Testing, testing; 3, 2, 1...

Foil suit progress? More later... but for now, the exciting news is we've blown up our first alien!

Howell discovered a shop in the Manchester area selling theatrical effects, so he bought a couple of flash pots to test out. I constructed our standard alien around one of the devices, with the wires poking out through the alien's "nose", then we made our way to the yard out the back of Nick's house to test it out.

A small group of onlookers gathered (10 feet away as the instructions stated), I started the camera filming, and Howell prepared to touch the wires to the terminals of the 9v battery... then...

KA-BOOOM!!!

The effect, as you can see above, was pretty impressive.  I've put together a set of 16 frames from the explosion (below).  The alien itself continued to burn quite steadily until we extinguished it.

Luckily Nick got out of the way before Howell detonated it!
(And isn't it strange how the explosion formed the shape of Mickey Mouse?!)

Next, Howell took an alien for a "walk" around the back yard so we could see how "natural" the movements looked on camera. The fishing line we're using to "tow" the aliens is pretty much invisible, so it almost looked like it was moving itself....

Howell walks the alien

And finally, seeing as we were getting so much done, we decided to continue work on the Foil Man costume... Pretty much the same procedure as last time, aided by our dedicated assistants Nick Stocker and Chris Simpson, we completed the trousers and made good progress on the top. Here's a couple of bizarre pictures...

+ = Foil Man ?