My PETER PAN costume from HOOK

Indakin

New Member
Well, I havent posted much if any on the RPF before, so this will be one of my first posts. Ive been a costumer since 2006 doing everything from Ep3 Anakin from REVENGE OF THE SITH, and eventually moving onto more super hero type costumes, like Superman and Batman.

A particular costume I have always wanted was Peter Pans outfit from the film HOOK. Mostly like alot of us, I wanted the Golden Pan sword more than anything. Getting ahold of the sword was the first step in making my suit.

I originally commissioned my friend Chris from Sterling Armory to make me the base sword to work from. We decided to use Bronze, since it was stronger than brass, and golden reflective looking as well. The sword blade came out fantastic, has the perfect taper and shape to it as noted from the few decent stills I could get from the film. I did some detailing tweaks to the grip area, but otherwise it was a great sword to get me motivated to finally study the 100's of still frames i took from the Film and few reference photos I found deep within GOOGLE's search :) Very hard finding good reference from anything early 90s and later. But from the little I had, I was able to figure out all the details to his suit, and capture almost all of them for making my Pan suit.

There are obviously alot of things I could fix up, which i still plan too for my suit, particularly shortening the belt length. The main material was likely a suede leather ( which i used for my boot tops). Since this was my first attempt, i didnt want to botch up good leather as i experimented making the suit. I used a mircro suede for this suit, and it worked really well. I plan to darking it slightly still, but in some shots the color looks pretty spot on to me. The biggest pain was really just cutting out all the different variety of leaves on the suit, and figuring out a general sense of the different types of leaves used for these cutouts. The draw strings on the neck were somewhat of a challenge too. My method appears correct enough to the movies look. Probably the most difficult part for a while was trying to find baby Acorns for the neck ties, not even Ebay had any. I actually randomly got lucky walking to visting my GF at work oneday and there happened to be a row of trees on the sidewalk that had just shed a ton of them. So I quickly grabbed a few handfuls and stuff them into my pocket... JACKPOT!

But enough about the details Ill tell you more if you ask...

The basic costume i figured out consisted of:

The tunic top, Shorts, Boots, Knife, Belt, Marble Pouch, Sword Holster (some promo shots), Tights, PAN SWORD.

All of the above have a good amount of detail points i was able to figure out to make it screen accurate.

I honestly didnt post a thing about me working on this project, since it was something I wanted to accomplish for myself, and didnt want to have too much input from. This is mostly because I had never seen someone do this costume before, and I wanted to pull it off myself. Im very happy with the results in the end. Especially with my "New" Pan Sword that I made recently for SDCC 2011.

Something i realized from the start with my Bronze sword, is that its WAY too heavy to fight with, particularly for a 10 -14 year old kid. I wanted to make a much lighter, and "safer" prop to carry at the cons, while also making it more detail accurate.

The grip / gaurd are much more screen accurate in size and detail to the hero screen prop swords. The blade is super light now since its made from aluminum. At first i spray painted the blade gold, but as i expected, it was way too dull. I eventually opted to use Gold Mylar tape, which is highly reflective and doesnt scratch too easily. There are some details like the taper of the blade out of the gaurd, that arent there now, but some of the stunt swords didnt have this detail always. Overall its a much better prop, and now i can say, i did make the whole suit, which is more satisfying.


Anyways here are a bunch of pics of my suit, along with some comparison shots of Robin Williams in suit. Hope you enjoy.
 
That's great! Did people get who you were? Or did they think you might be the from the vintage Zelda game
 
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haaa, yea i had quite a few people call me LINK. But there were def alot who knew who i was and loved it, which was good to hear. A had a few kids wide eyed over the sword, since they likely had seen the film as well. They asked." Where...did you get that..." I let them hold the sword, and they were in awe, as much as i was when i first saw the film. Fun stuff.
 
That is AWESOME!!! I had considered doing this costume a few times, but the lack of reference discouraged that idea. Great work!
 
you look kinda like the reflection when he gets hit by the baseball and looks into the water :) awesome costume. 1 of my favorite movies, i would make a hook costume if i had any sewing skills...
 
