Pacific Rim: Sasha Kaidanovsky

Because apparently my embroidered version of the Cherno Alpha eagle wasn’t enough fun, I felt the need to make a replica of Sasha Kaidanovsky’s jacket. Generally speaking, it was fairly easy. Just a lot of thrifting and safety pins.

Front of costume

Back of costume

The jackets used look pretty much like standard green army jackets, though in some photos, like the second one above, they look like they have a leather texture. I went with what was cheapest and looked good (as I usually do). If you have a military surplus store nearby, you can find these kinds of jackets anywhere between $20-40. I found mine for $25 at a thrift store in Montreal (where I was living for the summer). I found the faux-fur collar for $5 at another thrift store (Eva B: highly recommend that place). The jacket was a bit big, so I took it in on the sides and shortened the sleeves. If it’s only a little too big, you can get away with not taking it in. Big is still pretty accurate. I’m tiny and the smallest jacket I could find was a men’s’ medium, so I was swimming in it. The last details, other than the eagle design (more on that later) would be the stars on the shoulders. There are 2 on each shoulder and if you search “gold star appliqué” on eBay, you can find something that will work. I used 1 ¼ inches which I bought for $5.

Thrift store where I bought the jacket

Here it is in store before taking it apart

Inside of the thrift store

Outside of Eva B, where I bought the collar

Army surplus stores are also a good resource

    To start off with, finding reference photos of the complete jacket/costume is not easy. The actual safety pin details are not shown in the movie and the only full picture of the design available doesn’t give you an idea of how the eagle is positioned on the jacket and how big it is. The only hint I have is from this photo below where you can just see the tip of the eagle’s wing. From there you can pretty much guess that the eagle is positioned relatively high on the back such that the eagle’s wings span slightly lower than shoulder-to-shoulder.

the red bracket shows where the tips of the feathers are. The two red arrows show that there are two stars on her shoulder. Also a good view to get a sense of her hair style. 

 So what I did was I ordered the smallest safety pins available on ebay (19mm/size 00 if you’re curious, and no I couldn’t find any smaller. Wish I could.) You can get 1,000 for about $10-13 and I needed about 1,200 safety pins for the whole thing. 

This bag is 1000 safety pins. Doesn't look like much, does it?

Then I enlarged the photo of the design so that the pins in the photo were roughly the same size as the ones I had. The thing is, the eagle design uses different sizes of safety pins. The ones used for the head were smaller than the ones used for the body. If I made my pins line up to the ones on the head, the enlarged design would have been way too big for my jacket. So I matched my pins up with the ones on the central part of the body. It took a few tries, but eventually I got the right size. You might have to redesign it with fewer feathers or fewer stripes on the torso, but my philosophy is its always better to make it look good rather than making it 100% movie accurate. Depending on your body type, movie accurate doesn’t always look good. Like I said, I’m pretty tiny, so I wouldn’t be able to have a jacket large enough for a movie-accurate eagle design.

Another thing you might want to keep in mind is the eagle design in the movie is very oh-so-slightly crooked. Not a big deal in general, but on the jacket I’m using, there is a back seam which made it very obvious when something wasn’t symmetrical. By the time I realized this, I was roughly 800 pins into the design before I decided to rip them all out. Fun times. Anyways, to fix this I just copied half of the design at the size I liked it at and then traced its mirror image. Tada: symmetrical eagle.

First try: too small :(

Second try: Crooked! Also too low

Third try: juuuust right. 

If you look at the movie photo close enough, you can actually see there is gold paint underneath the safety pins. This fills in the spaces between the pins and makes the design look fuller. My gold paint of choice is Jacquard "true gold" acrylic. It’s more expensive than most gold acrylics, but it’s worth it. The cheapest I could find it was for $5 on ebay.

Finished version with gold paint under the pins. Haven't sewn the sleeves back on yet

Hairstyle was another thing that was difficult to find a reference photo, but behold!

The best darn view of the back of her head!

So here you can see her hair is sectioned off in three parts. The middle/top sectioned is gathered at the crown to form a regular braid and the two side sections are french braided.

Also another neat detail about her costume is the bling

I mean damn girl, look at those rings

Similar cheap ones can be bought for a dollar or two on ebay, but I recommend dousing them in clear nail polish else they will turn your fingers green. She also wears dog tags and a thick twisted gold chain.

