whims and obsessions: halloween costume

Showing posts with label halloween costume. Show all posts

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Alice: Madness Returns Steamdress

Finished and debuted! Whew! I was finishing up my gloves (oh the straps!) the morning of wearing it, so it was pretty close. While it's a pretty easy wear costume compared to others I've worn, it's still a little warm. Joy hasn't worn the full bunny suit because it was too many layers and the bodysuit part was the heaviest. She dropped down to just her waistcoat and bunny hat which accomplished the effect. We wore our costumes to the Halloween parties at my work and at Lee's. Lee's was definitely cooler and where this picture was taken. Click on the 'Read more' for the breakdown.

Baby Girl's costume was a conglomeration of 2 costumes. A pirate princess one and of course, a bunny one.

I had to get a larger size white rabbit costume because it was all they had and the bodysuit didn't fit her (not to mention it was only a wider neck opening and getting her in and out of that for diaper changes would have been maddening to both of us). So I also got a white chenille pajama to stand in for her bodysuit. I added the footpads on the bottom. Got rid of the belt and faux dress from the pirate princes to get down to a red coat and added some gears to the back. Oh and I added the teeny top hat to the bunny hat. The clock was made of a clock sign and some upholstery foam covered with fabric and ribbon. I had to make it squishy and chewable because that's exactly what she does to anything in front of her.

My costume was a bit more involved. But first, I neglected to put up a reference shot of the back of the dress.

And for the comparison:

I started with the Simplicity 2827 pattern and added some modifications: changed the neckline, shortened the skirt length, added snap opening to the front. I attached the apron to the dress to cut down on the weight that the belt harness would have to hold up. The icons are painted onto the apron, but I'm going to have to thicken those lines to make them show up more.

Lesson learned: if I'm going to use a moleskin cloth type of fabric to get a leather look without having to work with leather, I should pick a fabric that doesn't require finishing to make the edges look nice. The straps (galore) on this dress took a lot of extra seams to clean up the edges.

The belt harness required some internal boning structure to hold up to the 3 belt buckles on the front and hold it's shape. I attached the bow straps to the harness, but the bow was velcroed on for easy removal. Given that the bow is made with wire hangers covered with the moleskin cloth, I would not have been able to sit and drive in it. The compass in the middle of the bow glows in the dark though I think technically, it's supposed to be another clock. I also learned that hot glue does not make a robust system for maintaining the bow shape. I had the bow knocked off my back a few times during the Halloween festivities and it's now droopy and the compass fell off. I'll have to come up with something else to hold that together better.

It was kinda fun adding the eyelets to the apron and strings with my new eyelet pliers. The trimming around the skirt and sleeves was a ribbon though so I didn't need to do those. Have I mentioned the straps yet? I opted for simpler vest buckles on the arms and harness so they could be smaller and actually fit 7 on one arm. The smallest belt buckle I found were the 3 on the front of the belt and that would have been ridiculous to wear 7 of. Oh, and for the fun of it, I got some green contacts to wear.

Carrying my white rabbit around along with my vorpal blade was kinda heavy. I ended up using my boots as a sort of sheath to hold the blade in. My other boot was where I sheathed my phone. Sadly, no one I work with was cool enough to recognize the outfit (aside from my immediate circle of friends) but they appreciated Joy's bunny outfit anyway. For that matter, no one at Lee's work recognized us either. Oh well.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Madness: Scaled back Halloween costuming

I can't believe Halloween is almost upon us, which means it's time for making a new costume. I tossed around a few ideas with some new parameters. I'm looking to do a coordinated costume with The Girl that would be fairly easy to construct on limited time. Lee ended up going with a different theme (he's always wanted to do a good Jedi outfit and since we're not likely to be attending a nighttime costume event together, it made sense for him to splinter off this year). We considered a Portal 2 costume with me in the main character, Chell's, outfit and the baby as the cutest Portal gun ever. Instead we settled on a revisit of American McGee's Alice in Wonderland, only this time based on the second game, Alice: Madness Returns. Happily Alice has quite a wardrobe in the game, so I'll be able to wear a different style dress than the first goth Alice attempt. Due to fabric availability, I decided to go with this one:

Meanwhile, Baby Girl will be my trusty White Rabbit. Only not quite as dementedly evil as the picture below.

