Gnumoon's Stuff

Buzz Lightyear Costume: Part 2

This post should be titled "How to make a Buzz Lightyear costume in three days." If you have more time, money and ability, you can make something truly awesome, like this guy did.

Seriously, the more of these I see the more embarrassed I am by the slapped-together-and-drunkenly-planned one I made (The Artist would call that "slapdick"). Instead of acting like it didn't happen though, I think I'll use it as motivation to try again. I really want to try the vacu-foam technique, when I can find some time (2019?). I'm sure I could eventually make a more accurate version than what I did. So I'll dub mine the "charming, homemade" version, which is always code for "kinda shitty."

  Anyhoo, so after night one I sort of had parts sort of painted and sewed. I decided to build the upper body on a black sweatshirt ($3), so I measured off lengths of the foam insulation, cut them lenthwise and hand-sewed them near the zipper in the back. I left them the dark gray/black instead of trying to paint them completely black; I learned from the alien costume neckpiece that the foam really really hates being painted and will thwart your every effort.

Back to the wings and jetpack. I had to start adding on parts for authenticity, including the lightedtorches on the wingtips. So I painted some floral foam (cut into cones) and cut out notches so they'd fit securely on the wings. I did 2 cones, bottom to bottom, for each wing and covered them in matching green foam.  (The blinking lights fit into the tips)

As Mr. Lightyear is a toy, he needs screws to hold all the parts on, so I made some foam screws and painted them silver to go on the jetpack. (I assume these are supposed to hold the wing mechanisms in place and allow them to pivot outwards.)I know the wings are part of the costume, but there was no way he could move freely inside with the wings on. So I made the jetpack three pieces: the main, wearable pack, which is worn with the assistance of the back of an old Paradise Jam backpack and includes the bulk of the pack and the exhaust features, the wings, and the outer workings (including the screws and the karate chop action button/fan). All three pieces were fitted with velcro (industrial strength! Ooooh!) so he could wear the wings or just the outer artwork. I had to figure out how to place the velcro at about 4am, and I'm still impressed I got it right. *pats self on back*

One of my favorite bits of the costume is the DANGER! JET EXHAUST" signs on the jetpack, as they are not only a warning, but a fart joke. What? I'm immature, what can I say?

Speaking of the warning signs, I have to thank some geek on the internet for scanning in all the stickers on the toy so I could print them out for this project. (My husband says that after this, I'm not allowed to refer to anyone else as a geek.) M quite enjoyed putting on the armbands and space rangering around. I also put the appropriate stickers on the now-green chestplate.

A note on the chestplate: I scored some easy, cheap points with the red button. While it is supposed to trigger the wings, instead it triggers the voice. I bought this ($10) and took the talk button out. As it turned out, the button itself was futuristic and interesting-looking, so I just slapped some red paint on it and embedded it into the foam plate. {M has the now silent Buzz doll, she doesn't seem to mind it doesn't talk... I heard her telling it "You can't talk because my daddy took your voice away."}

At this point, several weeks later, I can't remember all the details. But at some point I made a belt and altered the ski bibs. The bibs were a size S, which just wouldn't do, so I had to buy some stretchy white fabric and replace the elastic panel in the outer thighs. Word of advice: ski pants are a certain size. Just let them be the size they are. All the cursing aside, they turned out very well and you couldn't tell at all they'd been altered. Score one for a bad bad seamstress.I also put more of the green foam around the cuffs of the bibs. I didn't get around to adding detailing on the front of the knees or the articulating parts of the back of the knees.

One part I did not like and will not post is the boots. I could NOT FIND proper boots to paint. I had such grand plans; I was even going to scrawl "ANDY" on the bottom of the sole in Sharpie. But I ended up buying some POS tennis shoes at WalMart and painting those instead. They basically sucked, but looked okay from far away. Let's move on.

The costume-building experience was a good one. I wish I'd had more time, more planning, more materials and skill. Mostly more time. I like working by myself in the dead of night, although it does make me think up questions I'd never previously considered, such as "How does he pee?," which leads to "Is he an android or a real person?," and then "If the laser is on the right arm, then is a lefthanded Space Ranger SOL?"

If I try it again, there are some specific improvements to be made. Better boots, for one. I want the laser button to be a button, and for there to be a blinking red light on the gauntlet. I want the plastic fishbowl helmet, but that's something I'm just going to have to order on the 'net. I want better joints in the elbows and knees, and a general "clean up" of the whole costume. If I'd had a few more days these are things I could have done for this go-round, but with work and family and school and cookietopia, I just couldn't swing it. Sadly, I have to sleep occasionally.

