This was such a weird costume.
My best friend/cosplay partner in crime Lindsay spent months working on the most beautifully detailed Zoey costume ever. Seriously, the med pack alone would bring you to tears… and it doubled as a backpack. It was gorgeous.
Me, being me, decided a week before the con I HAD to go in a matching outfit.
So I picked the Spitter. Same game series, and her mouth was sweet.
This was the first iteration, at Metrocon 2011:
It’s basically:
Cut off jeans, thrift store shoes, a cut off shirt, lots of body paint, me pushing my stomach out, a too small, hot pink thong that I actually burn later on, a great wig and spare fabric covered in latex and plastic teeth. And fake blood which makes everything better.
The wig had wire run through it so the pigtails would stand out, and curry powder, olive oil and cinnamon rubbed into it so it looked dirty. It smelled so terribly. To this day the wig is gag inducing.
I eventually redid the costume for EXP con, 2011….
I was aiming for green skin, because hers glows vaguely green in game. However it wasn’t very successful.
My final wear was at Megacon, 2012. For it, I built the chin into a prosthetic chest piece. In an effort to not spend hours painting my skin, I also did faux legs and a stomach. I had to stand still for hours while The Cyborg painted me with latex.
Latex smells like masking fluid. Or fish, for people who don’t regularly sniff masking fluid. And our apartment was tiny. Seriously, this is 1/3 of it:
(future presidential/word dictator opponents, this is a freebie to use against me in the running).
That’s me, drinking a beer because I had to stand still for like, a million years… or maybe just 2 or 3 hours. I’m also talking to a cat, because the crazy was really setting in at that point.
If you decide to pursue this path of masochism:
Basically, I took control top tights and stuffed the belly, random lumps in the legs, and the feet. I reinforced the soles of the feet with flip flops soles. I ran some thread through the belly’s center, around the stuffing and a piece of cardboard, to make the belly button. Then I painted my chest, faux belly and legs with liquid latex mixed with green acrylics and baby powder.
Reading online, the acrylic paints were not recommended because they can flake, but I felt a zombie would flake anyways, so I wasn’t too worried.
Then I waited for it to dry. While pulling it off, I ripped every precious hair off my chest, legs and feet. That’s the day I realized how much I had in common with hobbits.
Anyways, the finished product was pretty flippin sweet!
(And Lindsay made herself the smoker! WHAAAT SO COOL).
After Megacon 2012 I retired the costume for a variety of reasons:
- Too hard to speak and breath in.
- “Thong” kept falling down.
- I had too many people take pictures with only, not inviting my cosplay partner. It didn’t sit well with me and has kind of tainted the costume since then.
HOWEVER
This costume gave me one of my favorite stories EVER and if I tell you this story more than once, I’m not sorry, because it’s GREAT.
I’m usually pretty conscientious about my costumes, especially if the costume could scare little kids.
Even though it’s a “horror” costume, I feel no guilt wearing the Spitter to a con like Megacon. Megacon isn’t “Happy fun magic con”, it’s a con that allows pop culture like the Walking Dead. If you bring a small, timid child to Megacon and they are frightened by my zombie, it is not my fault.
However, I do feel guilty bringing the Spitter into a family restaurant. As a child I had night terrors. My little sister has them. I’m sensitive to other small chillin’s fears.
In building the costume it was important to me that the Spitter to be removable. So if we went to lunch I could throw on a hoodie and take off the mask and wig. Yeah, I’d look weird, but not SCARY.
Which brings me to the story:
I’m in the no mask/hoodie get up, in line at Panera and I hear this girl, maybe 6-8 years old, and her mom talking from behind me.
Girl: Mom, can I touch it?
Mom: No, you can’t touch her.
Girl: But mom, I like zombies.
Me: Ooomph, right in the ovaries.
