PAX West Omeganaut Crowns

Summary

Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is a series of massive video game conventions held every year. PAX West is the original one held in Seattle. One of its main events is its video game competition called the Omegathon. Its competitors, called Omeganauts, slowly get eliminated until the final round. One becomes the victor, and the runner up comes back next year. While the runner up is noted in the pamphlet, it didn’t feel like enough.
After participating in 2016, I volunteered to make a crown for the runner-up to wear in 2017. Now I make one every year, the runner-up wears it during the competition, and whoever wins gets crowned with it.

Challenges

Crown requirements:

1. It must be made out of left-over badges

2. It must be sturdy

3. It must be comfortable

Process

When I first agreed to make a crown out of badges, I had never cut up a convention badge before. I did not know how they could be manipulated. So I took a stack and just started playing with them. Cutting them in a variety of ways, trying to make holes in them, heating them up and bending. I found they were actually pretty pliable. Because of the plastic on the outside, they could be easily heated and shaped. Cutting with scissors wasn’t an issue either.
Attaching them together was trickier. I tried some glues and a thermoplastic that was sticky. They connected the badges, but easily snapped off because the badges were slightly flexible. I knew I had some thin wire, which would be flexible and strong. After testing hole placement on badges, I struck the balance I wanted. I did not want the wire to show too much, but also did not want the badges to break. The 2017 crown (made from 2016 badges) used a rough method to create the holes for the wire. For the 2018 crown, I rapidly sped up production and quality by creating holes with a Dremel rotary tool.

Final Checks

I did some checks before I handed the crown off at the convention. I checked how fragile it was, the first year stretching it wide to model on a plush toy. The second year I added more fragile details, but did bend and shake it some. The feathers weren’t wired the same way as the crown base in case the runner-up did not like them. He did, however, and a couple of feathers needed a quick fix at the convention to stay on. I plan to make all components more thoroughly attached in the future, being less concerned about “if” I take them off. I also sent images to the respective runner-ups, and the Omegathon Organizer for a preview before the convention. All provided approval.

PAX West 2019 Crown Plans

In 2018 the PAX West badges changed to a different material and producer in order to accommodate for RFID badges. These badges are much thicker and appear to be entirely plastic. While most badges had RFID components embedded, I checked with a tool and found that the Omeganaut badges did not have the electronics. This will alleviate some concerns I had. I plan to take a couple of badges to stress test the new material via cutting, heating, bending, and drilling. I also plan to attach every piece more permanently once I have the runner-up approve my final images. This will be after a couple other rounds to show her sketches as I plan as well as some in-progress images.