Headless Horseman

Early promo ad for the Sleepy Hollow TV show

While thinking about a new costume for the 2013 Comic-Con, I was watching the promo trailer for the new Sleepy Hollow series. I have a personal connection to the creator of the show, and so I decided to recreate the antagonist: The Headless Horseman. The promo trailer showed a headless revolutionary war soldier (red coat) with an ax and machine gun. How bad ass is that!

So, the challenges were to put together a recreation of a historic red coat soldier's uniform, create the headless illusion (while still being able to see well enough to get around), and create all the weapon props. All trying to be faithful to the upcoming TV show's character (which no one had seen).

First, I created the headless illusion by taking a black dress shirt (which I got at a thrift store), ripping out the arms, installing tall shoulders I made from foam, opening up the arm holes to fit my real arms, and building up a fake chest to match the new height created by the shoulders. My new neck consisted of an EVA foam cylinder capped at the top, all painted black or covered with black craft foam and sporting an attached white cravat, made from white tulle (veil material). This fit over my head like a hat, but came down to the bottom of my nose. I cut out a panel that I can see through and covered that with a couple of layers of black tulle. Also, the white cravat came down over my eyes, so there were 4 layers of tulle, both black and white, covering my face. Pretty effective for hiding my eyes and allowing me to see well enough.

I found a pattern for an 18th century military coat which I bought and then I made my own red wool coat with all the trimmings. I had to modify the pattern in order to make it large enough to fit over my fake shoulders yet still allow my real arms to go into the sleeves. Luckily I had a lot of muslin so I could make and modify pattern pieces in order to come up with an acceptable final pattern. The result came out just fine.

I created a vest facade, altered some gray pants, bought a pair of cheap black shoes, modified a set of pirate boot covers to recreate the leather boots, and made a bunch of fake shotgun shells. I bought a variety of gun accessories (belts, straps, bandoleers) and fake weapons, and I made the ax from wood (after all, I am a woodworker).

And I did all of this without a body form. It was a lot of putting on, marking alterations, taking off, and then modifying. Rinse and repeat, many times. It was a lot of work, but I am happy with the result.

For the same reasons as the Malgus costume, I didn't take many progress shots (no blog plans at the time). In future posts I may elaborate on parts of this build, but this post is meant to be an overview and introduction to the character in order to give some background for future posts.

I got a photo with one of the Fox promotional Headless Horsemen

I inaugurated the costume at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con. I anticipated being the only Headless Horseman there, because the show hadn't premiered yet. What I hadn't anticipated was that Fox would publicize the show by fielding 10 guys in Headless Horseman costumes. So, instead of having a unique costume, I was one of many, and I was the one who didn't have prizes to give out! <sigh>

Another cosplayer who wanted a photo, and I was able to get a copy!

Still the costume was popular and I had a lot of folks come up for photos. I threatened a lot of heads with the ax. Oddly, I also had someone on the convention floor ask for an interview, and after I said "sure" they told me that it was for the Playboy channel. It was an odd interview and I've never seen the video (insert your own "I only look at the videos" joke here). By the way, the above photo is NOT from that interview; she was a fellow cosplayer who wanted a picture.

I did win a costuming prize from the Costumer Designers Guild. This is the professional union for all Hollywood costumer designers. They apparently go to Comic-Con every year and give out awards for any costumes that they deem worthy. They do it right on the spot, and I was pretty surprised and pleased.

So, I guess I now have an award winning costume. Cool.

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Darth Malgus

Darth Malgus was my first real attempt at cosplay. I'm not counting Halloween costumes and various attempts at theater.

I've attended Comic-Con since 2006, which was a 50th birthday gift to myself (you do the math). Right from the start I've admired the cosplayers and considered giving it a try. I spent a couple of years tracking down cosplayers' blogs and videos, trying to get a feel for the culture. About the same time, a new MMORPG was being marketed, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Featured in the promotional animations was one bad-ass Sith named Darth Malgus. Older guy, bald, lots of armor...PERFECT!

So, in 2012 I took the plunge and started working on my Darth Malgus costume. It was beyond my skill level, but those kinds of projects are like crack to me (or meth for you Heisenberg fans).

