War Doctor: Make or buy?

View fullsize

A screen capture from The Day of the Doctor

The War Doctor is a very different costume for me. Up to now, my costumes have required a fair bit of crafting: making armor, sewing unique clothing, building props. And so far they have been for rather obscure characters, so most of the specialized costume parts were not available in other ways.

Doctor Who is a huge franchise, and the costumes are made from more readily available articles of clothing. I've never really had the option to buy so many pieces. The forums that discuss Doctor Who costuming give several opinions on each part of the costume, and alternative ways of achieving the look.

That has left me with the quandary, make or buy?

It'e been interesting to face this issue. I've come to realize that one of the criteria for this cosplay is speed of development. I'd like to have the costume ready for C4, the second weekend of September, so I've decided to prioritize speed and convenience. I'm also interested to see how I feel about a costume I've assembled this way.

I've looked at each piece individually, and they'll all come from different sources. Some pieces are so unique that I'll probably have to make them. Some are way too expensive to buy, so I'll make those pieces. either from scratch of by modifying a cheap alternative (off to the thrift stores!) And I'll be buying several of the pieces because it would take too long to make or require that I learn way too many skills for now (for instance that worn leather coat).

Based on some preliminary research, here's a list of the pieces in the costume and what I have planned for them:

• Coat: buy (done - yay!)
• Waistcoat: make
• Shirt: buy from thrift store
• Scarf: buy (a replica!)
• Bandoleer: make
• Sonic screwdriver: buy a toy replica, but make one later
• Chain: modify a bought chain
• Boots: buy
• Half gaiters: make
• Pants: buy from thrift store
• Belt: buy
• Hair: modify a bought wig, color my goatee & eyebrows, add some stray hairs with latex

War Doctor

War Doctor as seen in The Day of the Doctor

Today I received a key component to my next cosplay costume, so it's time to start documenting the build (see what I did there?) It's the War Doctor from the Doctor Who TV series as portrayed by John Hurt. I've been thinking about this character since I saw the TV episode in which he's featured (we see him briefly in two other episodes, but he's a primary character in The Day of the Doctor). I started seriously putting pieces together starting at Comic-Con (I mentioned buying a wig in my wrap-up).

The War Doctor cosplay fits several criteria I had set, most especially being that I want to be able to wear the costume for extended periods of time, ideally for a full day. I'd also like to be able to drive with the costume on, that way I could go to the Central Coast Comic Con (C4) without having to change on-site. Plus, he's old, has a goatee, and so I think I can pull him off. It would also extend my costume repertoire into another fandom.

I spent some time checking the current state of costume deconstruction by the usual suspects in the Doctor Who costuming community. There is an extensive network of Doctor Who cosplayers, and they're pretty good about sharing information. William Donohue maintains a Pinterest page where various articles of the War Doctor's clothing are displayed and discussed.

One of the big challenges for me was the coat. Although I was fine making the Headless Horseman's coat, I felt the weathered leather coat the Doctor's wearing would be too much for me to put together. So I started looking for Barnstormer Coats online. A brand new coat is WAY too expensive ($1700!) and didn't have the wear I was looking for. So I checked out Etsy and eBay and looked at several possible options. After a couple of weeks however, a worn coat that looked like a pretty good match showed up on eBay. The size might be a bit large, but it's easier to make a large coat smaller than vice versa. After negotiating with the seller, I pulled the trigger, and then immediately regretted it. I hadn't really looked long enough, it probably didn't match, or was so worn that it would be useless, etc.

View fullsize

The coat I purchased on eBay

View fullsize

The overall look, details, and weathering are a match for the War Doctor's coat.

Well, it arrived today and it's almost perfect! It's exactly my size. The seams, pockets, and buttons are a match for the pictured coat. The wear pattern is excellent. And it's a great quality coat with a wool lining. The only discrepancies are the lapels, which look wider than the collar on the War Doctor's picture, and the length of the coat. His comes down to mid thigh, and this one goes below my knee. If I need to, I can cut off the bottom of the coat and resew the seam. I suspect the wardroom department modified a longer coat for his look.

