Otakon 2012: Jafar is Done!

Two down, one to go! I finished* the Jafar costume this afternoon.

(*Okay, not 100% finished... I have to add a pocket to the robe, and hem the red drape on the headpiece. But he was in a hurry to get to work, and I wanted to get pictures...)

This was a pretty challenging costume to make, and I'm not really completely happy with the shoulder pieces. However, I'm going to stop working on them until I am done with the Maleficent costume for me (which is about 90% done).

Here's the whole costume:

A few technical notes: the robe and shirt were drafted with Wild Ginger's Tailor Made program. The robe was heavily modified with pencil and paper to get those shoulder wing shapes right. But it only took one muslin! The cape and cummerbund were done freehand; the cummerbund is fastened with Velcro in the back.

That headpiece was a nightmare!! I ended up using 1" foam (thanks to a suggestion from Bill on the Creative Machine list). The shoulder pieces were stiffened with Inn-Spire, thanks to another suggestion. Right now the only issue is that the weight of the cape pulls the whole robe backwards on his shoulders, so I might end up having to rig some kind of belt or something to keep it in place.

Back view:

The cape is hand-stitched onto the upper edge of the robe. Yes, it's wrinkly at the hem... depending upon my state of mind (and sanity) on Wednesday, I'll iron it out.

Here's a close-up of the headpiece.

The gold accent lines are single-fold bias tape, attached with a drapery product called Millenium Tape (essentially a very, very aggressive double-sided sticky tape).

Let's take a closer look...

One of the most distiguishing features of Jafar's headpiece is that big red gem. I searched everywhere for a red cabochon of the correct size and color, without success. Then I had a flash...

Why not make my own, by painting the inside of a soap mold and surrounding it with gold braid trim? As you can see, it worked like a charm. Hooray for hot glue guns!

The last part of Ian's costume will be makeup: he'll have a skinny, twisting beard glued onto his chin with spirit gum. And somehow I've got to make him look gaunt and angular!!!

So, we're heading into the home stretch. We are planning to do a "dress rehearsal" tomorrow afternoon, trying on full makeup and such and making sure it all looks good. Stay tuned!