Thanks guys! Yea , i do look more like the younger version of pan than Robins version.. but that works for me! Im only 26 so i have some time to wear this costume still and be age appropriate.


Yea a lack of reference is what really plagued me for a bit. Knowing that a blue ray is likely to come out soon since its the 20th anniversary this year... ill hope to get some better details. But i doubt really id learn much more about the suit than i already figured out.

Sewing wasnt TOO hard... its a basic tunic and pants... but i did make up the paterns myself as i went along. I trace my gym shorts and a large Tee Shirt to get basic measurements for the top and bottom, and then tweaked it from there. I added a pocket to my pants too, and use Tootles marble bag for holding money.

There are lots of little details i saw which i could get into, but its alot of nuances that i noticed and added in. One thing for example though, would be the thicker / lighter stitching that runs across from shoulder to shoulder, on front and back. I wasnt exactly sure what it was thread wise, but i simulated the look by threading in twine. His outfit is supposed to look rustic and put together, so details like that thicker threading give that look. Getting the colar area figured out, as far as how many layers of leafing there were and how they layered was kind of tricky. It was just a matter of looking as every decent ref shot i could get, as best i can. Alot of other photos i have show these details alot more.

I was also lucky to get a few decent shots of suits made for wax museums here in hollywood... which had jsut left when i wanted to see them. These costumes were CLOSE to the real suits... but not perfect. But it gave me some sharper looking photos to look at that werent too bad of replicas. I think my suit came out better than them though :)

Boots took some time to figure out, and mine are a little higher than Robins are sometimes. His seem to be taller at points and then flop over very short... so i just kept the intergrity of my boots how they were when i added the boot top flaps. The boots themselves are a pair of suede brown cowboy Roper Boots. They are a much shorter cowboy boot, and the foot is flater and doesnt curve up at the tips. They looked VERY close to his boots, and were exactly what was used for the Wax museums... so it worked for me. I had to recolor them though. The leather color on the tops is a bit more of the color i want my whole suit to be... ... So i will be darking the rest of the outfit soon as well.
 
Here's the sword, I made her from bronze. real coconut guard, etc.. Yep, she was a beast, but real nice :)

IMGP4703.jpg


IMGP4704.jpg


The suit came out amazing as always! How close was I on dimensions and such to the hero prop? i'd love to see side by side comparisons, and the aluminum one looks great! You are always top notch!
 
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thanks for posting chris! Without Chris making the 1st pan sword for me, i wouldnt have been motivated to complete the suit. Its pretty dang accurate from what i can tell. There were subtle things i changed though. I cut down the length of the grip about an inch, and then wrapped a thicker textured leather around her grip. Pretty thick grip now but the real sword has a pretty thick grip as well.

For making my own sword I wanted to get the proportions even more accurate to what i had seen. I also used a coconut shell (smaller in scale this time), wood trim to make the grips, and an aluminum bar to make the blade. Dremmeling the blade to shape, and cutting the coconut were quite the pain in the but. The Coconut was sooo strong to cut through, took a while. The aluminum cut easier, but the metal would build up on my grinding wheels and then wouldn't work as well. I added deep grooves into my wooden grips, so that when the leather was wrapped, it would fill in the grooves and leave a visable texture, like the movie hero version presented at the end of the film. The pictures should speak for themselves a bit. I did a bunch of detailing after it was finished too. I used barge glue for attaching everything together. I spent about a full day making my sword. I know how the original was made now too, but my methods work well enough and look the part... plus with this version i can actually cross swords a bit without fear of killing someone :)
 
ha thanks for the Epic Hair comment! I tried to do his hair more like it was when he is presented the pan sword by Rufio. He had fluffy flying hair. Later in the film it just falls down dead always... blahh. My hair had a bit too much product in it for SDCC. It was alot better for the LOJ Fantasy ball pics i have up. But it was also getting longer at SDCC and wouldnt stay spiked as easily.

Im also Rocking FAIRY ears.... Thats the real final detail...
 
BANGERANG!!!! Good work, I actually just watched hook the other day while my wife and I were enjoying a 5 hr emergency room visit on her birthday! The costume is great, the sword is fantastic and you sir nailed the look.
 
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