On Hallow's eve

Once in a while, I like to wear something I can easily move in, and see. Seeing is good. I also rarely play with leather and metal, so this seemed like a good idea. I bought the shirt and cape for this Captain Harlock (Albator) costume online and made the leather belts, belt buckles, leather chaps, modified the cape, and made the leather holsters for the sword and pistol. I already had the gun and sword in my toy collection (who doesn't, really?). It doesn't take up too much space, so it's a good costume to travel with. Oh, and the character drinks wine. Bonus.

Didn't have much time to plan anything, so I bought a latex prosthetic from the Scream team (again) and a couple feather boas at the dollar store. The cool part was really the eyes. I found some contacts that glow under a blacklight and I ordered some UV LEDs on eBay for a dollar. I taped a 9v battery on the hat, drilled a couple holes in the front and glued the leds so they point at my eyes. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!! I'm fairly certain it will ruin your eyesight, and it will definitely give you a headache.

When I dressed as a werewolf a few years back, it really bugged me that I had to wear clothes. Going all in on a fur suit seemed like too much work at the time, and I needed the snout to be more prominent if the transformation was more advanced. This year, I gave it a shot. I bought a ton of crepe hair, a dozen tubes of silicon glue and a flesh color body suit. It's easy, mix together three colors of hair, enough to cover about one square inch, apply glue, press hair in, apply more glue. Repeat about ten trillion times, and you have a fur suit. Must say, I would not do it again, it gets old after about 30 seconds. The suit stops around the shoulders, so I had to apply more hair on my body for a good 5 hours on Halloween night. Facial prosthetic is not the best, but it did the trick after I painted it, added blood, and, of course, glued some hair on it...

I introduced my son to Goldorak (Grendizer, if you saw it in English as a kid) and he just loved it. I thought I'd make a goldorak costume for Halloween. Took a few months, as I made a few mistakes along the way, but I'm pretty happy with the result for something entirely scratch built. Part of the difficulty is also that the "real" robot, is anatomically really weird. He's super tall (of course he's tall, about 20 storeys high, but tall even on a small scale) with a ridiculously small head, probably because the horns are so big. Now of course, if you have to wear it, the head had to fit on, well, your head. I tried to make the shoulders broader to compensate but it's not perfect. I'll put it on a mannequin, that way I can replace the soft parts, which I made so I could move a bit, with real metal looking parts... His eyes light up, there are strobes in the horns that make a lightning effect (Cornufulgure), and the chest also lights up (Retrolaser). The chest and horn lights are remote-coltrolled from one of the gloves... I'll post a "making of" soon enough... Oh, the chest acts as a speaker and it plays music from the show : )

I like this one. I went to a bar with some friends and there were at least three of four other Mad Hatters... It was late so they had already picked the finalists for their costume contest. I went to say hi to the other hatters when the staff saw me and asked if I wanted to participate. Unhappy hatters, there were... This is another very versatile piece from The Scream Team.

My son was eight months old. Couldn't really spend months, weeks or days on anything... Time to recycle... I did the makeup in record time, didn't even put the suit on properly, but it did the (trick-or-)trick...

My girlfriend was 8 months pregnant. I did absolutely nothing... (Probably made some soup.)

I had tried to avoir gory for the past few years, but when my girlfriend decided she was up for having half her face ripped off, we went all in. I was particularly proud of the removable eye. I made it with a real glass eye and fixed it to the eye prosthetic with a small magnet. I could just rip it off and hand it to people. Cool... I also like the effect of the contact lense on her left eye, it makes the "skinned ripped off" effect even better... (ADDED Nov. 06 2012 : For an amazing example of application and make-up, check this one : http://imgur.com/a/C2I1h#UuETK , I'm jealous...)

This was totally improvised. He sort of looks like Voldemort, but I'm not a Potter fan and I hadn't seen the movies. I just had a bunch of ideas and I mixed them together. I wanted to wear a tux, and I wanted a completely white eye. The rest just sort of happened... Facial Prosthetic is, again, from The Scream Team.

I spent the better part of that year building that thing... I bought a helmet off ebay for the fun of it, thinking I'd make a cheap costume to go with it. Next thing you, I'm in the Darth Vader reveal Helmer Builders Club, searching the world for the original parts they used in the 70's. All in all, 9 months of research, metal cutting, fiberglassing, painting. First experience with a bald cap as well. The face if four different prosthetics I bought, cut, and modified with some gel to get the burn effect. I'm really proud of this one. He's now on a mannequin standing in my office... (He puts people on edge when they come for job interviews...)

I had wanted to do a werewolf for the longest time but I wasn't too sure how to deal with hair. I was also really short on time... Turns out the guys at The Scream Team (they make the best latex prosthetics) had this thing as a product, and it's early enough in the transformation stage that you don,t need to be entirely covered with hair... Pretty happy with the result...

That was an odd year. I remember it being cold and I was half naked. I remember it took forever to paint the little scales on the side of my body and unfortunately, we can't see them on the one picture that survived the night. I lost my camera, fell (off the 6.5 inch high boots), sprained my thumb and woke up with my eyes burning because of the contacts (which we also can't see). Fortunately, someone sent me a picture they took of me that night...

Me and a friend of mine had won a contest the year before as twin ladybugs so we were motivated to win again... We decided to pick the most obvious costume idea, vampires, and tried to do it better than everyone else. First experience with contact lenses, not my foundest memories... The face is a partial prosthetic from The Scream Team. We were sort of new to this whole thing, we did research for a couple months to get the right products and good tips on make-up. It turned out ok, I think.