The build took me months, and I'm fairly pleased with the results for a first costume. In future posts, I'll describe parts of the build in detail, based on whether I've got photos or something interesting to say. Also, there are several things that I'd like to change and I'll document those changes as I make them.

However, in this post I'm just going to display various photos and note some of my experiences playing the part of Darth Malgus.

These are the runners in my group for the Course of the Force

My segment consisted of a freeway underpass, so thank goodness for the bicycle cops escorting us!

My first time out as Malgus was participating in a charity run called Course of the Force. It's a benefit for the Make a Wish Foundation. Each of the participants ran (walked, really) 1/4 mile and we were encouraged to do it in costume. It took place as a pre-event for San Diego Comic-Con 2012. I had a great time, and it really reduced my anxiety around being in a costume. Of course, everyone in the event was in a costume, which helped. But folks were very complimentary and we were all interested in each other's characters. After all, we were all pre-screened Star Wars geeks!

Next up, Comic-Con. I was still nervous about stepping out of the hotel room and waiting at the shuttle bus stop in full costume. But right from the start, I discovered that I wasn't really prepared for people's reaction. Near my hotel, there are just regular tourists, and it seemed like all of them were excited to see me, take pictures, and ask me about the character. They posed with me, had their kids pose with me, and were generally happy to see me. It was unexpected celebrity status from non Comic-Con tourists.

At the con it was even more extreme. Folks wanted to take pictures, they wanted to be in the pictures with me, and they wanted friends or family to be in pictures with me. And so all of my performer's ego came to the fore, and I became Darth Malgus, a Dark Lord of the Sith. I would fight Jedi, be defeated by younglings, pose with other Sith, and participate in cross genre encounters. I was only in costume for a few hours since I couldn't stay in the costume a whole lot more than that, but it was an amazing experience for a first time cosplayer.

I have never been able to adequately express how I felt at the Con as Malgus. It wasn't just being in character and performing; it was the feeling that people wanted me to be Malgus. That I was doing them some sort of favor. Damn, that's still not it. Suffice it to say, I wasn't just pleased with the cosplay, I was touched by the reactions, and I knew I wanted to do it again.

Handing off the light saber baton to the next runner in the relay

It was a year before I brought Malgus out again, and that was for the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con. I again ran in the Course of the Force just before the Con, and a couple of days later I walked the convention floor for several hours as Darth Malgus. It was another fantastic experience.

I realize that I don't have many photos of me in character. I've learned from other cosplayers that they often arrange photo shoots with photographers at the cons. Or they'll attend with friends and take photos of each other. I travel solo, and there isn't a lot of opportunity for taking "selfies" while in costume. So far, I've been happy enough with the ad-hoc photo opportunities (which is almost everything you see here), so I don't think I'll do anything different for awhile.

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Vacuum former: update 4

Today I mounted the platen to the vacuum chamber and finished the wiring.

The platen screwed down to the walls of the vacuum chamber; also shown is the frame bracket for holding the plastic

To attach the platen to the vacuum chamber, I first thought about using J-B Weld. However, I like being able to disassemble a piece of equipment for repairs, so I decided to screw the aluminum plate down to the wooden support. I put a screw in every 4 inches or so and it seems to be holding securely. I'll see whether it's air tight enough when I try to vacuum form something.

I finally got to the wiring today. Everything went together well once I found my soldering setup. I only needed to solder a couple of leads to the fuse holder. Everything else is attached with high temperature twist nuts.

I wired in the shop vac first, and that worked great. Then I wired the heating elements and discovered that the pilot lamp doesn't work (I probably damaged it when removing it from the toaster oven), and that wiring all the heating elements in series doesn't generate enough heat.

I rewired so that two heating elements each are wired in series. Then the two pairs of heating elements are wired in parallel to the power switch. That worked much better so that the heating elements warm up very quickly.

With the wiring complete, I have the following items left to do:

Put a protective set of walls around the oven box. Those are exposed live wires when the power is applied
Add a latch to the frame bracket
add spacers to the frame bracket right next to the handle in order to remove some of the slop when moving the frame bracket from the oven to the vacuum
Add magnetic holds between the oven box and the frame bracket
Replace the pilot light

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Headless Horseman

Darth Malgus

Vacuum former: update 4

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