Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Progress - Uniform

Uniform progress continues!

Gloves:

I ordered a pair of black chemical gloves from eBay, unfortunately the seller contacted me a day or two later and said they had been damaged when they had gone to send them. I was thoroughly disappointed and was speaking to my boyfriends parents about it. I had completely forgotten that my boyfriends father worked in a chemical plant, so he managed to get me a pair from work! They were exactly what I wanted but had some white writing at the top which I wanted to try and cover. I tried shading the writing in with a permanent marked but didn't like the way it looked:


I then tried some acetone to remove the pen and it removed the writing too!


So I used it on the other glove too and they look great:


Belt:

I ordered my belt from an army shop online, and ordered a set of belt fobs from one of the guys on the forum:

Boots:

I purchased my boots from eBay, I didn't realise until they came that they were fur lined! They're very comfy though:


Arm Band:

As an added extra I wanted to put my memorial patch for Harold Ramis onto my uniform but I didn't want to stitch it on. So I bought a memorial arm band and stitched the patch to that:


Leg Hose Connector:

My leg hose connector I bought from Nick-a-Tron props:



I'd asked on the fan page what the best way was to attach it to the uniform, stitching seemed to be the best option so I went with that. Luckily I already had some thread about the right colour:


Leg Hose:

I had seen a tutorial on the forum for how to make your own leg hose so I thought I'd do mine that way. I purchased the supplies but had trouble with the paint not staying on the hose as it was drying. The first time I tried it I hung the hose over my bath to dry and all the paint just ended up leaking out and leaving the hose with hardly any colour. I assumed that it had been the way I'd left it to dry so I tried a second time, this time keeping the paint in the tube longer and I left it to dry lying on the floor this time. It did the same thing and dried horribly as the photo below shows:

  

 At this point it was a week before LFCC (London Film and Comic Convention) which was when I wanted to have the uniform finished for. I was stressing out and panicking when my boyfriend suggested water cooling tubing. We have both custom built out computers and he had installed his own water cooling system but it just hadn't occurred to me to try something like that. I looked on the Scan website and found some that looked the right size and colour so I ordered it. When it came it was spot on so I just cut it to size and then put the fob on the end:


I decided not to permanently attach it to my connector so that I could remove it for packing/travelling.

So that is it for my uniform! My next project will be to start on some props to accompany the uniform, I will probably be starting with the belt gizmo and will eventually be building a proton pack as well as many other props.

I wanted to have the uniform finished for LFCC and in that I was successful! I received my clearance for the UK Ghostbusters on the Thursday before the convention (the day before). I'm going to do a post with all the details of the con so for now I will leave you with a picture of the finished uniform:


Progress - Elbow Pads

Progress on the suit happened a lot faster than I expected and unfortunately I didn't get time to update as things were happening, so in this post I am going to detail of the elbow pads only and then the rest of the uniform I'll post in one or two other posts.

Elbow Pads:

The elbow pads for the suit are Padded MMA Knee Pads, I purchased mine from Amazon.


The first thing I had to do to them was to remove the logos from the front, I used a scalpel and a pair of craft tweezers and managed to remove the logos whole.


The next step is to paint them grey, I used a grey primer spray from Halfords. I bought two of the 500ml cans and used a whole can and some of the second can but still have quite a lot spare. I'd seen someone either on the forum or on the Facebook fan page that had pulled their pads over 2ltr pop bottles to spray them, so I did the same. It made it very easy to spray them and meant I could get great coverage on them, also I held the bottle top when spraying so I didn't get too much paint on my hands although I do still recommend using gloves if you can (I use them for work so it was easy for me to get some). 

Before:


After:


Once I had checked all around the pads to make sure I hadn't missed any spots (and re-sprayed any that I had) it was then time to trim them down. I used a pair of craft scissors and the just singed the edges to seal them so that they didn't fray, and these are the finished result:


Thursday, 19 June 2014

The Beginning!

Hello!

My name is Jess and this is my blog about putting together my Ghostbusters costume, I decided to make a blog to track my build and for anyone else who is looking to do something similar.

Eventually I hope to build a Proton Pack as well as most of the other props (PKE Meter, Ghost Trap, etc.) but for the moment I am focusing on the actual uniform. I am hoping to have it completed enough to wear when I attend the London Film and Comic Con this July. So here is where I am so far.


My first purchase was the patches for the costume, I ordered these from Katarra8 on Etsy and was very pleased when they arrived. They arrived on the date of the Ghostbusters 30th anniversary which was an awesome surprise :)


I'd accidentally ordered the name patch with velcro on the back but when my suit arrived it had velcro where my name patch was supposed to go anyway so that was a happy accident! The suit fit awesome except being a little large on the arms but once I have my elbow pads on it'll be fine. I got the flight suit from eBay.


The next step was attaching the patch onto the suit which took me a lot longer than I expected it too.


Very please with how it turned out, I made sure to stitch the edges of the ghost down too to make it more secure.


Here it is so far including my Harold Ramis memorial badge above my name patch. My elbow pads arrived today:


I got these from amazon, hoping to scratch the logos off tonight then need to buy the spray paint for them as soon as I can. Sorry this post is image heavy, I'll be posting more often so shouldn't be like this in future :)