Night Viper

This costume was done for a friend of mine who goes by Jodo Kast 3.
It was an honor to work with him and when he gets photos of himself, I'll put them up.

This project was a completely new challenge to me... There were NO reference photos of a costume by others,
because nobody has ever made this costume before (that we know of). I actually felt a lot of freedom as I
approached which materials to use, and while it very well could have been done in some sort of hard armor
I opted for soft vinyl, for many reasons. The most important being my client suggested I sew fabric for it. *hehe*

But also, foam would have been much more expensive, and other forms of plastic would have required tools and machines
that I don't have access to right now - raising the time and cost of the entire project.

The first thing I did was practice on left over Boromir vinyl, to make sure I liked the look, and my machine could handle it. Thankfully it could - and I discovered quite quickly that stuffing it with cotton batting gave it a very nice cushy feel...	The black vinyl I used was softer and shinier than the bue prototype piece, and absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I was so happy. The undersides of all pieces is lined with cotton fabric.	I had discovered the black vinyl trim from Wal-mart when I did the elf armor skirt, and it finishes of the pieces very nicely. These attache with vecro.
Here is a view of one of the shin pieces (greave) on my leg while I'm wearing the boot. There is a very long strip of industrial strength velcro on the inside of each piece that I had to sew AND super glue on.	This is the right thigh piece - wonky angles because I had to hold the camera out as I took the picture... As you can see on the right, it tightens with buckles.	Here is a shot after I attached the sheath. It is merely sewn on. On the action figure the knife is green, but Jodo wanted it black. So he got it black.
The shoulder pieces were interesting to figure out. Lots of hand sewing to get the layers. That's electrical wire tubes you see there.	I tried stuffing the neck piece with cotton. HA!! It looked really funky, so I took a peek at Jodo's collar and Jango and Boba costumes and basically took a hint and left them flat.	Here's a close up of the chest sheath. Here I did use fun foam... under the sheath so that when the knife is removed it doesn't hang llimp.
These boxes were probably the most complicated pieces, and I didn't quite get the sleek look I wanted - but they still fall within the realm of the action figure. It's made out of foam, card board, and a wooden stick.	Oh, and there's a jar of bbq sauce in my refridgerator missing it's black lid...	Best part of this piece is that it's functional! It goes down to the bottom of the secon box and al fully lined - easy to get to stuff... Something like this is very useful when costuming, if you don't want to carry aroundyour water bottle and camera in full few. (course with Jodo it's a beer bottle, right? *L*)
	more photos to come!
The other leg piece was a bit too much of a challenge for my limitations, so Jodo is going to take over from here. But I'm donating the bottom piece to the cause... More of the electrical wire, half of a yo yo my kids broke, and - well... we also have to finish up that peanut butter. (Tin foil is a helpful replacement when a found object isn't quite done with it's primary function..)