Anyway, since I won't be able to sell my artwork in the artist alley this year at Anime Boston, I thought I'd cosplay! I'm going as Beemo from Adventure Time.
Also, this is a progress post. Whenever I get to a certain point, I'll update this post with my costume progress! Hopefully I'll be done by April 4, 2012, so I don't have much time!
Part I: Planning 1
Here's my little sketchy plans for my costume! :D
And here's the box I'll be working with:
Thanks to all the staff at the Boston Symphony Orchestra for helping me obtain this box! :D
A thick 42in. x 72in. cardboard box that I carried on the trolley, train, and bus all the way from work.... That was an adventure... :O
Part II: Measuring, Splitting, & Cutting the box
This is one of my least favorite parts to do in a project like this because I need complete concentration when I'm measuring, so I can't listen to music or do much of any of the things I do when I'm creating stuff. It makes the process all the more tedious.
My cat Salem decided to keep me company... She'll be popping up a lot.
Here is the box cut flat open, spanning 148 inches.
How did I carry this thing on public transportation???
The box seems to be made out industrial strength cardboard, because it was a jerk to cut and it took me at least 4 days to cut everything out... My hands hurt so badly afterwards... ;__;
Front cut out:
Front cut out w/ Salem :)
Back cut out w/ Salem:
Part III: Details: Buttons, Face, Spray Paint & Whatnot
Now that I'm done with the cutting, finally... I can move on to the other stuff on the costume, like Beemo's buttons!
Here they are cut out:
And, here they are painted:
Also, I wanted to add something to the back of the costume to look like Beemo's battery compartment, so I used leftover cardboard and short thumbtacks. I worked really well!
Here are the long socks I used as sleeves. I also used black gloves to cover my hands as well.
The spray paint I used for the box and the face. I had to buy more because I ran out which set me a day back... ;__;
After spray painting, I made and used stencils to paint the letters on the sides.
Part IV: My mom is AWESOME
As I drew closer to finishing, I ran into some big problems. The first was trying to figure out how to make the face. I wanted to be able to see but not have people be able to see me... I wanted to really look like Beemo.
However, couldn't find anything that really worked. I was originally going to use white pantyhose, but I couldn't find any big enough and the material was rather unforgiving. So my mom came up with the idea of using this plastic mesh stuff to create the face.
I spray painted the whole roll and then glued it to the inside of the costume, strip by strip. Drawing the face, which was the easiest part of this costume, took about a minute to do. I drew with a black Prismacolor marker.
Yay! :D
But I had another problem...
Because the box is industrial strength, gluing it was out of the question... Every time I did one side, another would come done. So my mom came up with the idea of screwing the box closed. All I had to do was spray paint them over.
Awesome!
However, one more problem came up...
I wanted to be authentic and have my arms at the bottom of costume come out of the "O's" in Beemo's name, but because of that, I made the arms too low and it started to throw me off balance. In addition, because the costume is so freaking heavy, I basically had to balance the whole weight of the costume on my head which threw me even more off balance...
So again, my awesome mom came up with the idea to create a helmet from an old popcorn maker bowl to keep the costume in place. It totally worked! :D
It's held together from a bolt from the outside.
Thanks so much mom for being super awesome and helping me out! I couldn't have finished this costume without you!
Part V: All Together Now
Tada! :D
So finally the costume is all done! Even though I had a super hard time putting it together. I had a lot of fun wearing it!
Thanks for viewing!
