Please excuse the crudity of my costume!
So, a little over two weeks ago I was in Salem Mass for Halloween, and I met a lot of nice cosplayers as Captain America. After several of them found me on facebook and asked if I was gonna be at Super Megafest, I decided to go, but I wanted a new costume to surprise everyone with.
Not having a lot of cash to spare, I decided to go as Doc Brown.
Initially I planned to do 1985 Doc with the radiation suit and the remote control, and I purchased a Rotex 880 on ebay to do the labels, but I couldn't find the proper remote, and the build would be rather expensive and take too long to do. Watching the films again for inspiration, I realized 2015 Doc would work much better. The costume would stand out more, and the only real prop I needed was the Sports Almanac.
Another benefit of the costume, was that I already had a lab coat, and I was sure I'd seen some yellow jogging pants down at the Goodwill. I figured I had a good chance of finding a red hawaiian shirt there, and I might even find some boots. The glasses could be made from auminum foil over coardboard, so they'd be cheap too, and iParty was sure to have some wigs on sale right after Halloween.
That was the plan anyway... (I think you can guess where this is going.)
When I dyed the lab coat, which I'd taken the time to remove the pockets from, it didn't come out the gold color I wanted, or even a bright yellow. It came out this really faded yellow. Like 10 parts white and one part yellow. Which, coincidentally was the mix of polyester to cotton in the lab coat.
So $40 later, I had a new 100% cotton labcoat, and another bottle of golden yellow dye.
As for the Goodwill, there were no suitable red shirts to be found. And scouring ebay and google turned up no results either for any shirts which were red with black hibiscus. On my third trip back to the goodwill however, I had an epiphany. They had a very light green hawaiian shirt there, in my size, with dark green flowers on it. Green is yellow and blue. Mix red, in, and what do you get? BLACK!
In addition to the shirt, I also bought the yellow jogging pants. They had a grey stripe down the side, but I figured I could live with that.
I didn't find any boots, so I looked on ebay and found a nice pair which were really similar to the ones in the film for like $10. Th red laces I found after going to like five shoe stores.
I then bought some red dye, and proceeded to dye the coat yellow and shirt red in my porcelain sink, because I wanted to use water that was near boiling to ensure I got the brightest color possible.
At least, I thought it was a porcelain sink. Turns out, it's fiberglass.
Three bottles of bleach, hydrogen peroxide, ajax scrubbing powder, and a box of rit dye with boiling water, and I've almost got all the dye out of both sinks.
After washing the shirt and coat... well, the color on the shirt was a little lackluster, but it was good enough. And the coat, damn was it bright! Which was great. Except now the jogging pants which were slightly orange in hue, looked like crap compared to it. So another $25 later I had some lab pants one size too large with an elastic waistband with which I could create my 3/4 length parachute pants. The pants were only 55% cotton, but since they needed to be a faded yellow to be true to the film, that was okay, and they actually came out brighter than expected.
Oh, and before I dyed them, I cut them to length, and sewed the cuffs so they wouldn't unravel. I also cut up a green shirt I found which was reasonably similar to the material Doc had on his leggings and sewed those as well. They didn't go in the dye bath with the pants of course.
With the pants and the coat being so nice I decided I then had to spend the money on a nice wig and a replica of his aluminum shades because I was running out of time to make the shades and the aluminum foil might not work well, and it's not like they'll go down in value.... Another $100 total there.
Spirit gum had to be shipped ground and wouldn't arrive in time to do the eyebrows, so I looked all over the place till I found some toupee tape locally. The eyebrows btw were like 3x the size you see in the pics. I actually got three different pairs out of the ones I bought.
The sports almanac is simply a printout on photopaper I wrapped around a National Geographic I cut down. I scaled the almanac down a bit to fit the photo paper, which conveniently made it fit in my pocket.