Until we were walking to the Halloween festival, DJ had never worn the whole suit together, and I was fairly sure it was going to be the biggest damn mess ever, with parts sloughing off and wings snatched by the wind. But amazingly, it worked. The kids loved it, M had a blast, and I stopped worrying about what if the wings should fall off and just concentrated on having a good time.

 

Buzz Lightyear Costume - Part I

When we were at Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween party, we were in line to meet Donald Duck, and behind us was a man dressed like Buzz Lightyear. I only noticed him in the melee of costumes because it was dark out, and the plastic wings had green lightsticks taped to them. Nice touch. But I had this flicker of a thought: Buzz is a good costume. A really good costume. And I couldn't shake it. I tried to shake it, but it wouldn't let go. I don't have TIME, I thought, to make this costume. A little alien? Sure, I can swing that. But a Buzz frigging Lightyear? He has WINGS, among other difficult-to-design parts. But still the idea lingered.

I love Buzz Lightyear, and that proably had a lot to do with it. He's funny and courageous and hilariously arrogant. Whereas Woody always struck me as a whiny fatalistic prima donna, Buzz is so honest and earnest in whatever he believes, and an eternal optimist. (The latter is the reason That One Scene You Know The One I Mean Is Someone Cutting Onions In Here Dammit in Toy Story 3 is so touching, when he knows it's over)

As an aside, I prefer the original Tim Allen voice, but Patrick Warburton's cartoon & game work gets a nod from me as well, because he's also Kronk and the Tick. Kronk may be my favorite 2D cartoon character of all time.

As an additional aside, the Mrs. Nesbit Scene in the original movie is on my personal list of "best scenes in a movie ever." "YEARS OF ACADEMY TRAINING, WASTED!"

So Buzz is an interstellar badass with a heart of gold. AND he has a really really awesome Space Ranger suit. The costumes online were really expensive, really terrible, and in a lot of cases, both. I didn't even start thinking about the Buzz costume until after I finished Jessie and the alien, my reasoning being that DJ wouldn't get to go to as many Halloween functions as M and I, so his costume could wait. And also I had no idea who to attack the construction problem. I've never made anything even vaguely space-suity, unless Rainbow Brite counts (it doesn't).

I sketched and I thought and I sketched. The weekend before Halloween I went to Woods of Terror in the 'boro with some friends and my brother. We consumed some adult beverages, and I ended the evening (ok, early morning) sketching madly on a paper towel at my in-laws' house, no doubt gesturing wildly, while explaining the pieces of Buzz to my brother The Artist. Said artist helpfully suggested that DJ just go as Sid Phillips because it was an easier costume, here less than a week from the holiday. I let him know that was a cop-out solution that he was welcome to blow out his ass, so we poured another glass of pinot and went back to the sketch, deconstructing. To the left is the drunken, wingless, from-memory sketch in question. It isn't impressive, but it at least gave me a starting point.

 Monday at lunchtime I started gathering parts. I went to the used sporting goods store and confused the hell out of the clerk by purchasing all manner of clearanced baseball gear. The main scores were a catchers' chestplate ($7) and some batting gloves ($4). Then on to the consignment store, where a shaft of light shone down from the very heavens and blindingly illuminated a pair of men's ski bibs, white ($4). I also picked up several random sets of kneepads, elbow pads and some shinguards ($6 for all).I also picked up a tai kwan do practice pad for some reason; although sized for a child it looked promising as part of a space suit ($2).

After work, M and I went to Lowe's for pipe insulation and some other odds and ends. She was very helpful, choosing paint colors and providing comic relief, as 3 year olds are wont to do. Total bill: $7.

I got home, shoveled some hastily-prepared dinner into my family, and set to work. I used all the terrible political pre-election ads we were recieving in the mail  as a dropcloth, and started painting. I already knew the foam wouldn't take normal acrylic paint, so I'd bought a quart of some sludge called "EXTERIOR SUPER ADHESION LAQUER," pausing only long enough between coats to paint mustaches and devil horns on the drop-cloth candidates (esp Soucek because he strikes me as a total douchebag).

The armbands for the laser and the Space Ranger insignia are repurposed beer coozies I found in the cabinet and dismantled mercilessly with my x-acto blade. GREEK WEEK '99? GONE! DIXIE LANDING RESORT? YOU DON'T EVEN EXIST ANYMORE! No foam item in the house was safe; several tub toys were sacrificed to bring us this costume.

