Costume review
Yoko Littner
Wow this was an experience from painting and cutting boots to building a gun out of PVC pipe. Everything was complicated to make because her costume wasn’t very easy to remake.
Bought parts: Neck scarf (Anime store), belt (college sales merchant), Socks (sock outlet store), uncut gloves (Halloween store), wig (online), and chop sticks ( japanese store)
First of all I really didn’t want to be wearing a bikini top so that had to be altered. That was a challenge to make the flames on a “swimsuit” type fabric because it would lay well and stretch where it needed to. After making the shirt came the gloves. Those were made in two separate parts. The gloves were made from two long gloves with the fingers and back of the hand cut and sewn open. Then I made the cuffs with fabric sewn over folded foam and velcro it around my wrist with glued on beads. The shorts weren’t too bad because I found a pattern and altered it to work for the costume. The boots were definitely the second most challenging part of the costume. They were originally white, vinyl gogo boots that went up to the knees. They had to be mid-calf length with large zippers on the side and with flames on the toes/heels. So after painting the flames on the boots I had to cut them to the proper length and while doing that I accidentally cut off the zipper pull. while trying to get it to go back on the bottom part of the boot the pull broke so I removed the old zipper from the boots and put in a new one by hand. That was horrible, but well worth it! After that i cut out the outer side and made a zipper looking part with pieces from the upper boot and foam for the zipper pull. The other piece that was hand-made was the skull clip. I made a large skull form out of skulpy and Then painted it and attached it to a comb which stays in my wig really well.
The gun is a whole different story. I had a friend help me make it because he has done something else that called for a lot of attention prop wise. The gun is made of PVC pipe with plaster and hot glue holding things together. After cutting everything and constructing the gun it had a whole smooth layer of plaster over it. Once that was complete it was time to paint. While working on getting it home i noticed that it was crumpling a little bit so I wrapped the whole thing in black electrical tape and that really reinforced the outside. Then the gun had a whole layer of black matt paint covered with black shiny paint and a clear seal to really make it shine. After the paint dried my amazing boyfriend rigged an LED inside the scope to give it a realistic feeling. To lug the thing around I made a special tightening strap around the barrel of the gun so that a shoulder strap could be attached and it would be easily carried around on my back. The whole thing stands about 6’5″ when it is sitting on the floor. The gun also comes apart at the magazine and barrel for easy storage and travel. A major thanks to my friends who helped out with this thing and my boyfriend for his wiring talents.
Cat Margiotta 