I've already got a white rabbit outfit for her. I need to deck it out with a red waistcoat, top hat, a giant clock and gears. I've gotten my fabric for my dress and even a bought pattern that I'll be modifying to better replicate the steam dress. The stripey tights were relatively easy to buy and shockingly so were the shoes (thanks Spirit Halloween Store!). And Epic Weapons already makes the Vorpal Blade. Now all I need to do is get some sewing time. Whew.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Tali Props: Behind the Scenes

Chris posted his Tali props video so here it is, as promised!

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Halloween Costume #2: Ninjette

Happy Halloween!

I've been reading Adam Warren's Empowered comic series and two weeks before Halloween, decided to make the costume for Empowered's best gal pal, Ninjette.

She's a beer-drinking ninja princess from New Jersey, hiding out from her clan. Aside from the beer drinking and actual ninja skills, I thought it would be a straight-forward costume for me to make and wear in two weeks.

It turns out that I only had one week to actually complete the costume since work sent me to China the week before Halloween. Compared to my Tali costume, Ninjette was almost a sleepwalk. The patterns were based off of a mish-mash of various pieces of clothing I owned. I did have to make my shorts twice because I assumed a stretch factor on the stretch vinyl that wasn't quite true. Thankfully, I was only off by a seam allowance width. I used the same kind of fabric paint for Tali's hexagons to make the Ninjette logo.

The arm and leg wraps were just long strips of the stretch vinyl. After this photo shoot, I ended up getting some black gloves and thigh-high socks to put on underneath the wraps so that when they slipped, it wouldn't look so obvious. There's still some refinement to do with that process, but when I went out to the club, I carried black electric tape for emergency repairs. I wore black toe shoes (not shown here) to complete the outfit.

The long ponytail is not mine, it's a wig from the Halloween store. I bought some nail polish pens and painted my nails while I was hanging out and waiting during my China trip.

I'm a bit bummed I ended up assembling the necklace in reverse order. But the comic rearranges the order frequently enough that maybe it's not that big a deal (except to my sense of detail). I also should have taken some darting into account for my halter top, but I didn't have time to adjust it. It still works but isn't as correctly fitted as I would like.

While Tali was showcased at work during the day Friday, I ended up wearing Ninjette to both parties we went to for Halloween. No costume contest for me. I figured anyone who didn't recognize the Ninjette character would just assume I'm wearing a generic ninja girl costume which isn't remarkable enough to warrant a stage performance. It was still a fun costume to make and wear. I especially liked the fact that 1) I could see clearly, 2) I wore the most comfy shoes I remember wearing for a costume and 3) I could dance.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Costume Escalation

This year is the earliest I've started a Halloween costume. I blame Chris. He wanted to start on a project last month and figured an elaborate Halloween costume would be just the thing to work on. So we decided we'll be characters from Bioware's video game, Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360 and PC.

I'll be Tali'Zorah vas Normandy (on the left) and Lee will be Commander Shepard (on the right).

Chris will be Garrus Vakarian.

To take it up yet another notch, I decided that Halloween is too far away for such awesome costumes. We'll be going to PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) over labor day weekend and debuting our Normandy squad there. I thought I had three more months and through my own fault, I have one. Yay me.

I'll post updates on this over the next month. I have to go draw some hexagons on stretch vinyl fabric now.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

On the Darker Side of Disney

Welcome to our Halloween costume 2009. The picture above was taken at DNA Lounge by Jamie Zawinski, the club's owner. It's one of my favorites.

The rest of this post will be picture heavy and not particularly instructive in case you sort of want to get the idea of how to make your own zombie Mulan and Mushu costume.

This was the source of our inspiration. Feel free to follow the link for other Twisted Princesses he's drawn. They're all very cool.

