to admit that I wasn’t very excited. continue

A very long time ago, before I discovered pre-made Superman shield icons from the internet, I made my own shild icons to customized my folders. I don’t use these anymore.

But anyone who wants, can now download these for their own personal use.

Click the image to the right to download.

YEAH! The website passed with flying colors!

It’s been years since I redesigned my own site. I hope you viewers like it. My portfolio section has been beefed up. I need to add more to it, but for now it’ll do.

April 21, 1971 – June 27, 2008

Michael Turner died at the Santa Monica Hospital in California, of complications from bone cancer. He was survived by his mother, Grace Crick, his brother, Jake Turner, and his fiancée, Kelly Carmichael.

This artist had tremendous talent. As an artist he is someone I looked up to. I hope that his memory will live on forever.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

I just wanted to make another entry into my blog using a new FIREFOX extension called Deepest Sender. I guess it’s not really new. But it’s new to me. And that is all that counts right?  Ha! continue

Where are you now? Your at the beginning of the new e.n.comics productions ( in comics) website. This site will be changing drastically. I felt that if I took my old site away, this would then force me to update it. continue

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• Custom Website Design
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