Jedi / Light Side Making a Kit Fisto Costume

My friends and I are planning on dressing up a Star Wars characters for the motor city comic con this fall. I decided to be daring and dress up as Kit Fisto, since he's been my favorite Star Wars character for a long time. It's going to be interesting seeing as I'm a RL female. I've had a little bit of experience with costume making before, I once made a gryphon costume for myself (head and all).

I decided to post my progress of making the costume in this thread... because this project is going to be a difficult one, and I may need some help/tips along the way.


I'm posting this picture of Kit to give an idea of the style I'm going for

Down to business. I just started the head this morning. Rather then going for a full head, I decided to modify a baseball cap into a cap/half mask combo (the lower half of my face will be green face paint). That way I can speak and eat properly without having to worry about taking the mask on and off. The half mask would probably be much more comfortable to wear around all day.

I have the base of the mask pretty much finished. To start with, I took an ordinary white baseball cap, chopped off the bill, and attatched my mask to the front. I sewed plastic mesh onto the sides to make it more sturdy. I used hot glue to attatch the eye ridges to the top of the eyes (those are made out of foam rubber).

Front View of the frame

Side View


I tried the base of the mask on to see how it fit. It formed snugly to my face (surprising, because I have a small head). To my surprise, it was also extremely light weight and comfortable.

Trying on the mask

Here I started attatching the green fabric to the front of the mask... as soon as I get my airbrush running, I'm going to airbrush a bit of darker green and brown onto it for color variation. The baseball cap will be painted green before I do anything else.

Frame with Green Fabric Attatched

I'm not 100% sure what I am going to use for the eyes. I'm thinking of bulging out a nylon-type material, and painting a bit of white onto it for the shine. Like I said though, I'm not really sure about that, so I'm open to suggestions.


Next step: Making his tendril-like tresses. I'm going to have my sewing machine fixed so I can actually sew them out of the same material I used for the mask. They are going to be stuffed with a beanbag-like stuffing (hopefully, if I can find some). That way, they will hand and swing naturally rather then just sit there. I am going to purposely make the front four tendrils heavier then the ones in the back, and well as add some weight to the top of the head to hopefully counterbalance the weight of the back. I am also going to airbrush each one.

In the end, I'm hoping that it's going to be easy to wear and sturdy enough to withstand the lightsaber battles that myself and my friend, Rich are probably going to have. I'm well aware that it is going to be a bit big when it's finished... I'll probably need a little help taking it on and off. The rest of the costume (Jedi Robes, hands, etc) probably won't be started until I'm finished with the head.

Other things I think I should note: I've already got the hands planned out... I'm going to buy a pair of garden gloves and paint/airbrush them the colors that I want. They'll have that cool rubbery look and feel to them. I'm also wondering what I should use a holster for my lightsaber, since there's no way in heck I'm goint to carry it around in my hands all day.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are very welcome at this point.

 

Looks like your off to a good start there!

 

My friend Donny did this for Comic Con Last Year
[image=http://www.seamesa.com/images/kit1.jpg]
[image=http://www.seamesa.com/images/kit2.jpg]

 

Looks like a solid start, can't wait to see the result.

"swguru2004":

Great costume. Is this the Rubies mask they sold some years ago?

 

Nope, Donny made that from scratch...

 

Yeah, the Rubies one is retarded. Makes me wonder why Rubies even bothers with that kind of thing.

 

Awesome mask!

 

Yeah it is isnt it! Donny is a perfectionist when he does his costumes...he missed to days of Con b/c he was putting finishin touches on it

 

I think donny is the one with the red mandalorian armour if i am not wrong. He did some great costumes

 

Yes, that would be him.

 

You might be best off buying a cheesy Rubies mask just for the eyes. I would suggest TIE pilot lenses but they wouldn't be big enough and most of them aren't curved.

Yo are off to a god start. I used a baseball cap in my Tusken mask and it works great!

Good luck and keep us posted. I have a friend that would take a great interest in this project!

~DG~

 

His mask is very cool (makes me feel a bit inferior. ) If I had lots of time, money, and Jim Henson's Creature workshop on my hands I would make a mask out of latex that would fit around the upper half of my face like a prosthetic. But since I'm a poor college student, I don't think it's going to happen.

I posted this same message on another forum, and I got a few good responses from there. Here's a few of the posts that I'm taking into serious consideration... and my responses to them:



"It's cool your trying this, he looks like a very difficult character to make a costume for! Just wondering, are you going to add something to smooth the top of the mask to the rest of your face? From what I gathered, you were just going to paint the rest of your face? It may end up looking like you've got a half mask on... Just thinking!"

