Worst Costume Experiences?

I was building a mask that was reinforced by wire. During a fitting, one of the wires sprung loose and went through the lens of my right eye, just shy of puncturing the lens of the eye completely. I spent the next few weeks hopped up on pain meds and fighting the urge to pluck the splinter from my eye. a scar raised on my eye that felt like a thick hair or splinter under my eyelid for two weeks. Almost went mad.
 
Yeoutch...

Health related: I wound up in hospital with near sepsis from shoes I made but didn't put a good lining on. I chafed my toes raw and they got, well manky. next stop ER. Though a month later...

Epoxy allergy of doom. Triggered purely by my stubborn bloody mindedness to make my own gear- which either is attributed to a bloke or is then assumed to be paper mache or polymer clay!!!

On site: Nothing terribly major so far, I tend to go overboard and glue myself into everything I can. Literally glue, with PA as it grips skin and cloth and prosthetics.

Assumptions in general. Tiny fists of fury while I smile politely and make an excuse to hurry away. At cons I always have my official hat on as part of the organisational team (costume contest, etc) so I can't say too much on a personal level ;)

Epic fails:
Oh man, my Samara head sculpt. Not she sculpt. I had a blast. But I had to sculpt the thing four or five times because my mold making was such epic fail. Partly me partly the medium. Plaster is horrible. It wasn't until I got my mitts on some ultracal that it was suddenly easy. made Shaak Ti a heck of a lot easier (one sculpt one mold. So happy)

I'm generally really good with fabric and can by amounts smaller than most people would and know I could cut what I need and not need to replace. However I am not above nicking too far when clipping curves. A few near misses- you can't glue or even sew a cut in fabric. You have to replace the whole panel. But hooray for learning techniques from practically every century (and these are extremely different).

If my rotary tool was really grunty I would have lost a few digits by now....
 
First Halloween wearing my clone costume, I hadn't trimmed it quite right because I was running out of time, One of my kids tripped I naturaly bent dow to catch them before they hurt themselves and I pintch one of my em,,,, one of my "Boys" inbetween my thigh armor and cod piece. My eyes were watering the rest of the night and I was bruised for over a week!!!...
 
Wearing my EP3 clone lid was pretty painful as the lens material and mesh really dug into my nose and mouth. It was a very tight fit.

I once used E6000 to glue a helmet liner into a TK lid and nearly gassed myself on it's first outing which was a little over 24 hours after the initial gluing. Puked my guts up after a few hours breathing the fumes. not nice.
(E6000 has a unique funk about it)
 
I was one of the TKs for the Star Wars segment for the Amazing Race finale a year and half ago or so. We did a couple walk throughs very early in the morning with the producers while in full armor. We were to escort the contestants quite a ways from the Yoda Fountain down to the motion capture stage.
I had just purchased some new boots as my old ones were separating from the soles and I did not realize my shin pieces would sit about a half inch higher and they started cutting into me just below the kneecaps. One side was worse than the other, and I soon became convinced blood had to be running down my leg into my boot.
The contestants were a bit more behind than they had anticipated and we had about ten extra minutes. I grabbed our handler and we ran back to my gear where I had her rip a spare sock in half so that we had an elastic tube that we put around my leg at the really bad spot. Ah, sweet relief.
The other side still hurt but not too badly. Got through the shoot just fine, but I did end up with bandaged knees for a few days.
One fellow had forgotten his TK belt and could not escort, only stand by the fountain. Turns out that was a better job, and he got more screen time.
 
My buddies and I spent months on our G.I.Joe outfits, and lost out to racecar driver Jeff Gordon and his friends dressed in suits and sunglasses-they were the Reservoir Dogs!
 
I was dressed in my ironman suit and i lost to a duct tape/cardboard mega tron. lol then when they had to take a picture of the winner they asked me to take a picture cause his costume looked really bad on camera lmao. That right there made the fiber glass cutting into my thighs well worth it.
 
Probably last weekend at Fan Expo in Toronto- where I had to tell Michael Biehn that I was dressed as Kyle Reese from The Terminator. :confused :lol

(Not to mention being confronted by the cops: who told me that walking up the street with a repainted Nerf Longshot was creating a public disturbance- they said they were getting 911 calls about a man in combat gear carrying a very large gun! :wacko :rolleyes)


Kevin
 
Having the expense of my "low cost" ironman costume spiral out of control, but due to time issues the costume didn't get up over the benchmark i was hoping.

Then having to cram myself into (and later extract myself from) the costume on my own with a torn ligament in my shoulder.

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Well, kinda worth it. but not really.

Screw you, every part of the costume below the waist. Screw you.
 
I don't think people realize just how restricted and uncomfortable some people are in a costume.

Absolutely. And God help you if it's Halloween and you're surrounded by drunk people!

I once used E6000 to glue a helmet liner into a TK lid and nearly gassed myself on it's first outing which was a little over 24 hours after the initial gluing. Puked my guts up after a few hours breathing the fumes. not nice.
(E6000 has a unique funk about it)

Wow. That really puts things into perspective.


As far as actual pain goes, last year wearing my Bender costume for Halloween, I ended up getting too warm and almost throwing up. I had to take the costume off for a couple of hours. Then when I finally could wear the costume, I ended the night with bruises and cuts up and down my calves from the upside-down bowls that were acting as shoes.... :rolleyes

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The Great Stuff foam was to keep the 100s of machine screws from scraping my arms and back...
 
One fellow had forgotten his TK belt and could not escort, only stand by the fountain. Turns out that was a better job, and he got more screen time.

