Modesty's Costume Closet

This should be the last post for my centaur planning. Hiding the seams! The main seam would be between the horse half and human half of the body. There may be some seams between the hoof and foot but that's covered in the hoof post .  Waisted  So the human half of the costume meets the horse half around the hips or waist when connecting to horse half. How you connect the horse half to your body will determine what needs covering. If you connect mostly with belts around the waist and hips, then the area to cover is minimal. If you use a system of suspenders then there is more coverage.  This is where the design of the character costume can play a big role. It can be a chicken-egg situation where how much you need to cover depends on your horse body design or you tailor your horse body design to the costume.  Using a tutu and saddle blanket.  For example, if you are creating a centaur character with minimal covering, then blending the horse half is done at t...

The other horse features to include on our Centaur costume are decidedly less complicated than horse legs, thank goodness! The features I'm going to highlight are manes, tails, ears, and horns.  Manes I'm going to start with the easier part to talk about: the mane. For the most part, centaurs just have long hair, so a wig of your choosing or just using your own hair is all you need. Done. Moving on.  ... I'm kidding. There is one aspect I wanted to highlight and that's back hair or hair along the spine. Personally, I think it's a cool design touch to the costume and it can be useful for hiding straps or support systems for the horse body. You can make this out of wig wefts, mohair or yak hair wefts, or faux fur or perhaps even brush bristles (for mohawk-like manes). I imagine you would have to include this as part of the wig or attach it to an accessory. Possibly latex it down to your skin directly. Now I'm done with manes. Onto tails! Tails Horse tails can be q...

For the discussion of how to make hooves, my focus is going to be on the front legs. However, that is not to say that we ignore the hind legs! The size of your hooves should be similar. So we may want to handle the front legs before deciding how to make the hind legs.  Hoof Approaches In the centaur design, our human legs act as the front legs for the horse, so our human feet will be where the hoof goes. But we run into a problem. Humans are plantigrade, meaning we walk on a flat foot. Horses are digitigrade, meaning they walk on their toes. Right away we will run into a challenge that will pit us against form and function!  If you do stand on the balls of your feet, then your heel and ankle look like a fetlock on a horse. However, this is not a comfortable or natural position for a human to stand in for a long period of time especially if they're dragging a horse rear-end behind them! It's not impossible, people wear tall heels every day so these muscles can be trained. This ...

 Arguably, the most difficult part of the horse half are the legs. They are oddly articulated and thin. When translating that into a costume, it becomes a bit of an issue because if the leg structure is not sturdy, it will make the horse half very heavy and droopy.  So, let's look at the source!  Horse Anatomy 101 Hind Leg Bones This is what the bones of the horse's hind leg look like. Already it looks like things are pointing in every which way! But from the bottom up we have the hoof bone (coffin), the pastern (toe bone), fetlock joint (technically like a knuckle joint but it looks like an ankle), cannon bone (the tarsal bones of your foot), the hock joint (like your heel and ankle), Tibia, knee joint, femur, hip socket into the pelvis. This skeleton shows a bit of spine.  While this may look complicated, it can be simplified.  Simplified Skeletons When creating the hind legs for our costume, this simplified skeleton will help serve as our guide for measuremen...