iamnadiaah

[galacticbugman]

Costuming on a budget

Hi everyone Galactic_Bug_Man here now for most of us there is a lot of nerd and geek conventions going on in a lot of areas around this time of year and other parts of the year. So here I am going to give you some of my tips and show you a few of my costumes that I have put together on a budget. Starting with my Star Trek one as you see here. 

This costume comes from my Star Trek fan fiction Captain’s character. This was a very cheap one to make for me because most of the stuff I already had but I did go along and buy a lot of the pieces. This was taken outside my old house during the 2016 Dallas Fan Expo before with left the house to go on this day (Above)  

Now for this costume I used an old pair of black jeans, my brother’s old orchestra slip on dress shoes, the Phaser I bought online for about ten dollars or so it was very inexpensive, the rank pips on the right side of the shirt are not really official ranks pins at all they're actually rare earth magnets held on to my shirt with my Texas Master Naturalist badge backing. Sometimes you just have to be creative and use what you got not to break your bank. I got the communicator badge for about 20 bucks at my first comic con. The shirt I bought at a clearance rack at Kohl’s for about a few dollars and it is really comfortable. So many of these things you can get for under ten bucks if you know were too look. As you can see I didn’t add the red shirt to do my division color which for this character it is red like TNG or DS9 or Voy. this is shirt is very close to the off duty uniform that Captain Jean Luc Picard would wear sometimes in scenes where he is playing is Rusikan Flute and sometimes he would wear an open jacket on the bridge and underneath he would have this style of shirt. The red shirt is absent in the first shot but in the shot below I have it. I got this shirt at Michael’s for a few bucks on their DIY tee shirt aisle. In the shot below I am wearing a pair of slacks I bought in between events. The belt was found during holiday Christmas clearance at Target for a few bucks. How I made the latch buckle look like a Starfleet belt was I printed off a small Black and White emblem which I made myself on Power Point and printed it off and then used some really good clear tape to put it on there. The one above was colored but the one on the bottom was back and white. 

Sometimes it is just knowing where to look. Always check out clearance items or discount stores you get really lucky sometimes. My brother went to an old store once last year to make a costume for our high school pre-graduation party which was called Bahama Bash. I graduated a long time ago but he was just about to graduate and he went as Donkey Kong. They had a jacket that was brown for about three or four bucks, they also had a nice pair of brown pants for a little more I think. The most expensive things we had to buy were the material for his gorilla chest, and the batting for his muscular look. I don’t have pictures of that costume because it is all packed away but just getting setting a budget can really help you if you are a nerd that is tight on money. I prefer using what I have but sometimes you have to try and make it look good. That is why I bought the Combadge at full price but the Magnets I got with coupons. Sometimes coupons to craft stores and things are great and that is what a lot of us cosplayers do. No I am not a sewer but I have made a prop for this costume from some of the leftover fake fur we used for my brother’s DK costume. 

I made a Tribble to go along with my costume for a couple of events. We had a halloween event on our campus that I went to. We had a costume contest and I just decided to put this puffball together one night. It was kind of fun to make it and it was a good use of some of the left overs. If you are doing a Star Trek costume and have stuff like this you can easily make it yourself. For tribbles there are tons of templates online and sites that give you instructions. I made this one using another blog site. Instructables also has stuff like this and looks really fun to put together. 

So clearance, coupons, using leftovers, sometimes just using what you have are great ways to get started on you cosplay journey. There have only been a couple of costumes that I have had that were fully sewn and that was my first Luke Skywalker Costume when I was younger. My grandmother made the Jedi shirt, belt, and pants for me as well as the shoe covers to make them look like boots. So that was pretty costly to do. I also had to by a lightsaber which didn’t cost me too much it was just one of those hold down and flick out ones it was not one that lit up or made noise even though I did have one of those but I didn’t have one at the time. 

For the last few years now my campus has had an Anime Convention and Nerd con of sorts so this year my brother and I are going to check it out. And this year I am going to go as a Starfleet officer again but I am also going to go as one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite cartoons. 

Since Animaniacs seems to be coming out with a couple of more seasons in an updated form coming to Hulu in 2020 I decided to make a Yakko Warner Cosplay. It seems to be the road less traveled I don’t see a lot of Animanicas at cons but I have seen a few people cosplay as them so I deiced to try and do my own style while trying not to break my bank fully. Still using coupons and things but I also had a few items that I had in my possession and somethings I bought on the cheap end. 

