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Halloween 2009!
Nov. 4th, 2009 12:46 amAs promised, Halloween 2009.
Despite having a few weeks' notice this year (unusual for the crowd we hang with), I was drawing a blank on a costume. Tery tossed out a few suggestions, all of which I forget now (except I know one was Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. How was I supposed to pull that off short of having a radiation accident myself and learning how to rearrange atoms?) Then she mentioned Rorschach from Watchmen, which I was just about to dismiss when after a little thought it occurred to me how easy (most of) it would be.
Sure, they make a manufactured costume, but the mask looks pretty ridiculous and it's pretty pricey for something I wasn't even sure would fit me (my noggin is as oversized as my feet):
Store-bought piece of crap
Trench coat from Goodwill (they had an entire rack of them): $12.
Fedora from eBay, cheap costume quality, with shipping (could have probably found cheaper if hat sizes weren't so hard to gauge online): $18.
Stocking for mask: $3.
Men's dress pants and shoes: Free (already in my closet).
That's it. Here's one pic of the result (more under the cut later):
Tery got smooched by Laura the Slutty Devil while I looked on disapprovingly
The mask obviously posed the biggest challenge. I scoured the internet, where I found plenty of fan forums discussing making your own. Unfortunately most of them were obsessed with having moving ink blots "like in the movie!" (guess what, morons -- in the movie his eyes are actually completely exposed and the blots are CGI'ed on later) This could apparently be achieved with the use of thermal paint that shifts when you breathe on it, but it involved a complicated process of more than one layer that I might not be able to breathe in and I'm sure would come at a higher price than I was willing to pay considering I expected no one to even recognize me.
That included a site I found, Rorschachmask.com, where a guy sells his own that look nice, but not $49.99 worth of nice.
So I got a few pairs of tights and stockings to experiment with. At Target the only ones that came in white were little girls sizes, which were very difficult to see through. My grocery store had "ivory" nylons that were more promising. I played around a lot with making the tiniest possible pinholes for my eyes, until I just tried no holes for the heck of it and discovered I could see fine. In fact, the darker the room, the better I could see.
Then the blots. Everyone online suggested using a Sharpie, which would have taken a month to color in all the shapes and would have resulted in very clean edges. In a stroke of genius, I found in the back of our closet some "scuff remover" for shoes, essentially liquid shoe polish. When I blotted that onto the stocking, not only did it cover large areas quickly but came out nicely irregular and automatically created a "bleeding" effect on the edges of the pattern. Again on the fan forums someone had helpfully posted a sample pattern that I just printed out, stuck under the stocking as a template, and dabbed in. VOILA.
I was ridiculously pleased with the result after so little effort. Even if no one would recognize me.
You can see the mask better. Tabby came as Edward Scissorhands (store bought)
( ::More pics and party stories here:: )
Despite having a few weeks' notice this year (unusual for the crowd we hang with), I was drawing a blank on a costume. Tery tossed out a few suggestions, all of which I forget now (except I know one was Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. How was I supposed to pull that off short of having a radiation accident myself and learning how to rearrange atoms?) Then she mentioned Rorschach from Watchmen, which I was just about to dismiss when after a little thought it occurred to me how easy (most of) it would be.
Sure, they make a manufactured costume, but the mask looks pretty ridiculous and it's pretty pricey for something I wasn't even sure would fit me (my noggin is as oversized as my feet):
Store-bought piece of crap
Trench coat from Goodwill (they had an entire rack of them): $12.
Fedora from eBay, cheap costume quality, with shipping (could have probably found cheaper if hat sizes weren't so hard to gauge online): $18.
Stocking for mask: $3.
Men's dress pants and shoes: Free (already in my closet).
That's it. Here's one pic of the result (more under the cut later):
Tery got smooched by Laura the Slutty Devil while I looked on disapprovingly
The mask obviously posed the biggest challenge. I scoured the internet, where I found plenty of fan forums discussing making your own. Unfortunately most of them were obsessed with having moving ink blots "like in the movie!" (guess what, morons -- in the movie his eyes are actually completely exposed and the blots are CGI'ed on later) This could apparently be achieved with the use of thermal paint that shifts when you breathe on it, but it involved a complicated process of more than one layer that I might not be able to breathe in and I'm sure would come at a higher price than I was willing to pay considering I expected no one to even recognize me.
That included a site I found, Rorschachmask.com, where a guy sells his own that look nice, but not $49.99 worth of nice.
So I got a few pairs of tights and stockings to experiment with. At Target the only ones that came in white were little girls sizes, which were very difficult to see through. My grocery store had "ivory" nylons that were more promising. I played around a lot with making the tiniest possible pinholes for my eyes, until I just tried no holes for the heck of it and discovered I could see fine. In fact, the darker the room, the better I could see.
Then the blots. Everyone online suggested using a Sharpie, which would have taken a month to color in all the shapes and would have resulted in very clean edges. In a stroke of genius, I found in the back of our closet some "scuff remover" for shoes, essentially liquid shoe polish. When I blotted that onto the stocking, not only did it cover large areas quickly but came out nicely irregular and automatically created a "bleeding" effect on the edges of the pattern. Again on the fan forums someone had helpfully posted a sample pattern that I just printed out, stuck under the stocking as a template, and dabbed in. VOILA.
I was ridiculously pleased with the result after so little effort. Even if no one would recognize me.
You can see the mask better. Tabby came as Edward Scissorhands (store bought)
( ::More pics and party stories here:: )