While that was drying I dragged out the sewing machine and mulled over the the cowl. (What color is Lightyear's hair? Judging by his eyebrows I'll guess dark brown. My hsband is a ginger and not inclined to let me dye his brows. Oh well.) I'd bought some purple fleece and cut it in the general shape of a three-piece hood. While DJ sat on the couch trying to get his daily West Wing fix, I made him try it on, adjusting and sewing and velcroing and pinning and hemming as he attempted in vain to hear the words of his president, Jed Bartlett. I was eventually satisfied with it enough to leave him alone and go back to my painting. (Note: I can't sew. This minor detail has never stopped me from finishing a project.)

At some point during that first night of construction it because painfully clear that the costume, with its Omaha Steaks cooler-based jetpack, was going to be very underwhelming without wings. I fired up the computer and started google image searching to check their construction. I'd yoinked some fome core boards from work out of the scrap bin, and started eyeing them with a new respect.  Flimsy, but possibly workable. I glued 2 lengths together back to back (for strength) and started cutting them in a general approximation of Buzz wings. By the end of the night I had a rough approximation of the jetpack and wings, but definitely not worthy of a Space Ranger yet. Zurg would just laugh his evil laugh at this point in the process.

I would have been worried about the costume's progress were it not for the star of that first evening of construction, the gloves. Oh the glorious gloves. Who knew that if you put paint on the existing stretchy parts of batting gloves they look just like Lightyear's hands? I suspect someone at Pixar knows this, because they looked almost perfect with very little effort on my part. I bet they were originally modeled after batting gloves. Or at least at 3am I was pretty sure of it.

Part II coming up in a jiff. I just have to take a break for some darjeeling.

 

 

 

This is the time on gnumoon's stuff where we DANCE!

I'm taking a small break from the costuming posts to bring you this lovely bit of randomness. I love ballroom dancing. I don't watch those shows about it, but I dearly love dancing scenes in movies, and in college my best friend and I wore out my VHS copy of Strictly Ballroom, which is one of the best dance movies out there (and one of the best movies out there in general). I also don't ballroom dance; my personal dancing is limited to Zumba class and bopping about the house with my daughter. If any of you can convince my husband it would be fun to try, I'll bake you some cookies. He's a good sport, but I don't know if he'd be willing to give that a go.

L (aforementioned best friend) and I were discussing over IM this morning how dance scenes just make us happy, and impress us with their amazing footwork and whatnot. So we decided to share some favorites. The criteria were: no big dresses impeding footwork (sorry, dance scene in Beauty and the Beast), no dance scenes-turned-into-raves (sorry, dance scene in that one Harry Potter movie), no dance scenes focusing on a troupe instead of a couple (sorry, all of West Side Story), and they had to make us smile (sorry, dance scene in Gone with the Wind). We reserve the right to break any or all of these rules at our whim.

So, watch these, and smile.

Dirty Dancing - Final Dance scene

The dance scene to end all dance scenes, although to get the proper amount of titular Dirtiness, I'd suggest the Loverboy dance scene instead. 

 

 

Take the Lead, Tango Scene

That Antonio Banderas, he can, how you say, Dance!

 

Moulin Rouge

This is another Baz Luhmann film, and another of my favorites. I was going to post the Roxanne scene, but it breaks the "happy" rule, since it's basically a choreographed rape. This movie is spectacular (spectacular) from a dancing perspective, and also if you happen to be a big Ewan MacGregor fan (raises hand). Botox or surgery or whatever she's done to herself since, Nicole Kidman is at her most gorgeous in this film.

 

Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers

Not technical ballroom dancing, of course. But my list, my rules.

 

Doctor Who - The Doctor Dances  

Again, my list, my rules. Here's a great clip of the Ninth Doctor dancing in the Tardis 1940s-style with Rose Tyler as Captain Jack looks on in amusement. 

 

Shall We Dance

Seguing into the paso doble section with Stanley Tucci's awesome permagrin.

 

Final Scene, Strictly Ballroom

Just the best. Scott's dad makes me tear up every time. The whole movie is excellent.

 

And my new very favorite dance scene in a movie is:

Toy Story 3 - Paso Doble

After Buzz is reset from Spanish mode, he retains some of his moves, and I'm impressed that Jessie never loses her hat.

 

 

 

 

Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl costume

So this is a little bit out of order. I actually made my Jessie costume first, thinking it would be the easiest of the three I was attempting. So the alien was the second one in the series.Jessie is a great character, but I admit when I made this I'd only seen Toy Story 2 once, years ago. But since the only other female characters in the movies were Andy's mom (yawn) and Bo Peep (yaaaawn), there wasn't much choice.