I'm aware the coat in the film doesn't have pockets, and isn't yellow, but I did not have time to sew a coat from gold fabric, I didn't want to cut the pockets off the coat because they'd come in handy and I would be able to sell to coat if it didn't come out a color I was happy with. Also I was not able to find the material for the pants, though I did find some similar material with a 2" pleat at Hobby Lobby, and when I was at the con a witch there had an almost perfect material in grey fabric with a 1" pleat (in the film, it appears to alternate between 2" and 1" pleats but I would be happy with the 1"), and I picked her brain about where she got it and what it was called, so it may yet be possible to get a proper fabric in the right color!
Let's see, what else...
I did my laces up as close as I could get to what he did in the film. My laces were a bit short and the boots are pretty small on the screen. I did notice the boots have some stuff jutting out of them as well but I'd never noticed it before and it looks weird, so I didn't bother with that.
I also printed up a copy of the flux capacitor schematic, and I made business cards with the same font and text as he had on the side of his truck in the first film: "DR. E. BROWN ENTERPRISES 24 HR. SCIENTIFIC SERVICES" with a stylized illustration of the flux capacitor below it, and on the back my email and facebook address. I'll post a pic of those later.
I think that about covers the costume. I was thinking about doing makeup to make myself look old as well but again spirit gum wouldn't arrive in time. Also, I had to pay $50 for that wig... iParty had almost no halloween stuff left, and it wasn't even on sale. But it's a nice wig, and everyone complimented me on having the eyebrows to go with it. They also loved that I had the Sports Almanac.
Oh and the Delorean... It's not mine! In fact, I didn't even know it was going to be at the con! You can imagine how stoked I was when I saw it there. And the dude that had it graciously allowed me take all the photos I wanted with it. The ones above are just the first batch. I have a bunch more I'll post later. I got some great shots both in the day and at night with all the lighting effects on.
Ah! I almost forgot the tie. I made the tie out of a shower curtain. I would have liked to use thicker plastic but I couldn't find a source for the kind of stuff they use for blanket bags locally, nor did I know what thickness it is, or have enough time to have it shipped to me.
So, a little over two weeks ago I was in Salem Mass for Halloween, and I met a lot of nice cosplayers as Captain America. After several of them found me on facebook and asked if I was gonna be at Super Megafest, I decided to go, but I wanted a new costume to surprise everyone with.
Not having a lot of cash to spare, I decided to go as Doc Brown.
Initially I planned to do 1985 Doc with the radiation suit and the remote control, and I purchased a Rotex 880 on ebay to do the labels, but I couldn't find the proper remote, and the build would be rather expensive and take too long to do. Watching the films again for inspiration, I realized 2015 Doc would work much better. The costume would stand out more, and the only real prop I needed was the Sports Almanac.
Another benefit of the costume, was that I already had a lab coat, and I was sure I'd seen some yellow jogging pants down at the Goodwill. I figured I had a good chance of finding a red hawaiian shirt there, and I might even find some boots. The glasses could be made from auminum foil over coardboard, so they'd be cheap too, and iParty was sure to have some wigs on sale right after Halloween.
That was the plan anyway... (I think you can guess where this is going.)
When I dyed the lab coat, which I'd taken the time to remove the pockets from, it didn't come out the gold color I wanted, or even a bright yellow. It came out this really faded yellow. Like 10 parts white and one part yellow. Which, coincidentally was the mix of polyester to cotton in the lab coat.
So $40 later, I had a new 100% cotton labcoat, and another bottle of golden yellow dye.
As for the Goodwill, there were no suitable red shirts to be found. And scouring ebay and google turned up no results either for any shirts which were red with black hibiscus. On my third trip back to the goodwill however, I had an epiphany. They had a very light green hawaiian shirt there, in my size, with dark green flowers on it. Green is yellow and blue. Mix red, in, and what do you get? BLACK!
In addition to the shirt, I also bought the yellow jogging pants. They had a grey stripe down the side, but I figured I could live with that.