Twisted Princess: Mulan by ~jeftoon01 on deviant ART

Just in case you don't quite see the similarities, this is a handy Photoshop to help you.

We tried to do a group costume in the Twisted Disney theme, but only had one taker. Beast is my coworker, Chris.

Construction:
Most of the work was Mushu, as you can guess. My costume mostly involved taking a kimono and some scraps of fabric, stabbing it with arrows and distressing it a bunch. The cats were enthusiastic about helping with the distressing process. Especially once it had arrows in it.

I also discovered that Testor's Ruby Red Metal Flake model paint, when sprayed on clothing is a good fake blood substitute. The cricket on my shoulder was made out of pipe cleaners by Chris (Beast).

Makeup is not my specialty, but standard makeup I found in my closet is mostly what I used except I added gel blood from the Halloween store. The biggest bang by far, were the contacts. Yes, they're contacts and they're creepy.

Mushu's head started out life as a bike helmet, cardboard, wire and styrofoam.

Craft foam, felt, paint and many sticks of hot glue later. The crowning jewel was the EL wire for pointless illumination.

The rest of the outfit was a fleece footed pajamas with craft foam and paint. We replaced the feet with built-in shoes from Payless. The talons we bought from the great store called the internet.

P.S. We didn't win any costume contests, though both contests I participated in (one at work, one at DNA Lounge) had the MC paying us compliments on the costume as we lost. Beast did win Scariest costume at work.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

'Tis the Season

Let's play spot our Halloween costumes. This is the poster for this year's Halloween costume contest at the DNA Lounge which has us in it twice! As far as I know, there was no bribery involved. Click the "Read More" link for the super sekrit answer.

We're third down on the left column (last year's costume) and top of the right column (2006).

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Electric Mayhem Rising

Way back in September, Todd and Ali fired off a simple email for a Halloween costume idea: Are we in for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem band? For those uninitiated to the band of the Muppets, these guys:

I was initially wary. Todd and Ali have previous expertise with Muppet construction. Their award winning costume in 2006 were a pair of Beakers, Dr. Honeydew's lab assistant(s). While Lee and I have had our share of elaborate costuming attempts in the past (which I expect I'll blog about retrospectively sometime) it seemed like stepping up to the Electric Mayhem required a whole 'nother level of commitment. Of course, that level of effort requires the optimal place to showcase our craft. A place, preferably with a costume contest, that would appreciate the love and care that would go into achieving Muppethood. We had several good contenders, but we ultimately decided to make our band debut at DNA Lounge's Halloween party on Halloween night. DNA Lounge is known in San Francisco as THE place to go and be if you're serious about quality Halloween costumes. The very prospect seemed daunting and yet appropriate.

Because I'm impatient, I'll just go ahead and jump to the end result. Read on to see the riveting (or maybe glue-gunning?) documentary behind-the-scenes look at "Electric Mayhem Rising"! (Warning, image and media heavy post ahead!)

Tada!

The original Electric Mayhem had 5 members and we only had 4 people. Turns out Zoot was off making a solo foray during Halloween and so the rest of us had to soldier bravely on without him. Yeah, that's it. Our first band practice was Oct. 11. It was a busy weekend for everyone, but we squeezed in a mad brainstorming session as well as a parts shopping spree where we closed out Michael's, JoAnn's Walmart and the Halloween Spirit Store in rapid succession.

Thanks to Todd's l33t screen capturing skillz, we each had our own master character sheet with which to derive our inspiration. My original plan was to build the muppet heads on a hardhat I have so that I could have some structure underneath whatever the head was made of to interface with my head, create a bit of an airspace and better distribute the weight. But I only had one hardhat and there were four of us. So we got some bicycle helmets at Walmart as the basic scaffold for all of us.

We decided that both Dr. Teeth and Animal had roughly spherical heads. Last year Ali had experimented with creating a Dr. Honeydew muppet to go with their Beaker costume but it was abandoned and the remaining papier mache ball, when cut in half would start both Dr. Teeth and Animal. I used exactly half of the ball and poked some zip ties through to tie into the zip ties through the bike helmet.

