Rose Tyler #7: New Earth

Confession: I LOVE this episode. Billie is hilarious when she’s playing Cassandra inhabiting Rose’s body, Tennant is adorable and just stretching his legs as the new Tenth Doctor, and you have The Face of Boe and all the cat nun nurses. I love it. “It’s like living inside a bouncy castle!” So I’ve been wanting to do this cosplay since the beginning, with the added bonus that it can be worn without a JACKET unlike most of the Rose cosplays, and I needed a warmer-weather option, living in New Orleans.

Part 1: The Episode

Part 2: Sources of Info & Inspiration

This outfit is pretty easy; the only real difficult item to find is the DIESEL shirt, which is basically made of unobtainium. I think there are, maybe, four Rose cosplayers who own the real thing? Of course one of them is the amazing Jessica who runs Bad Wolf Closet, and her posts are the first stop for any Rose costume you want to put together, she’s got the best collection of IDed Rose items out there.

I also found some good photos on the LiveJournal TARDIS Wardrobe pages. These gave me a great place to start. More shirt reference photos I found, from folks who have been lucky enough to score their own ACTUAL DIESEL top (links to their pages/images embedded):

 

Rose Tyler #6: Aliens of London/World War III

I was really on a roll with Rose costumes, and I found the DIESEL jacket in an XL (finally) on eBay when I was looking for the one from The Christmas Invasion, so I grabbed it even though I hadn’t planned to put this outfit together. Aliens of London & World War Three aren’t high on the list of best Ninth Doctor episodes, but the cosplay ended up being pretty easy, and I’m having a great time collecting Rose items.

Part 1: The Episode

Part 2: Sources of Info & Inspiration

The primary source for this was Bad Wolf Closet, of course. This post breaks down all the items, with pretty decent photos of most of them, which made it much easier to search for them on eBay – particularly the jeans, which have several details that are present on other styles but can be difficult to find this exact style. 

Rose Tyler #5: Boom Town

Keeping on with the Rose thing… not sure which one to do next, so since I already had the scarf from “The End of Time” episode, I went with “Boom Town”.

Part 2: The Episode

       

Part 2: Sources of Info & Inspiration

This is a less common Rose cosplay, so I hadn’t seen too many finished ones in photos. I have gotten to the point where I’m really just enjoying finding the items and putting the costumes together, even if they’re outfits I don’t plan to wear much. For this one, I felt like I could get an approximation or common ALTs of most of the items pretty easily, with the exception of the scarf, though there are many ALTs available. 

Canine Cosplay: K-9

I love my dog, Maya. I have grown to love costuming as well. Maya comes with me anywhere I’m allowed to bring her, she’s my constant companion, and well-known by our local Krewe du Who members. So I wanted to give her a Doctor Who costume of her own, for when she comes to Krewe events. What costume to make? There was only ONE option, really, and it’s an AWESOME one. K-9, the “tin dog”, beloved robotic companion of The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.

Part 1: The Character

Part 2: Sources of Info & Inspiration

It turns out I’m not the only nutter who likes to dress up my dog in sci-fi costumes. Go figure. I found some super cute pictures on the Interwebs, and got some good ideas about what I wanted to do and what I thought would work best for my pup and where/when I wanted her to wear it, and how to make her comfortable. She’s nine years old now, and we live in a hot climate, so comfort was top of my list for considerations for this costume. I didn’t want rough edges or anything too warm, and I wanted to sue fabric so she could lay down and it would move with her, and it would be machine washable as well.

Check out this little guy on deviantart. A Google image search yielded more results, but unfortunately I don’t have links for these. If these are your pups or you have links I can add, please let me know, I’d love to give credit!

  

The Joker, Animated Series

As I mentioned in my Harley Quinn post, one of our good friends decided she wanted to have a “clown party” for her birthday, and Seann came up with the awesome idea for us to do The Joker & Harley Quinn for our costumes. Seann decided on The (Mark Hamill-voiced) Joker from the animated series as his inspiration.