Now, I almost missed this part, but it turns out that "Cherno Alpha" is written in Russian on her left sleeve. 

This is actually the only scene in the movie where you an see the details on the back of their jackets. Its only there for a second and you barely notice it.

Here is an example of the logo using the Russian script

Below are photos of my finished product! Interested in having one of your own? Check out my Etsy shop for details. Follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and/or Instagram!

Pacific Rim: Cherno Alpha embroidery

The costume shenanigans continue! This time: in Costa Rica! (strangely enough, not having a sewing machine doesn't stop me)

So Pacific Rim is one of my favorite movies. Definitely my favorite movie of  2013 anyways. After doing some small embroidery details on my Arwen chase scene costume (see previous post) and after being inspired by Michele Carragher's amazing gallery, I thought I'd try to make a larger embroidery design. Go big or go home, right? (In the case of Pacific Rim: "Go big or go extinct!")

There are some really cool details on the costumes of the pilots of the jaeger Cherno Alpha. If you're not familiar with Pacific Rim, a jaeger is basically a giant robot. The pilots are Sasha and Aleksis Kaidonovky.

I mean come on, look at how cool they are

and this is Cherno Alpha. Aint she purty?

However the costumes in question are these ones below:

I believe this is from the art book for the movie

This design is on Sasha's jacket

Aaand this one is Aleksis'. If you look carefully at their jaeger suits, you can see this decal painted on their shoulder

The Cherno Alpha symbol

I decided on the eagle design because that's closer to the symbol for Cherno Alpha (unfortunately I didn't have access to an image of the Cherno Alpha symbol while I was designing the embroidery). As you can see in the above images, the designs on the back of their jackets are made out of safety pins. About $50 worth of safety pins. Embroidery might take a whole lot longer, but I didn't spend more than $10 on materials (I found all my materials at your generic local craft store).

I drew the design directly onto the denim vest I was working on (not one of my better plans, but oh well). Sadly I don't have many photos of the whole process, but it took me roughly three months to complete the whole thing.

Stage One. I freehanded the design on the jacket so its kind of lopsided

Above is the finished first layer. I used two tones of yellow/gold to give the design some more dimension. I also started to experiment with if and how I wanted to outline the eagle (see the beads on the first feather of the left wing? I decided I didnt like those so I ripped them out.) I also tried to figure out what I wanted to do for the eyes. The big blue bead looked gross so I ripped that out too. If you look at the tail just to the left of the center feather, you can see a metallic copper thread that I started to test out. I ended up going with that one for the outline.

Stage 2

So here you can see I finished the copper thread outline (actually you probably can't see it. It's not super noticeable. If you click on the photo, it will make it larger). I also embroidered some eyes that I liked and a star like in the Cherno Alpha symbol (again, freehanded so kind of lopsided). At the tips of the wings you can see where I started to add beads. They're a sort of brownish-copper color.

And the finished product! Well, as finished as it will get for now. I was wondering if I wanted to continue the beading around the embroidery, but I thought the design might get too busy.

Questions? Comments? Leave 'em here or email me at ghostpulse7@gmail.com!
Until next time...

LotR: Arwen chase scene dress

Arwen's chase scene dress appears in The Fellowship of the Ring when Arwen is first introduced. I like this dress for many reasons, mostly because it is among her more "elvish" looking dresses. Most of Arwen's costume use the same shapeless layered look with long sleeves in different colors.

Haven't I seen this dress before?

Wooow look how pretty

I'm sensing a pattern here...

Despite this dress being the first we see with Arwen, it is less popular than her other outfits. This makes it an ideal costume for me to make because I will be less likely to run into another Arwen cosplayer with the same outfit on. The scene where she wears this dress is short and fast-paced. She is constantly on the move, so its difficult to get a good look at the details in the movie. Thank Eru for the Lord of the Rings costuming exhibit.

"If you want him, come and claim him!"

Between the costuming exhibit and the concept art, it was pretty difficult to tell how long the dress was supposed to be. Some made it look like the dress flared out at the hips versus the waist. Some pictures made the dress appear to go down to her ankles whereas others appeared to go down to mid-calf. I designed my dress to flare out at the waist and it ends around mid-calf. In retrospect, I wish I made the grey part of the dress a little longer.

