Bud was constructed along side of Wan with the original deadline of Halloween 2001. However, with all the work I was putting into Wan, I had little time to work on the hero of the Bird Clan. Luckily, the talented Lauren Wolf came over and helped out, making Bud’s undershirt, the sleeveless tunic part, baggy aviator’s pants and neck ruff thing. She blew me away, making garment after garment with just a few measurements and some imagination. We had the red wig from witchwigs.com and Sean had constructed the chest symbol out of blue foam painted with latex and the goggles out of foamy. It was enough to bring Bud to life at the last minute for Halloween.

There was still a lot of work to do though. The work up to this point was pretty much all Lauren and Sean. But has a bird form and so I would need to construct wings that could be taken on and off easily. I started by ordering a few pounds of white chicken feathers from rainbowfeathers.com. I made sleeves out of cotton lycra and sewed them to white cotton gloves. Next, I cut some plastic mesh canvas into strips and glued one to each finger. They ended up making each finger about 8 inches longer. I cut out some plastic screen door mesh and sewed those to the back of the sleeves, gloves and fingers to give me a wing shape.

Next was the tedious process of gluing the feathers to the mesh. Each finger was covered so Sean would have some measure of manual dexterity when in costume. Plus, it would just look cool. Originally I was going to just fur the inside of the wings but I set the fur on there and it didn’t look right so both inside and outside of each wing got feathered. The top part of the wings did get furred where the sleeve was. Elastic straps were sewn onto the edge of the sleeve where normally it would be sewn to a shirt. The straps has plastic clips sewn onto them so you can just pull the sleeves on and then connect the straps, one side to the other on the inside of the shirt, to keep the wings on.

I tackled the feet next, carving foam and covering it in material for the big bird feet. These were made to slide over top of Sean’s sneakers. But they were simple…

For the mask, I made a new mold of a bird beak using sculpting clay and then covering it in plaster to get a negative. I poured and pulled the latex beak and covered it in material using spray adhesive and a little hot glue. The inside of the mouth got some dark brown foamy glued into it for looks and to hide there the material was glued down. I bought a cheap plastic half mask and glued the beak to it. Then I created the eyes, using Plexiglas and painting them on the backside white but leaving the centers clear. That part got covered in green lighting gel and tint that was carefully glued into place. When complete, I glued the eyes in place and started furring the mask with white fur. I made feathery looking pieces in fur and sewed them onto the cheeks to stick out a bit.

All that left were a few finishing touches. I did some work on the utility belt, creating the pouches out of vinyl and making the leg coverings. Sean finished off the knee and elbow pads and Bud was ready for flight at Otakon 2002.