Part 1: The Character

    

Part 2: Sources of Info & Inspiration

For this one, we really just went with photos from the animated series. I didn’t consult any other resources online because this one was actually pretty straightforward. It’s all “normal” clothes in weird colors, and stuff that was pretty easy to find. 

Harley Quinn, Arkham Knight

One of our good friends decided she wanted to have a “clown party” for her birthday. We’re all about theme/costume parties here in New Orleans, so it wasn’t a surprise to have one, but I was honestly NOT thrilled about the clown thing. I’m not afraid of them, but they don’t hold any particular delight for me, and I had already mapped out my next several costume projects, so adding another one that I wasn’t excited about was a bummer. UNTIL Seann made a suggestion for how to make it work for us, with the result being costumes we could wear more often, something more in our wheelhouse: The Jokey & Harley Quinn. SOLD! But which versions…? There are SO many iterations of these two that I didn’t know where to start. I was not (am never) thrilled with the idea of a full-body tight-fitting suit, I just don’t have a great body shape to pull it off and it makes me uncomfortable. Which meant the “original” Harley in the jester bodysuit was a no-go, as were both the “Injustice” Harley and the “Arkham City” Harley (the only two I was really familiar with at all). After looking around at a few, I decided the one I liked best was the “Arkham Knight” Harley. Still very much HER, but the skirt makes for a more comfortable costume option for me, and I’m comfortable with the corseted top with sleeves as well. Seann decided on The (Mark Hamill-voiced) Joker from the animate series as his inspiration – see this companion post for information on his costume.

Part 1: The Character

   

Part 2: Sources of Info & Inspiration

I honestly just mostly used images I found of Harley (including fan-drawn items and images of the doll), screen shots of the game (taken from this walkthrough video Seann found for me). I also checked out a handful of existing cosplays for ideas on how to transform the animated character into real life. The best ones I saw were:

• The ones made by MaiseDesigns
• Jessica Nigiri (my understanding is that this one was also made by MaiseDesigns)
• ShermieCosplay on Deviant Art
• dreamhunter707 featured on MoviePilot.com

“The Master” Harold Saxon & Lucy Saxon

For the Third Krewe du Who Collector Card run, my husband Seann and I decided to do a card together. Our first thought was Rose Tyler (of course) and the Metacrisis Doctor from Journey’s End, which we’ve been slowly working on (finding the right color suit for him for that one without spending an arm and a leg is challenging, and I’m embarking on an ambitious project for the blue/purple jacket myself). Instead, we decided to go in another direction, departing from the Rose/Doctor pairing and going for a pair of characters that haven’t been represented in our card runs yet: The Master Harold Saxon and his wife, Lucy Saxon. We are both natural blondes (though we might have to faux-frost Seann’s hair for this), and Seann can do a wonderful impression of Saxon’s “crazy face”. Haha!

Part 1: The Characters

The outfits that make the most sense and would be most recognizable (particularly together) would be the ones from “The Last of the Time Lords” in which Lucy actually shoots The Master. He’s wearing a fairly ordinary black suit with a white shirt and black tie. Lucy, on the other hand, is wearing a gorgeous red satin dress.

 

Part 2: Sources of Info & Inspiration

The primary resources we’ve been using for these costumes are actually just the episodes themselves. I’ve been doing some researching on other cosplayers who have recreated Lucy’s dress, to see if there are any good ALTs out there or a pattern someone has made to make the dress, since it’s a pretty unusual cut.

• This image on photobucket has some nice notes pointing out the dress details.
• There are two places I’ve found great discussions on recreating her dress, the first here on prydonacademy and the second here on cosplay.com. Both are full of great tips and links.

Rose Tyler TED/TDD UPDATE!

For the first iteration of this costume, please see Rose Tyler #1 The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

Part 6: UPDATE! 