I didn't find any boots, so I looked on ebay and found a nice pair which were really similar to the ones in the film for like $10. Th red laces I found after going to like five shoe stores.
I then bought some red dye, and proceeded to dye the coat yellow and shirt red in my porcelain sink, because I wanted to use water that was near boiling to ensure I got the brightest color possible.
At least, I thought it was a porcelain sink. Turns out, it's fiberglass.
Three bottles of bleach, hydrogen peroxide, ajax scrubbing powder, and a box of rit dye with boiling water, and I've almost got all the dye out of both sinks.
After washing the shirt and coat... well, the color on the shirt was a little lackluster, but it was good enough. And the coat, damn was it bright! Which was great. Except now the jogging pants which were slightly orange in hue, looked like crap compared to it. So another $25 later I had some lab pants one size too large with an elastic waistband with which I could create my 3/4 length parachute pants. The pants were only 55% cotton, but since they needed to be a faded yellow to be true to the film, that was okay, and they actually came out brighter than expected.
Oh, and before I dyed them, I cut them to length, and sewed the cuffs so they wouldn't unravel. I also cut up a green shirt I found which was reasonably similar to the material Doc had on his leggings and sewed those as well. They didn't go in the dye bath with the pants of course.
With the pants and the coat being so nice I decided I then had to spend the money on a nice wig and a replica of his aluminum shades because I was running out of time to make the shades and the aluminum foil might not work well, and it's not like they'll go down in value.... Another $100 total there.
Spirit gum had to be shipped ground and wouldn't arrive in time to do the eyebrows, so I looked all over the place till I found some toupee tape locally. The eyebrows btw were like 3x the size you see in the pics. I actually got three different pairs out of the ones I bought.
The sports almanac is simply a printout on photopaper I wrapped around a National Geographic I cut down. I scaled the almanac down a bit to fit the photo paper, which conveniently made it fit in my pocket.
I'm aware the coat in the film doesn't have pockets, and isn't yellow, but I did not have time to sew a coat from gold fabric, I didn't want to cut the pockets off the coat because they'd come in handy and I would be able to sell to coat if it didn't come out a color I was happy with. Also I was not able to find the material for the pants, though I did find some similar material with a 2" pleat at Hobby Lobby, and when I was at the con a witch there had an almost perfect material in grey fabric with a 1" pleat (in the film, it appears to alternate between 2" and 1" pleats but I would be happy with the 1"), and I picked her brain about where she got it and what it was called, so it may yet be possible to get a proper fabric in the right color!
Let's see, what else...
I did my laces up as close as I could get to what he did in the film. My laces were a bit short and the boots are pretty small on the screen. I did notice the boots have some stuff jutting out of them as well but I'd never noticed it before and it looks weird, so I didn't bother with that.
I also printed up a copy of the flux capacitor schematic, and I made business cards with the same font and text as he had on the side of his truck in the first film: "DR. E. BROWN ENTERPRISES 24 HR. SCIENTIFIC SERVICES" with a stylized illustration of the flux capacitor below it, and on the back my email and facebook address. I'll post a pic of those later.
I think that about covers the costume. I was thinking about doing makeup to make myself look old as well but again spirit gum wouldn't arrive in time. Also, I had to pay $50 for that wig... iParty had almost no halloween stuff left, and it wasn't even on sale. But it's a nice wig, and everyone complimented me on having the eyebrows to go with it. They also loved that I had the Sports Almanac.
Oh and the Delorean... It's not mine! In fact, I didn't even know it was going to be at the con! You can imagine how stoked I was when I saw it there. And the dude that had it graciously allowed me take all the photos I wanted with it. The ones above are just the first batch. I have a bunch more I'll post later. I got some great shots both in the day and at night with all the lighting effects on.
Ah! I almost forgot the tie. I made the tie out of a shower curtain. I would have liked to use thicker plastic but I couldn't find a source for the kind of stuff they use for blanket bags locally, nor did I know what thickness it is, or have enough time to have it shipped to me.
