Testing whether the length of the EL wire I ordered (3m each!) will work for the girls’ Quorra costumes. Other than losing the arms, it looks like it’ll work great. #make #Halloween #cosplay #lovemakeshareFollow Trevor on Instagram
It’s an early(ish) start to the kids’ costumes this year. In my past couple of Halloweens, I’ve scratchbuilt Whistler a pink Batgirl costume (that same year, I did a Supergirl costume for NJ and an Arkham City Batman costume for myself) and subsequently watched my girls wear store-bought costumes with the grim realization that I simply didn’t have the time management skills to make them proper costumes.
This year, it seems, I’ve gotten over a) my preciousness that a costume has to be entirely a labour of love, when I have neither the time nor the skills to produce a full-on film-accurate Quorra costume for them completely from scratch between now and the end of October and b) the idea that a build has to have a specific endpoint or objective. The nice thing about doing kids’ costumes and about doing Quorra, in particular, is that these projects are infinitely scalable in terms of complexity. They could just be black leggings and turtlenecks with EL wire taped to them, or they can be labours of love. They’ll undoubtedly fall somewhere in between, and that freedom is really nice.
Now that I have my new workbench built and my shop organized, I can go down and take 20 minutes to work on a project in between other things. I don’t have to go down, clean, carve out a workspace, and then get going. Yesterday alone, the girls and I fixed some busted teddy bears and worked on their discs. In just a handful of minutes together.
Getting my makes off the ground is going to require considerably more retraining of my usual coffee-fuelled marathon strategy, but I’m excited that it seems to be changing already. Allowing myself to chase short makes or intermediate steps instead of putting off a build until I have time is not only empowering, but damn useful.
Until next time, paddle your own canoe, folks.
Trevor
[…] It’s a real shame that Quorra isn’t given a place to stand on the display base. She’s a cool minifig and deserves a place next to Sam and Rinzler, given that she’s one of the leads in the movie. Also she’s the kids’ favourite, to the point that they both dressed up as her one Halloween. […]