Beauty and the Beast

I've been working on this Beast costume for about two years or so, off and on (mostly off) at the request of my friends who were already doing the rest of the characters pictured in the bottom right. I finally finished it for Dragon*Con 2013.

Initially I thought I would do digitigrade stilts and puppeting arm/hand extensions, but after friends and family saw the stilts I'd built, they threatened me with murder if they ever saw me get up on them, so I pared back. Since I did build the stilts and puppeting hands, maybe they'll find their ways into something else in the future.

Facial prosthetic was based on my drawings, which were based on Disney animator Glen Keane's designs, and made custom in foam latex by NorthFur Prosthetics. I painted the piece using my Dinair airbrush kit.

I hand-sewed and hand-trimmed the paws, legs, tail and cowl using the Palomino Fox Fur Fabric from CRs crafts. The cowl was particularly difficult to figure out and went through many revisions and wigs and odd combinations before I figured this out at the 11th hour.

Pawpads were cut leather that I soaked and mildly shaped using a heat gun and claws were latex claws I cut off of some Woochie werewolf fingers I'd already had.

I added bulk to the torso with a set of football pads built out with Sintra, foam, pool noodles and duct tape, then covered with more of the CRs Crafts fur.

Coat, vest and shirt were sewn by my friend and Belle: Lindsay gypsyviolet.deviantart.com/

The tusks I made by taking a mold of my teeth and casting it in plaster, then building the tusks out of clay, making an Alumlite rubber mold, and pouring in dental acrylic that ultimately fit right to my teeth.

The ears are Faun Ears by Aradani: www.aradanicostumes.com/elf_ea…

The horns are by FX Warehouse: www.fxwarehouse.info/mm5/merch…

I'd like to make just a few minor adjustments for next time I wear this. I think it'd be best to permanently sew a jabot instead of trying to tie a cravat (I have this brilliant tie pin that looks just like the animated one, but you can't really see it due to the cravat going out of control). I'd like to airbrush the dark brown stripe down the center of the head hair and generally brush and hairspray the head hair so it's a bit less fuzzy. I have never been able to wear contact lenses before (due to an uncontrollable aversion to things touching my eyes), but I'd like to try to get over that and wear some blue, color contacts.