Concept art plus embroidery design

This photo from the exhibit gives you a good idea of how big the embroidered area is on the arm. Notice how in this version of the costume the sleeves are white but the underskirt shown is more of a dove grey which is slightly lighter than the grey suede overcoat. 

However, looking at this screenshot from the movie, you can definitely tell that there is white fabric flying out from behind her

This sketch that someone did makes it look like there are two slits in the back of the dress...

...but this shot from the movie definitely shows a center back slit

See how this picture of the dress makes it look like the grey part only goes just below her knee? Very different from some of the concept art.

Another sketch of the back

Close-up from the movie. You can really see the three tiers of braids (or are they twists? not sure)

Some detailed shots from the exhibit include the embroidery on her sleeve, the butterfly buckle, and the stitching on the seams (note the braid-like stitching pattern down the front seams). While I do not have any detailed pictures of the butterfly buckle I made (I lost it), it is included in some of the photos below of me wearing the costume. The buckle was made of craft foam and painted with silver Rub n' Buff.

from Shadow Dale Creations

Embroidery & seam detail. Notice how there is a slight flap of fabric which extends beyond the shoulder.

In this photo, taken from the movie, you can really appreciate the texture of her collar

The costume appears to be made of a grey suede with an underdress of some white flowing fabric (real technical terms here, I know). Suede is expensive and I generally feel uncomfortable using animal skins if I don't know where they come from, so I ordered 3 or 4 yards of a faux suede from Ebay for like $4 a yard. It has a suede-like pattern printed onto the fabric, but it still has a fuzzy suede-ish feel to it. I found the white fabric in a remnants bin at a textile warehouse. Five yards wasn't enough for someone's drapes, but it was perfect for a costume. The textured inside of the collar, as shown above, was difficult to find a similar kind of fabric. I used this kind of fabric instead (below). I bought 1/4 of a yard, which was plenty.

Photo courtesy of Meg. This was actually for her 

Thranduil costume, but we ended up using the same fabric. 

For the skirts on both layers of the garment, they were essentially circles with slits in front and back. The skirts curve upwards in front. On the underdress, the sleeves flared at the elbow, basically like a circle skirt for arms. The lower sleeve on the grey dress is petal shaped and ends above the knee.

My sketches for the pattern pieces. I didnt feel like making a coherent way to pattern this, but if you're interested, email me.

Front view of underdress

Side view of underdress

Side view of the costume

Back view of the costume

Front view of costume

The ribbon was just a simple purple satin purchased from Joann's Fabric Store for maybe $5. For the embroidery and stitching details, I used silver embroidery thread also from Joann's. That stuff is a pain to work with, in the future I would probably just stick to different varieties of grey. I copied the embroidery pattern onto some dissolveable interfacing and used that to guide me. For the other arm, the design was mirrored. 

Sleeve detail: embroidery

Aaand putting it all together... I wore the evenstar necklace (puchased from ebay for under $5) even though Arwen doesn't wear it in the chase scene. I thought it might make me more recognizable as the character (even still, someone thought I was Tauriel at Boston Comic Con. Are you kidding me?). The wig is a lace front-brown wig secured with spirit gum (borrowed from a friend, but you can find them online for under $40). the front two locks of hair were braided and tied in back (even though in the movie, there are three tiers of small braids). Under the garments I just wore black leggings and grey lace-up boots. Not accurate, but oh well. (In the movie, she has deep plum colored leggings and the boots are a different shade of grey with less of a heel and they lace up in back). I didn't do much with makeup, mostly because I dont know how to use it. I'm just wearing some brown eyeliner, black mascara, blush, and a bit of lip color. Nothing special.

Bonus: sassy party elf time with King Thranduil

For the future, I'd like to make gloves for the costume. Arwen wears gloves from the same grey material in this scene. I'm also in the works of procuring a resin copy of Hadhafang, her sword. I purchased a different wig for this costume as well. While unfortunately its not a lace-front wig, it is longer than the wig I used in the pictures above. Once again, ebay to the rescue: the wig was $10. I'm also hoping to line they grey dress with some dusky shade of blue like the one shown in the pictures from the costume exhibit.

Yaaaay that's it for now! See you next time I decide to waste my time & money on stuff I'm not supposed to.