andrew r asks at cons where you're in your cosplay disguises do you have an emergency
repair kit close by what are your always on hand items for that well it is i guess i do
um in fact myself and the entire test team has participated in cosplay repair
uh workshops at silicon something we will continue to do when silicon opens back up um
cosplayer you have to go to a con with a full repair kit uh what is always in that repair
kit what is always in that repair kit first up hot glue you got to have hot glue and a couple
different kinds of hot glue in your repair kit um crazy glue uh ca glue cyanoacrylate glue and
a kicker um i usually bring both a chemical kicker and baking soda um baking soda because
well i've talked about this before but baking soda is a kicker for cyanoacrylate glue and
it's a kicker that actually lends real body to the acrylic and you can build you can do make
structural solutions with ca glue if you've got uh some uh baking soda present um tongue depressors
these guys one of the most important things in this shop are these i buy them in big boxes
of a thousand at a time you can split them up the middle you can use them for yeah these are
completely intrinsic i bring a couple dozen of these i usually bring uh a complement of tapes
masking tape scotch tape magic scotch tape double stick tape of usually two or three different kinds
absolutely some aluminum plumber's tape this is like the base base base kit baling wire
baling wire the wire that built the west this is mild steel wire every hardware store carries
bailing wire it should be in your kit it should be in your shop um i usually just wrap up about
10 feet of this and throw it in the bag blades your complement of x-acto blades i usually bring
a dozen of those dozen single edge razor blades a dozen carpet blades like this uh you know uh
nippers needle nose heavy duty nippers a good pair of scissors and then there's all the stuff you
need for the costume itself so one of the things is when i'm building a costume and i'm sorting out
the pieces of it i'm often ending up with a couple of different versions of each thing so i will also
bring all of my extra parts with me to comic-con in case something falls off um if my costume has
power to it i'll bring extra batteries extra wires i'll bring in a bit of a soldering kit it is
really specific but i think that's a pretty good base list for what i what i head to a con with um
william van kolenberg says oh yeah it's not here hold on
it's too hard to get to uh william collinsburg hollenberg says uh he notices that i have a body
double dummy for pit for fitting it's true um my friends at fbfx uh who have made tons of the
costumes for the marvel universe uh including wonder womans um sorry she's not the marvel
universe she's in dc they've done both marvel and dc um and they have a room in which they can scan
a human form in a couple of seconds to an incredibly high degree of fidelity and they we did
a sequence in that where they showed me and then a few weeks later they didn't tell me this they
carved me out of bead foam and sent me the the the positive and i've used it to pattern my costumes
ever since um but william wants to know if you didn't have one um how would you go about creating
one and what are the most important measurements it's a great question and there's a ton of
guidance online for making what is your own duct tape mannequin and it's a great great methodology
um to make a duct tape mannequin of a body part you cover that body part with some plastic
and then you wrap duct tape around not too tight you don't want to cut off your circulation you're
not you know in debt to the mob um and then with a pair of scissors you cut that tape pull the part
off and tape it back up again and there are other there are many different methods for solidifying
that some people uh paint on um uh epoxy resin and use fiberglass some people simply stuff it
because uh it can't it's because it's done with cloth tape it can't exceed the measurements of
what it's got to cover so you can uh i don't have a favorite video of this but it is a technique
i've seen a ton and i've seen it work a ton on the rpf um if you are going to do a costume
that is a relationship you know that has a helmet armor plate and an arm armor you're going to need
your whole upper torso it's you can do it without that and i have but it just means you're going to
be putting stuff on and pulling it off putting it on pulling it off um having access to your
own measurements in a way that you can really work with and see around is completely vital
i every now and then i go looking for like an old men's dressmaker dummy that i could configure to
be my size and there are lots of new ones but there i i have trouble i've had trouble so far
finding a vintage one that is like highly well made that's what i would like i would like a
um a dress a male dressmaker something that went down to here and had an adjustable chest
for me to uh to be able to pattern like i said i found tons of those that are new
i know that there's like a vintage one out there that's like nice and robust and will fulfill my
cosplay dreams it just hasn't happened yet um but uh the relationship one of the key reasons
you want a full torso for patterning something that involves a helmet and chest armor is that
relationship between those two things is really really important and tiny differences
can make tiny changes can make huge differences in the final product i was
just pattern patterning out and working with an armor suit and it took me four tries of remounting
the hardware between the chest and the helmet to get the relationship until it felt right um
and some of that was putting it on a stand in a way that matched me but a lot of that
was putting it just on my body and monitor and and seeing it oh well so there's an example where the
the dress dummy that i have didn't even help yeah um duct tape mannequin
that's your friend a couple more all right let's see here there's so many good ones um
gideon says how much of cosplay to you is the physical aspect
and how much is the mental character aspect that's great um i think i mean
one has a great bearing on the other don't you think one uh you know i think specifically to when
i did uh the joker from dark knight specifically bank heist joker from dark knight and the suit
got a package um my dark knight joker was one in which i like i worked really hard
to kind of get that sort of like that like that way in which he keith ledger walked i'm
not gonna get it anywhere close to right right now but that way in which heath ledger sort of
walked around being led by his head the kind of great almost serpentine way he moves in the film
such an astounding portrayal anyway i worked that back and forth with my wife because she's uh also
had studied has studied acting in the past and is a wonderful mimic um the mental character aspect
it's more like i spend time thinking about how the costume feels about the way in which the costume
feels you know and the way in which that informs the way the character feels wearing that costume
deborah again deborah landis is the one that told me that nelson's real trafalgar uniform probably
pulled his shoulders back like this that british uniforms were made to like keep you in
a regal frame physically like it is a corset to make you look like you were standing at attention
that is all the character development i need sometimes like just that constriction is
is a real a real addition to the to the character um
logan this is a good question is there a cosplay you really want to do
but you haven't because you're worried about doing the source material justice oh yeah
there are a few different categories of that but for me the biggest one is drag um i spent a lot
of time working throughout my life with different drag performers it's a it's an art form i greatly
admire both in both directions um but one i have not explored because i don't yet have a
point of view about it i feel like when i when i think i have something to contribute to drag
um i'll jump in but until then you know i there's nothing to me that would be that that would that
would less serve a costume than jumping in with both feet without a significant point of view