I had forgotten about that -

I was doing some last minute repairs the night before on the belt, and left is out of the tub to dry, and in the morning just grabbed the tub and ran out the door. When getting dressed and realized i'd forgotten the belt. the LFL handlers went inside the building, and tried to remove the one off the screenused TK thats on display ! Unfortunately, it was rivited to the ab piece. I just held my gun at waist level, snd it didn't show in the final cut.
 
I felt bad for you but standing by the fountain WAS a better gig than escorting the teams like the 'Cowboys' (who had never even seen Star Wars....really?...in this day and age?) and then standing in the LFL computer server room for over an hour......quite cold....extremely noisy....bleeding into my boots....:)
Chris premiered his clone that day, and he was suffering mightily by the end as well. He hadn't quite nailed down the trimming on the suit.
During the walkthroughs he could barely shuffle.
The cameras go on and he started marching like there was no problem whatsoever, at a pretty darn good clip.
Had a blast. Good times.
 
Wearing my EP3 clone lid was pretty painful as the lens material and mesh really dug into my nose and mouth. It was a very tight fit.
I antiipate this with my Shae Vizla helmet. The test cast was a little thin and still just brished my nose (okay it may slightly press on it) so I anticipate a little less room when full layered and with the visor in place. But that is the price of trying to get even close to screen proportions.

I once used E6000 to glue a helmet liner into a TK lid and nearly gassed myself on it's first outing which was a little over 24 hours after the initial gluing. Puked my guts up after a few hours breathing the fumes. not nice.
(E6000 has a unique funk about it)
Oh ew.. yeah I can see that happening. I use a lot of Shoe Goo (the same stuff in a different package) and alwasys glue last thing at night and close up my workshop so I am not hanging around the fumes. It's always a lovely welcome when I open it up again the next morning- it then gets properly aired out before I spend any time in there.


On stage costume malfunctions include blindness from mascara in the eyes and having to wind my way off stage... a skirt untying while in the middle of a big dance number (luckily few arm movements so I was able to hold the skirt in place- this has happened to a lot of Christine's on stage during Think of Me as their skirts weigh more than 15 pounds and is hooked on stage in the near dark).

Oh and falling a over t at a con. - there was icecream left on stage as no one cleaned it up after a challenge. Actually that was a bit of a blessing in disguise as I had spent the months before barely able to walk due to a glueteal problem. It seems the shock realigned something and I was no longer in need of crutches.. once the inflammation settled that is ;)
 
I was working on my Blackfoot dress and had just finished beading the bodice - with over 6000 tile beads. I sewed the edges of the bodice together and tried it on, before attaching it to the skirt. Over 2000 beads popped off as the thread I used wasn't strong enough, even tripled and quadrupled. Took a week's vacation and resewed every single bead with quadrupled carpet thread.
 
Some of y'all think you've had it bad. I was walking in a parade a few years back when a guy on the side of the street waved in my direction and shouted "Hey Vader!"

I was in my TIE pilot costume.

I still have nightmares of that day...
:lol
 
I was so stressed and hurried while changing at Dragon*Con that I put my wrap on the wrong hand for Baby Doll one day and completely forgot it the next. Also, my expensive gun fell when I was putting it away after a photo while walking very quickly to get somewhere. The piece that holds the charms on broke off, and my bunny and bear charms lost a few pieces. I almost cried right there!
 
My wife and I went to Toronto fan expo in2010
I had on a spiderman suit by Ollie when he was
Still in business. I worked out like a mother€£¥•*^
and was looking pretty cut at the Marvel costume
Contest where there we're many other notable costumes
Competing

First prize was an X-men comic signed by
Stan Lee..........and we all lost out to a girl in a purple mini
skirt and a green trench coat dressed as Gwen Stacey. They're
We're audible coments of disbelief throughout the crowd :(
 
Hmm...well a HUGE one was this past weekend at Dragon*con...first malfunction I've ever had in my 8 years of going.

I wrapped up my Tron Siren shoes in newspaper/bubblewrap to protect them from getting scuffed inside my prop bin...well...humidity got into them since it was a rainy/humid Atlanta day..and the newspaper stuck to BOTH shoes, leaving horrible marks :|.

My boyfriend had to call his dad that works down the street, to run to Walmart a few blocks over and grab a can of white spray paint. Went and spray painted them...and the paint underneath started to curdle!!! Had to rip all the patent leather off and respray paint them, to only run out of paint and had to call my bf's dad again!!

DISASTER. But, they came out ok. Totally ripping the top part off and plastering a new shoe on there though. Ripping the patent leather off made the shoe much wider and they don't fit anymore -_-

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Dragon*Con 2000: a group of us TKs were to march into a huge panel and stand behind the guests (I don't even remember who they were) for a couple minutes then march out. The con person/handler/whoever gave precise instructions on how to arrange ourselves on stage (although I don't remember the specifics). When we get there, the instructions were counter-intuitive to what felt right up there, but I turned or stopped or whatever at the point I'd been instructed to, and the guy behind me, not expecting it, walked right into me, causing a couple thousand people to laugh.

Joke was on me for being the only one to follow instructions!
 
At least they got Lucas in the shot with you -
Charity_46.jpg

you mean you were this close to lucas and did not euthanize him for all that he has done to us! god how sad is it that the fans themselves had to go in and re edit out all of the crap he put into the original trilogy to get the perfect blu ray set that he will never give us ! i downloaded it yesterday by the way and all i have to do is watch it on the ps3 :>
 

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