Modesty's Costume Closet

 With the wide variety of tools and chemicals you can use when making a costume, I figured it might be advisable to create a general SAFETY FIRST type post.  Typically you'll want to be careful of:  Sharp Things Dust/Particles/Flying Debris Hot/Flammable Things Chemical/Fumes Electric Things Machines General Precautions - Research your Materials and Tools! Before using any material or tools, check for warning labels. If you find 'em, read 'em. Usually you can find these on the product itself if the warning is warranted. You can also do a little online research.  Common warnings are:  Flammable High Pressure High Temperature/Hot Hazardous Material Irritant Warning Skin Contact Warning Poison Just to name a few. - Be Alert and Focused One bit of advice I got from an online course is to never cut leather while upset or tired. You make a lot more mistakes if your brain doesn't have the capacity to focus and coordinate your movement. When handling sharp, hot, or dangerous it

 Know what's dope? A tail that moves on its own! If the ears move too, bonus! However, you've given yourself a challenge that I myself have little to no expertise in...robotics or animatronics. So I'm going to offer some suggestions for further learning if you want to DIY as well as methods for the non-engineer types. (warning: May still require engineering.)  Full DIY Tutorials  3D Printing a simple Wagging tail - limp tail 3D Print skeleton Instructables Fox tail Pre-Built Tails/Ears Heads up, these are generally expensive!  MiTail from The Tail Company The Tail Company Cosgear  Halloween Moving Fox Tail Semi-Crafted Tails These are just alternatives to purchasing the tail or full DIY. Helpful if you don't want to spend a fortune. These are just my ideas and I will admit are at this point untested. Although I do have the flopping fish toy and can confirm you can take the device out of the fish without hassle.  Flopping fish Cat toy - charges, touch-activated, Inexpen

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 i

 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 measurements and joint pla

Previously, I went over design considerations to adjust the challenge of making the centaur costume. It is still a big challenge but now we can get into building tips for the horse body.  Disclaimer:  Once again, I will emphasize that as of writing this blog, I have not attempted this construction. When I do, I may come back to update a few things. I'm going off of what I would consider in the planning/design phase and how I would approach construction. You are free to try my ideas but know that these are currently UNTESTED. I am using principles from making art dolls, sculpting and pony plushie making in these experiments/hypothetical situations.  Measuring for the Horse Half If we look at a picture of a horse from the side and you measure from the withers to ground, you should get the horse's relative length from chest to rump.  (Life's not perfect...but it's relatively true.) Standard Horse, Pony and Draft Horse, picture angles... We can take this principle in measur

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:  Ginny Di's   Centaur of Attention Book  and Video .  Kopolenske's Walking Centaur Instructables Trilemma Adventures: Halloween moving Centaur And Write of Passage's WordPress Blog   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. Centaur Body Design Considerations Concepting a Character Building up a Horse Body Suggestions for Horse Legs