Costume Crafting

"Crafting" is our catch-all word for a number of things:

The process of building props, like a character's favorite weapon;
The process of building three-dimensional costume attachments, like spikes, bezels, or hard plates;
And the process of building "hard-shell" costumes (meaning costumes that are often hard to the touch).

We admit that we usually prefer to make the hard parts of costumes (like plates of armor) out of, well, hard stuff like thermoplastic. Chalk it up to some of the theatrical roots of MOCHI: if you invest the time to make a Roman gladiator's helm, you want it to stick around for more than one production. In many cases where safety might be an issue, softer materials may be substituted, but Spiky Mochi usually opts for "hard-core crafting" whenever he can. (If you ever want to see him excited, tell him that you've got an industrial vaccum table and a blowtorch that you need to get rid of at dirt-cheap prices ....)

Keep in mind that none of what we do is terribly difficult (after all, we've managed to muck our way through it), but it often takes a few tries to get right. (One corner of the workshop is filled with rejected pieces, waiting for their turn to be recycled.) With practice, anything is possible.

Before we get too far, please read the little blurb about safety. We're all for doing wild and crazy things -- we're just not into completely stupid wild and crazy things.

In one corner, we've assembled a virtual version of the MOCHI Toolbox. This is an illustrated gallery of the various tools that we've found useful in our costume crafting. We've tried to cover both very basic tools (along with some of the, uh, creative uses we've found for them) and the more esoteric.

In the other corner, there are several tall Storage Lockers. Our store of basic materials is kept here: glue, paints, plastic, rivets, etc. One of the wonderful things about costuming is that you start to look at the world in an entirely new way: everything has the potential to be used in one costume or another. Spiky Mochi has some really odd stuff tucked away in here ....

Between the two, above the workbench, are notes on the Techniques that we've used or seen. Although (where possible), we've illustrated each technique with pictures from a particular project, each writeup is meant to be very general. You should be able to adapt it for your own, nefarious purposes.

Finally, even though it's empty now, we hope to have a Project Spotlight. Each spot would cover on particular project, from start to finish, in detail. (Yes, you can run screaming from the room now. If it makes you feel any better, just keep telling yourself it's the paint fumes talking.)


MOCHI > The Workshop > Crafting