Okay so here we have the red nose, the belt buckle, and the headband with ears. The headband I got at the Dollar store. On it I bought some enlarged pipe cleaners to make the ears and they were on the kid’s craft Aisle at Michaels. I buy a lot of my stuff from either Jo-Ann’s or Michael’s depending on who has the best deals at the time. The red nose I had when I had to have my kidney operated on I got a red nose from one of the volunteers at the children’s hospital when I had my left left kidney operated on after years of scar tissue built up after being born with an enlarged kidney and after years of chronic infection. It is okay I got that taken care but that is where the nose came from so it was free. The belt buckle was made from foam board and I colored it with a yellow sharpie. 

Now you might be thinking where is the hair for my costume. It is kind of funny but my hair line is receding just a little bit and when you put the middle part down my hair does what Yakko’s and his siblings does. It is kind of funny but hey that means I can just go with my natural hairline and natural hair. Sometimes you have to go with it and have fun. Me I am one of those that likes to roll with it and laugh at myself. That is all you can do sometimes. 

These are my slacks and tail. As you can see I used the pipe clearer to make a tail too. The slacks I got a JC Penny full price because I needed to get some slacks for some function. So I recycled those for this cosplay. I tied on the tail to the back belt loop. I can already tell you this part is going to be tricky so I am hoping that if I have to leave a panel to do something that I don’t shut my tail up in a door. I probably wont but sitting down will have to take some adjusting. Always try to make your cosplay as easy to maneuver as possible. It will help a lot by knowing just what events you will be doing and what it calls for. I am thinking it will not be all that bad but still I just got to make sure that I don’t get it caught in anything. This part of the costume was really fun to put together I was laughing at the end result because of the way it looked. I thought it looked pretty good and silly. I am a pretty fun guy so this cosplay will be really neat to do. I have never gone as a Toon before so this is something I have been wanting to experiment with for a good while now. 

Next up the Iconic feet of the Warner Trio. These are nothing more than painters shoe covers with toe marks on them. I got these at the Home Depot for about four bucks. I also bought some heavy duty white duct tape so that way I can make them somewhat wear and tear resistant from being on the concrete all day or the tile or carpet. I am going to wear some tennis shoe with these over them. I can already tell you that with this part you are going to need to tape the part that is not going to be to be the front of the foot down or it will look all funny looking. I have not wore the costume yet but I am already seeing somethings I am gonna have to do to make it look good. So yeah even your local hardware store is a good place to get some stuff for costumes if you have the right idea. 

I bought this black long sleeved shirt on clearance at Jo-ann’s they were getting rid of their long sleeve shirts for the season so I was able to get this fairly cheap. So yeah this was a pretty good deal. I am just saying things can look really good. This is one of the easier ones to make. The Star Trek costume took me a while to make. I had to find a combadge that was not sky high in price and where I didn’t have to pay for shipping and handling. 

And of course I got the gloves too at Jo-ann’s these were on their winter clearance and they had a whole bin of them and they were only a few cents so we got a few. It is not in here but I also have an all black belt so I have all the pieces finally to this costume. 

I love making costumes but sometimes it just have to play it really cheap. When I met Sylvester McCoy from Doctor Who I did a Doctor Degeneration theme where what would he look like if he was dying or something. So I have the scarf from four, the fez from 11, the sonic from nine and ten, I bought a Doctor Who Tee that looked like 12′s suite. and I had a my black jeans so I looked like that. that was actually more expensive than what I had for the other two costumes because I bought all that Doctor Who stuff online. So it just depends on what you want to do. Many of you know this but some of you may be new to cosplay. This is just showing you the way I do it. I am sure we all have our preferred method of doing our cosplay. 

I have to tell you that the Animaniacs cosplay is something that I am looking forward to wearing at our Campus Convention. I am very excited to see how it goes. Like I have said I am a huge Animaniacs fan and with this cosplay I am going to do something I don’t do a lot. I have a real knack to doing voice impressions and want to be a voice actor when I get out of college as well as a nature photographer and I can do both Yakko and Wakko impressions so I will be talking like Yakko most of the time at the con just to be silly and play the part. Sometimes if you dress the part you have to play the part. So I think that would be really funny and be worth some laughs. So until next time be safe at your conventions and have fun. I will see you next time on the trail of life.