I have a PhD in horribleness
Thanks to a suggestion from themink17, I ended up as Dr Horrible at Swancon. (Indeed, thanks to some interesting scheduling, I ended up in said costume on 3 separate days.) I went with the "levelled up" red coat, both for aesthetics and because it's much easier to find black boots than white ones. So many people said positive things about my costume, which made me very happy.
With huge chunks of assistance from the lovely _gilligan_ I made my costume from scratch.
Boots: These were the easiest part. $25 from Bunnings, all I had to do was colour over the green logo on the front with sharpie.
Goggles: Based off instructions from this post in drhorribledress. Goggles from Bunnings, $25. They start off green, and are a flexible rubbery material. About 8 coats of metallic silver paint later (with a few drops of sealer) they were much stiffer and a lot more silver. The lenses pop out easily, but after the note in the above entry I left the vents in. Didn't bother sanding the surface first. I should have - I'm told justadecoy needed only 1 coat when he made something similar. The rust layer was a mix of gold and black very lightly dry brushed on in the corners. Mine is much more subtle than the version I've linked to, but I like how it turned out. Finished off with a coat of sealer.
Gloves: I got some PVC coated red gloves from Bunnings (<$10). Spray painted them black, got a very nice surface (although needed about 3 coats, and my coats were way too thick - they took several days to fully dry). These weren't quite accurate, since they had a shiny cuff. _gilligan_ replaced the cuff with (faux?) leather, which was quite an improvement. Unfortunately the paint job _really_ didn't like being turned inside out, although the way they kept flaking makes me think the paint wouldn't have lasted long anyway. Definitely would have been a better move to sew first and paint second though.
Keys to a shiny new Australia - trivial, $2 from a souvenir shop. Definitely worth it for the laughs I got.
Coat - Not surprisingly the most complex part of the costume. Used Simplicity 5386 pattern (Matrix style coats), modified as per queza7's instructions.
Some notes:
I used the small pattern, and ended up still having to take it in at the waist. Apparently I'm quite thin.
The pattern and instruction recommend 4-5m of fabric, we barely used 3m.
We curved the bottom hem too much initially. Looking at the original source, his coat is very square. The length measurements listed are also a little small, I would have rather had it 5cm or so longer.
The pattern sleeves didn't work very well. I had very little movement at the shoulder above about 45 degrees below horizontal. Attempts to modify the pattern to improve this failed.
We put two lines of stitching around the forearm to match the source coat.
I added some false seams at the top to match the two sides. An extra line on the curve of the front flap where it meets the sleeve (to match the double seamed sleeve on the other side) and a line on the non-flap shoulder (to match the seam at the top of the flap). Dr Horrible's is actually double seamed everywhere, but that seemed a bit keen.
Buttonholes sounded like way too much work, so I used velcro and put false buttons on the outside.
The instructions for the cinch had it slightly too wide on each side, I moved it in about 2cm.
_gilligan_ hand embroidered my pocket (and it looked fantastic!)
[Edit3: (Forgot about the collar) The instructions for modifying the collar pattern piece were not all that clear. I did what I think was correct, but ended up with the following two caveats. First, the collar was much too high by about a factor of 2. I had to fold the sides all the way in to get a sensible height. Second, the collar was too long, around 5cm longer than the area of coat is was being stitched to. I left it at this length, just having more overlap on the inside than I did with the rest of the front flap. Not a major problem. I hand stitched the outside seam of the collar, but _gilligan_ pointed out afterwards that given I was using red thread I would have gotten much the same result from machine stitching.]
Hair: Bleached that morning. Ended up lighter than the original source, but I had fun with bright yellow hair for a weekend.
Total build time was about 3 weekends.
[Edit: There are some old entries about my costume now less tightly locked. Nothing too interesting, mainly status updates for the posse ]
If you have photos of me or my posse I would love a copy (please email me or post a URL). Comments are initially screened since I don't link to photos of myself. Anything not related to photos will be unscreened. [Edit2: Now comments really are screened. Oops.]
With huge chunks of assistance from the lovely _gilligan_ I made my costume from scratch.
Boots: These were the easiest part. $25 from Bunnings, all I had to do was colour over the green logo on the front with sharpie.
Goggles: Based off instructions from this post in drhorribledress. Goggles from Bunnings, $25. They start off green, and are a flexible rubbery material. About 8 coats of metallic silver paint later (with a few drops of sealer) they were much stiffer and a lot more silver. The lenses pop out easily, but after the note in the above entry I left the vents in. Didn't bother sanding the surface first. I should have - I'm told justadecoy needed only 1 coat when he made something similar. The rust layer was a mix of gold and black very lightly dry brushed on in the corners. Mine is much more subtle than the version I've linked to, but I like how it turned out. Finished off with a coat of sealer.
Gloves: I got some PVC coated red gloves from Bunnings (<$10). Spray painted them black, got a very nice surface (although needed about 3 coats, and my coats were way too thick - they took several days to fully dry). These weren't quite accurate, since they had a shiny cuff. _gilligan_ replaced the cuff with (faux?) leather, which was quite an improvement. Unfortunately the paint job _really_ didn't like being turned inside out, although the way they kept flaking makes me think the paint wouldn't have lasted long anyway. Definitely would have been a better move to sew first and paint second though.
Keys to a shiny new Australia - trivial, $2 from a souvenir shop. Definitely worth it for the laughs I got.
Coat - Not surprisingly the most complex part of the costume. Used Simplicity 5386 pattern (Matrix style coats), modified as per queza7's instructions.
Some notes:
I used the small pattern, and ended up still having to take it in at the waist. Apparently I'm quite thin.
The pattern and instruction recommend 4-5m of fabric, we barely used 3m.
We curved the bottom hem too much initially. Looking at the original source, his coat is very square. The length measurements listed are also a little small, I would have rather had it 5cm or so longer.
The pattern sleeves didn't work very well. I had very little movement at the shoulder above about 45 degrees below horizontal. Attempts to modify the pattern to improve this failed.
We put two lines of stitching around the forearm to match the source coat.
I added some false seams at the top to match the two sides. An extra line on the curve of the front flap where it meets the sleeve (to match the double seamed sleeve on the other side) and a line on the non-flap shoulder (to match the seam at the top of the flap). Dr Horrible's is actually double seamed everywhere, but that seemed a bit keen.
Buttonholes sounded like way too much work, so I used velcro and put false buttons on the outside.
The instructions for the cinch had it slightly too wide on each side, I moved it in about 2cm.
_gilligan_ hand embroidered my pocket (and it looked fantastic!)
[Edit3: (Forgot about the collar) The instructions for modifying the collar pattern piece were not all that clear. I did what I think was correct, but ended up with the following two caveats. First, the collar was much too high by about a factor of 2. I had to fold the sides all the way in to get a sensible height. Second, the collar was too long, around 5cm longer than the area of coat is was being stitched to. I left it at this length, just having more overlap on the inside than I did with the rest of the front flap. Not a major problem. I hand stitched the outside seam of the collar, but _gilligan_ pointed out afterwards that given I was using red thread I would have gotten much the same result from machine stitching.]
Hair: Bleached that morning. Ended up lighter than the original source, but I had fun with bright yellow hair for a weekend.
Total build time was about 3 weekends.
[Edit: There are some old entries about my costume now less tightly locked. Nothing too interesting, mainly status updates for the posse ]
If you have photos of me or my posse I would love a copy (please email me or post a URL). Comments are initially screened since I don't link to photos of myself. Anything not related to photos will be unscreened. [Edit2: Now comments really are screened. Oops.]