The plan for the display called for a couple of aliens positioned in front of the saucer who were trying to effect repairs (I wound up building only one). The alien started out as a simple PVC frame and was covered with bubble wrap to provide some "meat" on the PVC bones. By using standard PVC connectors, it was possible to make the frame somewhat poseable in several directions. It would be fun to explore a real armature for life size figures using this system. Once the frame was built, I clothed the body with a space costume purchased during the closeout sales after last year's Halloween. I wrapped the end of a short PVC rod with a ball of tape and bubble wrap to create a head support for a laytex mask. This rod was plugged into the body frame and could be posed in virtually any direction. Last, I bent some wire in the shapes of hands and covered the wire with laytex gloves to finish off the alien's appendages. This worked out prefectly in that the design allowed the alien to hold stuff (lights) fairly securely. It was a happy accident that the hands appeared translucent while holding lights, a nice alien-like touch.