So when most people hear “superhero party”, they’ll probably go dressed as their favorite standard super hero. And I do have very clear ones of those. But that requires a lot more effort or money to pull off something that looks sort of okay. And I like being fringe.
My choice?
Barbara Thorson. I Kill Giants.
It’s being made into a movie now too, that I fear won’t at all have the soul of the comic, but I still think it will be fun.
I actually grabbed a ton of screenshots from the comic (on comixology, woot) but this one turned out to be my prime base image.
For good and bad, my host said I’m not allowed to bring a weapon the size of myself, because we wouldn’t have the space for it. So. No giant wicked hammer to show off, BUT, no giant wicked hammer that had to be made.
But anyway.
Let’s start with those ears, shall we?
I bought galvanized steel wire, a cheap, plastic headband, and some plush fabric, then got going.
I used a board with nails and some violence to shape the ears.
i don’t recommend this type of sharp, violent jig if you don’t know what you’re doing and you don’t have really good control, because the wire WILL want to spring that nailed board into your face. But it does work reasonably.
I only had reasonable freeze tape around, so I used that to fix the position and test it out. Then made the other ear.
This would later be reinforced with proper gaffa tape, but it works to get started with shape and dress.
To make the actual ears, I made an ear sandwich with padding, and stuck it to the back…
…then I double folded the edges over and ladder stitched it together with black thread. And a day or so later I’d gotten my gaffa tape and taped down the remainder a lot better.
After this I started with the shirt.
I grabbed the print from the screenshot above, made it black and white, cleaned it up, and printed it.
A rough print is fine, I just taped overhead plastic over it anyway and used it as a guide – exact lines are less important.
I had bought this lovely turquoise paint that I dabbed on in two or three layers. That’s a newspaper you can see sticking up out of the shirt – otherwise you’ll get a really messy back print too.
And on the plate, on top of the paint, there’s some cleaning foam sheet thing to even out the paint. You only want to “stamp” your sponge with paint, not PAINT with it.
Once dried and ironed, I finished off the ears. I used the cover taken off the original headband for measurements, but it got far too small with all the tape and things on. But! It got wide enough to hide everything on the top, after slicing it open for the ears.
(I also added some extra padding to cover for the fact that I slit it around the ears – you can’t see that, and the picture below, of the inside with the “hair band” glued back on, is not seen anyway so that’s fine)
The only problem was that I never had time to make counter weights for the weight of the ears, so they REALLY wanted to tip forward, but at some strange uncomfortable angle they really stayed on, so I left it like this
The bag was a one day haste job, the same day as the party. I grabbed some inner and outer fabric, a zipper, a sloppily painted shape, lace, paint… and just threw it together. It’s reasonably suitable. I was never going to make a heart shaped semi-hard bag in this time, nor actually stitch the hammer like she does, but I’m satisfied with my painted equivalent.
And the thorn looks pretty legit.
All in all, I might not in any way look like her, nor have been able to find the right kind of shirt, and so on and so forth, but it’s a pretty reasonable likeness side by side!