Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Jedi Twi'lek Costume

As far as i can tell there are three main things to get right in order to perfect the Twi’lek Jedi costume: The Lekku, the makeup and the Jedi garb itself.

The Lekku
As i mentioned earlier, I did not make my own Lekku, but through contacts in the Rebel Legion managed to find someone who seems to have perfected the art of making them and will make them for others for a reasonable fee. The other part of the headpiece can also be the headband, and again, i resorted to purchasing a replica Aalya Secura headband and then making some minor modifications to it.
One of the things I was the happiest with was my decision to use a combination of cloth tape, and self adhesive Velcro as a means to secure the Lekku to the headband (seen above) and prevent it from sliding back, which will happen because of the weight, especially if you run (that’s another story)

The makeup
Although this might seem like it would be the easiest part to get right, its supprising how much time and effort will go into trying to get the correct colour and the correct makeup for the given situation. My first costume, the Pantoran X-wing pilot used blue Kryolan water based cosmetics, called Aqua. If you live in Melbourne, you can purchase these from their retail store at 147 Little Collins street Melbourne VIC 3000 (They used to be also known as "Backstage Makeup"). A small tub will cost $14, and a large one $33. You may want to purchase a dark colour or black should you want to highlight lips and eyes.
One of the main things you will need to weigh up is how easy or hard you will want the makeup to stay on and the type of environment you are likely to use them in. For example, the aqua variety are fine as long as its not too hot and you don’t sweat too much. Plus you can also get spray on sealer, but this is also water based and fairly expensive. As i type this I am about to embark on a journey into the oil based variety as we enter the summer months and I find the aqua solution not as good, especially on certain parts of the body.

For the Pantoran i used I use the Kryolan Aqua 093 as well as 501. For the Twi’lek, I think the 501 is way too dark, but I know a girl who uses that colour and it seems to work well for her, so i guess its a personal thing.

The Jedi Garb
It should be noted that because my costume does not have a robe it does not qualify as a formal costume for rebel legion. And the one thing i still have to figure out is how to make a robe that will also accommodate the lekku. I suspect this will be another topic one day soon.
Rather than sew the entire costume from scratch, which would probably produced a better finished product I decided that I would order a complete mace windu costume from costumebase in Singapore and try to modify that. The main reason for me doing this wasn’t so much that Im lazy and cant sew very well (although that is a factor) its because when i went on ebay looking for a Jedi belt which is something im pretty sure i couldn’t just make, i found that the cost of purchasing a belt on its own and getting the entire costume wasn’t as big a difference once shipping was included and i thought that in the worst case scenario, i could just give the costume away or modify it for my little boy to wear. However once i got it, i realised with some modifications the main robe and tunics would do nicely for my costume. There where two things that needed to be taken in. As the robe is made for a male, the front overlap has been designed to wrap over the wrong side for a female, and this needed to be taken in. Also, the collar was cut for a male with very wide shoulders and that needed adjustment also.

If you can see the photo above, i took in about an inch or in some parts more all the way around. This does cause some problems with the lines of the tunic, but i think i was able to get away with it, be it far from perfect.
The tabarbs also are a tad too wide for a female in my opinion, so these had to be narrowed by about an inch.

The next was the tabarb thing that goes under the belt. I had decided that i wanted some contrast with the traditional shades of brown and tan. So i had decided to go with a deep purple and made this from scratch.

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