Hey guys,
After a grueling four months of working on props for other people I decided to take a break and build a few quick props for myself. Of course I ended up going overboard and was pretty sore and feeling kinda crappy by the end. I probably should have been wearing sunblock, sunglasses, and my respirator the whole time. But I got 75% of what I wanted to get done, done, and I debuted the costume at GraniteCon, a local comic convention this past weekend. I hope to finish up the rest after I get the Microcntrollers and PKEs I'm working on finished, and make it to NY comiccon this year with it.
Anyway, this is a build thread, so here's the pics!
I'm going to split this into a few posts since I don't know how many pics I can post at once. First up, is the costume itself:
Here we have the blue spy, and the red spy. I decided to go with the blue spy, since it was easier, and I've seen someone do the red spy much better than I could hope to do. I think that fellow must have either dyed a suit or had one custom made.
Anyway, the suit was the whole catalyst for this costume. When I found this one on ebay, made in the 1970's, I knew it would be perfect: (I was wrong of course, but I'll get to that in a moment.)
Based on that color I figured the balaclava should be fairly light, and I found this satin fabric, like I used for the star on my Captain America shirt:
Of course it was only after I purchased it that it occurred to me that if the fabric couldn't stretch, there was no way I was going to be able to make it fit snugly. Particularly because the neck hole would never fit over my head. So I had to look for alternatives.
I eventually found that alternative in the form of this sports shirt, from Walmart. I first looked at cotton shirts, and tried the fabric stores for some kind of spandex, but I was really hoping for a better looking, thicker, yet breathable material, and that's when it occurred to me to see if I could find some kind of sports garment that would fit the bill. I'd also gotten the suit at this point, and knew I'd need a darker color, but I didn't want something in a navy because that would appear almost black on camera. That's why I took a photo of it:
For $6 at Walmart, I couldn't have hoped for a better fabric. Thicker than spandex, extremely stretchable, breathable, and comfortable as hell to wear. And it was just the right color. Now I just needed to find a matching tie...
I went with the Covington because it looked the most blue on camera, and was a good match for the color of the sports shirt.
Speaking of color... So about that suit. Looks amazing in the Ebay auction right? Too good to be true almost. Well it was. When I got the suit, it was much much darker. It was almost navy blue. And since I had to import it from Europe I'd already gotten half my props done, so there was no turning back now.
But it's not terrible. A bit dark, sure, but it's got nice pinstripes, and is the right sort of style, and I convinced the person who sold it to me to give me a $30 discount, so I didn't pay too much for it. And it works well with the sports shirt and tie being a bit dark. It is so freaking hard to find a blue garment in anything but super bright blue or a dark navy. It's actually weird how consistent fabric colors seem to be. You'd think they'd span all shades of blue.
Anyway, enough about the costume... on to the actual props.