Tada! A wearable papier mache half-ball. Dr. Teeth's half had to be modified somewhat so it wouldn't be as wide as Animal's head so we made a cut up to the center and glued/stapled the overlapping ends.

Floyd and Janice's head shapes were no mere spheres. Lee and Todd started on Floyd's head shape since it was a simpler pear-shaped head. They started the fishbone spine using 14-gauge wire from Home Depot. Then they attached wire mesh that we found at Michael's as the base skin. Wielding only wire cutters and pliers against the irascible mesh, Lee and Todd emerged scarred and battle-worn but with a Floyd-shaped head. Todd would go on to fatten Floyd's head up with a layer of foam.

Janice's head was the trickiest of all. It was vaguely Kermit-shaped. But the real beauty of her head was her chin. What Muppet had a chin? But there it was, unmistakeable in the screenshot, so we had no choice but to give Janice a chin. With the learnings from Floyd's head creation, Todd and Ali further honed their wire shaping skills and wounds to create Janice's head.

Wire-form Janice head

With the head shapes established, there were many Muppet technologies we had to invent to add each character's signature look. We decided that Dr. Teeth would merely be a happy guy - his signature is his reflective gold tooth.

Dr. Teeth looking eerily like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy green head. Since we were all looking out of the character's mouth, we put a light, sheerish black fabric there, complete with tongues. A little hard to see out of, but impossible to see in!

Animal needed movable eyebrows, preferably controlled invisibly. To simplify the mechanism, I opted to default Animal's look to half-lidded with the movement being a more wide-eyed look. Animal does have an expression that involves almost fully closed eyes, but I left that out. I ended up using a partial Halloween wreath (black like eyebrows), tying some fishing line to it, threading it through the papier mache and sewing it to some velcro. The velcro would attach to the bike helmet underneath and serve as a chin strap. I could then open and close my mouth to move Animal's eyebrows. I did have a movable jaw for Animal, but I opted for manual jaw movement given that my chin was already attached to his eyebrows, I didn't want to get confused and raise my eyebrows to open Animal's mouth. Since the jaw movement was hinged through only paper and glue, I stuck the jaw wire through some plastic disks attached to the head for durability.

Janice needed to be able to pout. Lee came up with the idea of running fishing line through one strand of her hair, attach beads to the end so that she could tug on her hair to close up the mouth. The fishing line would of course be attached to her jaw.

Did I mention that Janice has a chin? How to mold wireform and foam to look like a Muppet chin? Well somehow, Ali made it work. And work it she did!

Floyd also employed what we ended up calling "M5 Muppet technology" to have a hair-controlled jaw (Floyd has a ponytail he can yank on). He had some additional challenges in the nose department. The initial nose color was unfortunately toxic to Muppet noses (styrofoam).

On the left is Floyd's nose on drugs. On the right is Floyd's nose out of rehab. Any questions?

Fortunately, the Electric Mayhem didn't travel around naked, even though Animal was close. Dr. Teeth modified a giant pink top hat with some additional feathers, a pimp costume from a Halloween Spirit store with some red fringe on the back. Animal wore his two-toned rock shirt and ripped pants. I also wore the requisite chain so that the rest of the band could keep him under wraps. (I also ended up sewing some Muppet gloves and booties for Animal.) Floyd wore his signature Sgt. Pepper jacket and cords. Janice was in her rock babydoll tee, miniskirt and sandals. They carried around their lighted guitars and Animal carried drumsticks to beat on everything I could get ahold of.

Then we were ready to take the stage at DNA Lounge. We were an instant hit! We got hugs. We got pictures. Each member of the band had their fan club. Some couldn't believe they were actually seeing the Electric Mayhem live and in person.

There were some that posed with us over and over again.

But the culmination of the evening was the costume contest and this was the reaction:

Which ended up with this as the result:

We took first place! At DNA Lounge! By a large enough margin that they had a run off for 2nd and 3rd place but not for first! Second place went to an amazing Predator and 3rd place went to Bender.

Additional pics