Nightwing

Leaving shit to the last minute is never a good idea. “I tend to work best under pressure,” is such a bullshit excuse. Lets face it, it’s laziness met with the realization that time is running out. I knew exactly who I wanted to dress up as, but had no idea exactly how it would come out as many ideas filled my head.

In my mind I was first going to just get a fitted black long sleeved shirt and spandex pants and use felt to sew on the design I needed. Although that seemed like a good idea, in hindsight it was terrible. I decided to try and make more out of it, so I went shopping a few days before Halloween.

Almost everything I needed was gone. Target had taken 80% of their halloween items down and began putting Christmas stuff up…. Seriously…. Fuck this, I decided to purchase almost everything from Amazon. As a prime member, I get free 2 day shipping.

I bought a black zentai suit, foam to make armor pieces, spray paint, pvc piping for the Escrima sticks, liquid latex and spirit gum for the mask.

Googling some images I took ideas from various pictures and began formulating my Nightwing design.

I then began making the escrima sticks from the pvc pipping, which came out better than I anticipated.

The mask was the next step. Many coats of Liquid latex is needed for this. My advice, be patient. I couldn’t find a mask to use to make the costume mask, so I used my niece’s makeup to draw the mask on my face, filled it in with more makeup before beginning to apply the liquid latex. After about 10 coats, I used baby powder to peel the mask off.

Slowly the costume began formulating. Using a heat gun, I was able to bendy the pieces of foam to get a better fit on my body. When making costumes, a glue gun has been my best friend. I wouldn’t dare try to make a costume without a glue gun. The mixture of ideas and tutorials really began paying off.

At this point I found out I could use other materials instead of foam to give the costume a better look, but I decided to use that for the next costume I make and just focus on finishing this one with the foam. The end result:

Although I learned to late what I can do and different materials to use to make my costumes better, I was proud of this specific
costume design considering it only took a few hours in total to get this done.