This is my first and one of my easiest costumes to wear, so it’s become one of my standbys, useable for any occasion. I used it for the Krewe du Who’s first set of Collector Cards in 2012, which was REALLY fun, and I’ve worn it for Wizard World ComicCon and other events since then.

Since 2012 I’ve learned SO MUCH about costumes, about screen-accurate items and how to find them, followed along with Rose fan groups and fellow cosplayers, and had a lot of time to slowly upgrade this costume. Though I’ve never been as happy with my hair as I was the day of that photo shoot. Those roots took some commitment!

I have since acquired most of the SA items from this costume. I traded out my old low-top baby blue Timberland boots for the SA high-top ones, scored on eBay for $25.15 (cheaper than the first pair!). I also picked up a suede & leather shoe cleaning & protection kit from Amazon, for $19.57.
I found info on the SA items from Bad Wolf Closet, the source of all cosplay info related to Rose Tyler (and others).After MUCH eBaying, trial and error with sizes, and switching from the purple to the black to the SA brown versions of the Firetrap Harrie jacket, I finally settled on a medium SA brown version, which I managed to find on eBay for only $31.75, amazingly enough! I also searched and searched for a pair of the SA Oasis jeans in my size, which I eventually found (they may be a different wash, it’s so hard to tell, but again, it took trial and error with the sizes) and spent $50.84 on them, from eBay. They were a long size, and I am SHORT, so I had to shorten them, which I did with the help of a friend and a new sewing machine.

 

The SA Union Jack t-shirt and undershirt are not IDed, but mine needed an upgrade. I bought a shaping white tank top to wear underneath, on Amazon for $22.89 including shipping. I also bought a new Union Jack shirt, since mine was so faded from wear and wash, for $23.96 on Amazon. This one is unfortunately too long for me, so I will need to shorten it for it to be wearable.

This is a super comfortable costume as long as the weather isn’t too hot, and I love the comfy puffiness of this jacket. Plus it’s easily the  most recognizable “Rose” look out there! Here are a few photos from Wizard World Comic Con 2014 and Dragon*Con 2015:

More photos forthcoming!

Note: All costs include shipping. Total ( UPDATED) Cost for this Costume = $185 (not including the leather cleaning kit)

Guardians of the Galaxy: Gamora

In preparation for Dragon*Con this year, our gaming friends decided to put together a group costume. We did a Guardians of the Galaxy/Star Wars mashup, with the concept that we were the GotG characters going to Dragon*Con, dressing up as the Star Wars characters. (Peter made us do it.) Seann, my husband, got Star Lord as his character, because he can totally pull it off. I got Gamora, because I am (a girl) not afraid of body paint. But Gamora is awesome so I was stoked to be her, but immediately panicked at the complexity of her costume… Here goes!

Part 1: The Movie/Characters

      

Part 2: Sources of Info & Inspiration

The best resources for overall photos of what Gamora’s outfit is supposed to look like are actual screen caps of the movie (I watched it on my laptop and went crazy with screen caps), plus this gallery and this gallery of the real costumes on display, and honestly, images of the Gamora “action figure” were super helpful for the belt and other details. This post with ALL of Gamora’s outfits is useful as well.

DeviantArt and therpf were incredible resources, as there are some folks who’ve posted long threads about their own costumes there. Here are two found particularly useful:

• Lythara’s SA Gamora costume on therpf (seriously, scroll down, she’s got EVERYTHING with lovely detailed photos)
• CaptainMorganTeague’s arm bracers on DeviantArt

Prince Ashitaka, Princess Mononoke

For our second Krewe de Fu ball, the theme revolved around anime, and I wanted to put together a costume of San from Princess Mononoke. While he wasn’t obligated to, my wonderful husbad agreed to wear a Prince Ashitaka costume and match me, which was amazing of him! BAM! Couples costume. (see this separate post for info on the San costume) Ultimately, due to family events, we weren’t able to attend the Ball (sad face), so instead we wore them for Halloween later in the year instead.

Part 1: The Character