Costume Making

STAGE 1

Here is the selection of football chin-pads I plan to use for my armor (I will spray them with metallic silver spray paint) . I firstly was going to use the white Umbro ones, as they had no logo indentation, but once I noticed the white elastic I thought that wouldn't work. I settled with the Nike large and small/child ones (fore gauntlets) as these had nice patterns that could work and were the correct size. I will be sure to cover up the Nike indentation logos at a later date.

This red bed sheet I will use to make a cape, and out of this vest, PVC beanbag cover and leather jacket I will start to make the chest piece. To do this I will cut out the leather and PVC and stitch it on to the already fitting vest.

Originally I was going to spray 6 big birthday badges with the spray paint, but once I found  that skateboarding knee and elbow pads contained better shape and better detail, I decided I'd use them instead. I also managed to find what will make good shoulder pads in these.

STAGE 2

Firstly I had to attach the leather and PVC on to the vest (a very lengthy process.) This was very difficult and I bent 3 needles trying to penetrate through the leather. This was by far the most difficult part of the costume making. Once this process was finished I attached a cape that proved not too difficult at all in comparison. I folded the edges at the bottom and snitched over to ensure that it would not fray.  I then attached the skirt like piece (made from the bottom back of the leather jacket) and sprayed the armor pieces.

I was instantly very pleased with the result of the spray-paint, as it looked as metallic and worthy of fooling the untrained eye to believing it was indeed metal.

STAGE 3

The next part was to connect the discs on to the costume. To do this I used a glue gun to attach cut in half sponges to all six of the discs, this gave the discs straight edges that could then be glue gunned to the costume.

Once this was done I felt the costume was very much coming together, and it was now recognizable as a Thor costume. If the rest of the costume continues at this standard I'm confident it will be a success.

STAGE 4

It was always my idea to use blonde hair spray paint to transform my hair to blonde, as I had seen white hair spray work on dark hair in the past. However, I did not anticipate it would not work and not this appallingly bad.

I would highly advice anyone who is looking to change their hair colour for a night not to use this product based on my experience. It didn't work at all, and forced me to re-think my tactic.

My next idea was to buy a wig. Though I was at first skeptical of this idea, I do think it worked rather well. After showing it to friends, my feedback was to scruffen it up and stylize it, as it looked to straight and womanly. After this, I decided to have a quick re-look at Thor's hair and make it look more similar.

 In my Thor: the Dark World review I looked at hair, and determined that in his latest outing it looked far better, so I will try and make this wig look more similar to that style.


Here I gave the wig a hair cut, taking approximately 5 inches off in length, although he does have his longer at the back, it didn't seem to look right or work in my design. I also added a small plat on each side, and a long obvious on at the back. Finally I added product to scruffen the wig up further in an attempt to make it more manly and wavy and less straight.

 

STAGE 5

This stage Required to to obtain a hammer, so I quickly researched into this and found some terrible, and some very good replicas, ranging from £5.00 - £500.00 (yes, that was not a typo!) and based on price I bought a lightweight, well detailed Hammer that I feel in sufficient, practical and within my price range at £20.00 (the one on the far screen left.)

STAGE 6

This would have been my final costume, and while I don't feel its bad, I don't feel it looks particularly impressive. The costume technically worked as I anticipated but simply it lacks a wow factor.

Also, I found while I was wearing the costume it was very restricting in movement and therefore created a big problem for any action scene. I also thought it it didn't look detailed enough and in my opinion I think I could do better.

Therefore, I shall start again immediately. However, this said I can keep most of the costume, the only real part that I wish to change is the torso. The discs, cape, armor, skirt piece, hammer and boots can remain.