For Otakon 2002, My roommate Sean and I decided to continue the tradition of making paired characters. I like to do costumes that I don’t think anyone will ever try and make so they’ll be totally original. We chose Wan and Bud from an obscure Anime called K.O. Century Beast.

Both characters can change from a “human” form to beast form and so the plan was to make the costumes so that they would be usable in human form for long periods of time and then in beast form for shorter venues. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and while Bud can change form, Wan is stuck as a tiger.

I started with a modified McCall’s pattern for the shirt. I had to design the sleeves from scratch. The red material was just thin cotton so I double layered it and trimmed the sleeves with a single layer of black cotton. The collar was also designed from scratch and was backed in black material. The pants are again, modified from a McCall’s pattern. I left the top baggy and trimmed it in the black cotton material.

For the furry part, I ordered some orange fur from Mendels.com. I cut the sleeves off a white T-shirt and replaced them with furry ones. I used a Marvy Fabric Marker to put the stripes on. The tail is built over a wire hanger that was bent into a harness. I attached it to a piece of pipe insulation and covered it all in the orange fur.

The gloves and feet were fun and came out wonderful. For the hands, I just took some 1” foam and drew out my hand on it. I then drew the larger cartoony hand and cut out around it. I do most of my foam carving, the larger cuts at least, with an electric knife. Then I had to carve out space where my hand would fit in. I did this to 4 pieces and then glued them together into 2 gloves and rounded the fingers. I cut some suede cloth to the general shape of the glove and sewed it around the wrist area. I made the cuffs as well and sewed them onto the gloves. Then I slid it over the foam and custom fit it to the foam with hot glue. I made friendly plastic claws and hot glued them in place. I finished it off with some foamy that I painted bright blue in spots with liquitex.

For the feet, I went to Payless and bought some suede leather slip on shoes and then traced their shape onto some thick foam. I drew out the larger foot shape and cut these out and shaped it. The new foam feet were glued onto the shoes I bought. I used the suede cloth again to make the boots. Most of this was guess work and hastily drawn out pattern making. These have cuffs as well. Again, friendly plastic claws finished off the feet.

The belt is some gray vinyl that I just folded over and sewed in place. I made a pattern for the pouch and cut that out and hand sewed it. The belt closes with a plastic clip that is hidden by the round shapes in front. They, along with the pieces at the ankles and the symbol on the chest of the armor, are all made from blue Styrofoam. I drew out the shapes, cut them with the electric knife, and then sanded them smooth. They all got many coats of liquitex. The ankle pieces are just stapled to some cloth ties while the other pieces rely on heavy duty Velcro.

The mask in the photos is actually the second version. Originally, I had wanted to try and stay away from latex so I make the head form out of 16ga. wire and covered it in thin craft foam. It worked but it was a bit too big. It gave the suit a mascot feel, which wasn’t what I wanted. So, after Halloween, I scrapped it and started over. I wanted to redo it for my office Halloween party, leaving me 1 night to do it all. I already had a feline mold so I pulled a new latex mask from it. I remade the eyes. I had them drawn out on paper. I copied it over to Plexiglas and cut them out. Most of the back got painted white but left the center clear. I carefully glued in lighting gels and tint to see through. Then the finished eyes got hot glued into place and set about furring the mask. I had purchased a wig from witchwigs.com and I sewed that in place. I hot glued on the black stripes on the face and carved some circular foam disks for the ears. I carved out their centers about halfway and then furred them and sewed them in place.

The armor would have to wait until later. After many failed attempts, I went with foam and just cut it to the shape and covered it in material. I still hadn’t learned the wonders of spandex and so it came out wonderful considering the material didn’t stretch. The hole in the top is just large enough for my head when the mask is off so I can slide on the armor that way and then the sides snap together with 2 clips on either side that were sewed in place on the inside.