Anyway, I couldn't be happier with the coat. Once I put it on and saw how it looked, I knew I'd be able to pull this off. At that point I became committed to this build.

The next real challenge is the hair. There's no way I'm growing that hair, so I need a wig. Never having worked with a wig before, I decided to take advantage of the Epic Cosplay booth at Comic-Con and see how they could help me.

View fullsize

The next big challenge will be modifying this wig to match the War Doctor's hair. They don't look that similar right now, but I know the changes that need to be made.

They were great! They asked about the character, looked up his image online, and two of them discussed which wig would be the closest start. Then one of the guys talked with me a bit about styling, dyeing, and cutting the hair, although the best advice was directing me to tutorials online. I took the plunge and bought the wig even though I hadn't fully committed to the costume at that point. Now that the coat has finalized the decision in my mind, I'm ready start work on the wig.

My secret weapon is the Cospod team. The hosts, Amber and Val, have a ton of cosplay experience, and I've seen all of their video podcasts and quite a few of their tutorials. They've been very helpful by email, and I expect to be bugging them about wig styling and the like. If you have any interest in cosplay, I highly recommend their site.

Finally, this doesn't mean I've stopped work on the Ithorian build. It's just that I can tell that it still requires a lot more time, and I'd like to get another costume in place that isn't so elaborate. Expect to see more posts about the Ithorian build interleaved between posts on this War Doctor build.

San Diego Comic-Con: Counting cosplayers

View fullsize

The Whovian cosplay meetup!

I don't know what possessed me this year, but I started wondering about the percentage of Comic-Con attendees that cosplay. I know part of the motivation is that there is almost no cosplay on Wednesday's Preview Night (there's some, but very few and it's very casual), and on Thursday there is a significant and noticeable increase in the percentage of people in costume.

So I started rough counting cosplayers vs. non-cosplayers. I would take a representative sample periodically through the day, and it would be wherever it occurred to me. I'd count while waiting in line for a panel, and when I was on the exhibition floor, and while walking through the Sails Pavilion. I didn't count outside of the convention center because I decided to just limit myself to people who had passes. And since it was all in my head, i tended to round off a lot. The numbers are definitely approximate!

My criteria for identifying someone in costume was subjective. My cutoff was whether someone was clearly portraying a character. Just putting on a Batman shirt or wearing cat ears in your hair wasn't enough to be counted as a costume. I didn't have to recognize the character (there were plenty which I couldn't identify), but I needed to be able to tell that someone was wearing a costume.

There are plenty of weaknesses in this count, but it's the first set of statistics of this kind that I've seen. In the future I'm going to do a better job at data collection. This time I only wrote down the daily numbers in some Facebook posts, and here I'm collecting the numbers from those posts.

So, with all of those caveats, here are my day to day statistics of attendees who were cosplaying:

• Wednesday, 0, 0%,
  • I didn't actually count on Wednesday, but it was extremely small
• Thursday, 1 in 10, 10%
• Friday, 1 in 7, 15%
• Saturday, 1 in 4, 25%
  • There were a LOT of cosplayers in groups, so the count kept changing
• Sunday, 1 in 20, 5%

Busiest cosplay day, Saturday with about 1 in 4 people in costume. There are a LOT of cosplayers, and there are a lot of groups. Not necessarily groups with a common theme, just groups of friends all of whom were cosplaying.

Slowest cosplay day (other than the Wed. preview night) is Sunday with about 1 in 20 people in costume. It's a dramatic shift from the day before, and it's very noticeable. Sunday is the last day to sell out tickets, so my bet is that the majority of Sunday attendees only have the one day at the con, and so they are focused on the exhibition hall and getting to as many booths as possible. Cosplay takes a back seat for those people. That's just a guess on my part.