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Becoming a Centaur: Introduction

This is going to be one of my first series of costume concept designs giving you tools and ideas to make your own version of this concept. I have a few other creatures in mind but we'll start with the toughest: the centaur/centauress. 

Now, to be honest, I have not yet attempted to make this myself. These are my design musings. I borrow heavily on my past costuming experience and what I've gleaned from tutorials. Some of the tutorials that were particularly helpful for my research are: 

Then I looked at other people's attempts at this costume and tried to decipher what they did. 

This will be a series of blog posts that will act as guides for different parts of this costume.

  1. Centaur Body Design Considerations
  2. Concepting a Character
  3. Building up a Horse Body
  4. Suggestions for Horse Legs
  5. All about Hooves
  6. Other Horse Parts 
  7. Blending Horse and Human


Now I'm going to delve into the challenge points and explain what I plan to try. 
The big costume "engineering" challenges are: 
  • How to portray a horse's body (Are you going for realism or a more stylized horse?)
  • What kind of hooves/shoes you will wear (Are you on your toes? Platform heels?)
  • Will you make the hind legs move with the front legs? Or are the legs stationary?
  • How will you attach the horse half to your body? (Around the hips? Over the shoulder?)
These points will help guide our design decisions down the line. Start with the Centaur Body Design Considerations post for some elaboration and tips. 
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