 Here's Jessie. She's a rootin' tootin' yodeling cowgirl, and a part of Woody's Roundup gang. Her costume is alse deceptively intricate, if you're going to be serious about doing it correctly. I gathered the parts before attempting any of the costume, visiting our local Goodwill for the shirt, Michael's for the felt and rickrack, and Wal-Mart for the wig parts.

I made the wig first, by cutting the bill of a red ballcap ($2 on clearance at Wally World) and hot-gluing lengths of red yarn to it. I seriously underestimated the time this would take (and Jessie has an enormous head, so the amount of red yarn needed to get the proportions correct was almost the whole skein). Instead of the hour or so I thought it would take, I spent 4 times that gluing the yarn and my fingers to the cap. I blew through half a season of Torchwood (nice anagram) on Netflix while I made it. Oh Jack, you're such a dreamy freakshow.

Here's how the wig looked, and I looked in it, at 3am. Note undereye circles, lack of makeup, and shifty-eyed distrust of all alien life. The wig is suprisingly comfortable, and with the addition of a festive yellow ribbon, looks much like Jessie's beautiful yarn full of hair. (That's a Buzz Lightyear quote, btw, not me just switching words around) I look like fresh hell in this picture. The addition of concealer, freckles and superhigh arched red brows really helped the presentation for actual Halloween festivities.

The shirt was the next evening's activity. I looked at a still from the movie and cut yellow felt to match the shape, then hotglued it onto my $3 Goodwill button-down. Then I added red sparkly rickrack and ribbon in the correct pattern. The cuffs were a little more difficult and required actual sewing in addition to the generous dollops of hot glue. And my favorite part of the whole outfit was the fringe on the cuffs. I know it was just felt cut into fringe and sewed on, but for some reason it was just the right touch to made it feel authentic. The buttons were wooden round things I picked up somewhere (a junk drawer or box, I can't remember), and glued safety pins on. Fancy fancy.

The belt buckle I got at the Goodwill for .50. It was attached to a wonderful molded plastic belt that only reached about halfway around me, so I ripped it off an stuck it onto a belt of my own. I tried to make the original belt work, because it was very intricately carved with horses and buttes railways and such, but it just wouldn't work. I'm still mourning that one, actually. It was perfect, only it was also teeny.

An important note to anyone who is making a costume such as this. Please please please TRY ON your shirt before you buy it and modify it. I didn't do this, and the shirt ended up being 1. Too thin and 2. Too snug. This is not a good combination. I don't want to talk about it further except to say I had to not breathe or eat during Halloween, which really sucked. Sucked in, that is. 

Next was the cow fur chaps. I got unexpectedly lucky here, and I took it as a sign that I should indeed make the rest of the costumes. Years ago I got into this thing where I'd paint chairs like barnyard animals and give them to people. I had a pig, some cows, etc... I called it the "E-I-E-I-O Collection." The cows even had pink paper mache udders. Yeah, I know. Anyhoo, at some point I bought this fabulous fake fur fabric and covered the seats of the chair in the stuff, and apparently made some throw pillows to match. One of the pillows was sitting in the "bag to go to the Goodwill" and caught my eye just as I was wondering how to paint the chaps. I took out my trusty seam ripper and took it apart, then cut it lengthwise, pinned them to some jeans and Bam! instant chaps. I also got lucky on the boots: really awesome Fryes a friend let me borrow.

 The hat. The hat. The damned hat. Jessie's hat is not a normal cowboy hat, it's something called a Mexican Cowboy hat, which is flatter on top. Also, as I may have mentioned, this chick has a gigantic noggin, so a normal hat wouldn't fit anyway. I finally gave up on the hat. And then ... jackpot, I found one under a display at the party store in Greensboro. At $12, it was much more expensive than any other piece of the costume, but I considered it worth the extra cash. Unfortunately, it was black. No problem, I thought, that's what spray paint is for. Except the black felt was like a black hole for paintm sucking and sucking the color in. I ended up using 4 large bottles of acrylic on the damn thing before it was passable, adding an extra $2.47 to the price tag with each bottle. But hey howdy hey, the final product looked good.

 
 For comparison, buying the Jessie costume online(without shipping and with no wig), is about $68. My Jessie was about $30. (Around $9 without the hat).

(And it made this little girl at the Halloween festival so happy, which made it all worth it.)

Up next: biting off more than I can chew, and beyond!