tommy stevens oh this is a great question tommy stevens says
is it better to follow a costume requirement list like the 501st or mandalorian mercs
or okay let me describe what that means if you want to go out and get a stormtrooper costume
you can go get one from a bunch of different sources there are official
sources that are unofficial sources they don't necessarily track to the most accurate
um but if you want to troop with the 501st with a group that goes and troops they have helpful lists
of what their minimum requirements are for trooping in your costume accurately
so they'll tell you which vendors make the pieces which parts need to be dead on and which
parts there's some fungibility with depending on what movie you're doing um and so what they want
to know is is it better to follow one of these costume requirement lists for building one's first
cosplay or is it better to trial and error one's way through said build without any real guidance
i i reject that it is one or the other um i also don't tend to begin a costume
by thinking that i'm going to be slavish to one of these lists of requirements in fact
i usually don't look at those lists until after i have built my first pass at a costume
so i didn't look at that list for uh esp bubba fett until after freddy and i had assembled 95
of the costume and but that's not to say that i go that i trial and error my way through to
build without any guidance i look at tons and tons of build threads uh on all sorts
of different building forums i look at youtube videos of people's show and tells i look at their
i do tons and tons of research and i make my own lists of the parts that i need of the
pieces that i need i'm working on a new costume right now that mark dubo just laid on me and
the like it's great because he's given me like 80 of a great costume that's unfinished and unpainted
and in order to wrap my head around it i came in they have to give to me and i laid it out
on brown paper i took individual pictures of each piece just so i could wrap my head around
how many parts are this costume how many different ways they need to be
attached to each other how are they attached in the real movie how do cosplayers do their
own attachments so i'm currently making lists like that i have not yet gotten to a list of
uh aliens colonial marines cosplayers and their minimum requirements for a suit
because frankly those lists tend to use verbal shorthands that i don't know yet
and so then i'm spending all this time trying to figure out what these lists mean because they're
referring to pieces in part pieces and parts that i don't have in my head so i i don't think those
are great places to start but once you've put in a bunch of research and you you're you're like
all right so just to walk you through my research process when i am gathering information on a
costume like this and i'm not going to tell you what custom it is i i do a bunch of google image
searches i even also go after i feel like i've reached the end of google image search i go search
on bing i go search on flickr um and i just start downloading images just tons and tons and tons i
sort by size so i gather large and big ones first um and i just load up the folder with images then
i open up that folder and now i'm looking at all these different images and i can see that there
are some that are the full suit some that are just the front uh part of the suit some that are just
the arms of the suit some that are just how the attachments work some about the electronics and
then i start making separate subfolders and then i sit there and go through those subfloors okay
i need more pictures of this part of the suit oh okay neck rings okay uh gloves uh boots what kind
of boots do people use with these oh turns out i don't agree with those i'm gonna try these boots
so i do a ton of of of infrastructure building as i'm gathering information about a new costume
then once i've done that now when i go to one of those lists it makes sense to me and then i can
make choices based on what's possible or feasible frequently i mean there are aspects to some of the
501st tripping costumes that are very expensive to get right there's just no inexpensive way to
do it and that can be a hold up and that may mean that you feel like i guess i'm not going to trip
with them for a while or i'll just have to end run and do the you know work extra hard at this thing
rather than spend my way out of that problem so tommy i hope that i hope that that was instructive
um oh james morgan i can't believe you're asking me this question this is great if you were to have
a unique custom sword made to your specifications what kind of sword would you choose would you try
for a historical design or something more fantasy based yeah this is this has been something's been
happening in my head and it's good and what it is is a point of view about a sort and it started
about three or four months ago and have just been let letting it kind of percolate in there um
and this is a phrase that's really important to me
right now in my thinking about creativity is point of view um
i define making i i worked hard to come up with what i consider the broadest possible
definition of making and the definition i have is to be a maker is to use your point of view to
make something that didn't exist and whether that's a video a poem a dress a table a car
when you use your point of view to make something that didn't exist
you're doing something important really important my whole life is devoted to this practice
but the amazing thing about a point of view is you don't always know what it is in fact much of
the time i don't know exactly what my point of view is on the project that i'm tackling
so i localized my point of view to the thing that i'm tackling in that project and eventually this
shape appears and eventually i do have a point of view about the project but this is why i
say follow the process not the plan the plan is your picture of what the end product is going to
be the process is the means by which you bring it about and if you are open to the process i submit
that what you initially think you're going to make doesn't look anything like what you finish with
in fact i'm just going to say for me and my personal experience
all of the best stuff i have ever built shocks me with how different
it was than my original conception of what it would look feel and and and be like um
so one of the best parts about a point of view is being surprised by it
seriously how many times have you looked at a room and thought oh my god i just realized i hate that
chair i want to just move that chair out of this room that's to me like what it is to be surprised
by your point of view to look at something and realize oh i do have thoughts about that um
so i have started having thoughts about the shape of a sword blade
that would be mine and it's not this it's not based wholly on a historical blade and it's
not based wholly on a fantasy blade and it is pretty straightforward as blades go but it has
a relationship to its it has a shape and that shape is compelling me and so i'm just letting
it sort of percolate in my head and thinking yeah i'll probably make this out of aluminum
i'll probably try and make this out of aluminum and then i may try and make it out of steel
steel i'm not sure if it's a hollow ground or a convex ground
i'm not sure what kind of real fuller it's going to have i don't know whether it's going to be
one-handed two-handed bastard sword i don't know what the guard with the pommel looks
like just yet i just know how the relationship between the blades thickness and its length
and that that that image is is is i'm finding the image compelling each time i go back to it
i'm finding it compelling so this is you you're you've asked the perfect question at the very
germinative part of the process for me in a new thing because it was really exciting to
me i've i've built a dozen swords now over over time since peter lyon at what a workshop taught
me how to grind my first one i now look at that one and i can just see how young and fresh i am
and seriously it's not like i've made a ton of progress i don't know that i'd be qualified to be
peter lyon's assistant today but i've built enough swords that now i do have a point of view on sword
shapes and their weight and their their look and all of that and that's exciting to me i love
when you have a point of view that's when something exciting is going to
happen