The Destro and Baroness costumes were a hit. The Destro mask didn’t hold up as well as I would have liked, some paint chipping and cracks, but it did the job. Likely going to do some repair work and use it for Halloween.
Lessons learned from this costuming:
TIME. No matter how much you think you have, you need more.
No more leather or vinyl. I must have lost 5 pounds in sweat and I know I ruined two chairs from sweat leaching from me to the fabric.
The whole process of making the costume and wearing the costume is incredibly AWESOME. I can totally see how people get addicted to conventions and costuming.
What’s next?
If anyone ever sees me on XBOX Live, you’ll know I’m somewhat addicted to the game BioShock. It has great game play and a truly original and intriguing story.
There have been many people that have made successful costumes from characters in BioShock, so that’s where I’m going next.
There is a character called the Big Daddy. He is a protector of the Little Sisters. In the first game, the Daddys can be an intimidating and difficult enemy. In the second game and DLC, you play as a Big Daddy and against other Big Daddys. This one class of Big Daddy is called the Alpha Series. The two characters you play, subjects Delta and Sigma, are Alpha Series Big Daddys. My goal is an Alpha Series costume, specifically subject Sigma.
The costume will have multiple components. 4 tanks that are worn on the back (two are re-breather tanks and 2 are life and Adam tanks). Building the tanks may not be too hard, but working out the backpack portion to wear them could be. There is a deep sea dive helmet that the Daddy wears. Building that will be fun. The dive suit shouldn’t be too hard as it is really just a jump suit with some custom armor plating. The Daddy has a couple of choices of weapons. There is the iconic drill arm and in the new Minerva’s Den DLC on the XBOX, there is a new ion laser. The laser is the goal. Also, most BioShock costumes are done with two people, one as the Daddy and one as the Little Sister. In the game the Little Sister rides on the Daddy’s back. I am going to attempt to construct my own Little Sister to ride on my back. Lastly, in the games, the audio and dialog creates a very unique atmosphere. I will be attempting to wire in an audio system of some sort to play audio and dialog from the game as I walk around in the costume. So, if that works, I will have a soundtrack, periodically groan, and the Little Sister will speak. If this works, it will be amazing.
Wish me luck! I have a little less than a year to get this together. My hope is to have a prototype in place for the East Tennessee Adventure Con. I can go to that and do a test run and have time to work out bugs before Dragon*Con.