Ulario, you might look around online and see if you can't find a place that sells prosthetic costumes. Like the Werewolf muzzle and hair, and you spend three hours gluing it all to your head, and it makes you look like a real werewolf? They might be able to tell you what's used, because you'd still have to have 'something' that would smooth out the lines from muzzle to face... Hmm.. I'll look around bit! *Must... be.... HELPFUL!*

Me: Yeah, I've been thinking about adding something to smooth out my mask/face. I'm not sure what, though. I used to have a place like that around my house. Unfortunately, it burned down last december. It's been making costuming much more difficult. If you find anything I can use, please let me know.



"About the only thing I can say for the tentacles/dreadlocks is that they'll need to be lightweight so that they don't accidentally pull the entire cap/headpiece off your head when you have your lightsabre battles. Only use a little bean bag filling in the ends, and then fill the rest of the tentacles with polyfill stuffing.
For eyes, check into getting those clear Christmas globe ornaments that come in halves. You can paint/tint the insides of them. I'm not sure what paints you'd use as I've never worked with them before. Sorry."


Me: You know, I wondered about the weight of the "meat dreadlocks" pulling it off my head, too. That's why I figured I'd try to balance them by making the front ones slightly heavier. Trying to make them as lightweight as possible is definately a given anyways... since if they are heavy, then it may hurt my neck by the end of the day. I think when I wear the head, I'm going to have to use bobby pins to make extra sure that it's secured to my head. Also, would stuffing them mostly with polyfill make them too stiff?

I'll have to think about using Xmas tree bulbs, since the world's largest Christmas store is a half hours drive away from my house. My only fear is if I tint them, I won't be able to see. Being able to see where I'm going is a must.




Anyways, I finished painting the cap... and I think I found what I'm going to use for the eyes. My BF found an old alien mask. The eyes on that are a bit big, so I'm going to try and trim them down to the right size. I hope it works, so I won't have to go batty thinking of something else to use. **crosses fingers**

 

I thought of that... but I don't feel like spending $50 on a crappy mask just to cut the eyes off.

 

Have you thought of looking for children's novelty sunglasses for the lenses? I don't know what is out there now, but I do remember seeing some in the past at discount stores that might have worked.

 

It's crossed my mind... but are the lenses rounded or flat?

 

Ok, here's an idea that comes from my experiences trying to make eyes for my Bossk mask. I bought one of those plastic globes from Michael's. Who knows what they're used for. Ornaments? Anyway. So I cut out circles to fit the eyeholes, blah blah blah. I made a frisket for the pupil, and painted the iris on the inside of the globe. What I WANTED to do for the pupil was put window tint in the space, but it's virtually impossible to make a flat piece concave. So I kinda cut an oval of the tint that was bigger than the opening with tabs on each side, which were glued to the inside. So it curves from left to right, but is flat up and down. Confused yet? lol

So while you can't make window tint concave, you can kinda cheat it by painting most of it black, leaving a hole in the middle for a smaller piece of tint that you can put close enough that it looks concave.

It might end up looking like crap, but it's an idea.

 

A bit off topic, but you said that you made a Bossk costume. While searching for info on eyes today, I stumblied across this link:

Clicky

Basically dragon eyes that respond to light. Something like that would probably look awesome on a dosh.

 

ULARIO-

It depends on what you can find. I bought some for a goddaughter a few years back that were rounded. We found them at Target, but I'm sure you could find something at some of the other retailers.

 

I took Dante's advice so I FINALLY figured out what I'm doing with the eyes. I bought a pair of sunglasses and I'm going to shape them to the size/shape that I want. I'll definately have pictures when I'm done.

It may be a while before I work on it again. I'm taking my sewing machine to get it fixed so I can work on the tendrils.

 

Glad you all like my costumes

 

hey,
I made a jit costume for a friend. I used the same technique on my plo koon mask. you can see the tutorial here at padawansguide.com

http://www.padawansguide.com/plokoon.shtml


maybe it gives you some ideas. We made our Kit tentacles out of cast polyfoam rubber, and they were really heavy, I'd say that is the main concern in a kit mask, the tentacle weight and how many to try and do. We wanted to do 18 but only did 16 and it was really heavy. Also the eyes in the vader voice changer mask would make excellent kit eyes, my friend had me make him wire eyes out of screen so they would'nt for up, thats another concern. hope this helps and good luck

 

excellent job on your plo koon mask!
I'd like to see some finished pics on your kit mask, pm me them.
-thanks

 

The forum Moderators suggest I place this tutorial here.

Hello all, my name is Mark Twitchell. I was the Kit Fisto at Celebration 3 that could smile in his mask. I wrote a very long tutorial on how to do Kit Fisto that is up on the grandarmy.org boards but I don?t mind giving you the abbreviated version here.

Start by buying the basic Kit Fisto mask. Yes I?m talking about the sickly yellow one with the crappy tentacles and the frown. It?s ok, because exacto knives are beautiful things.

You cut the tentacles all off at the bridge around the top that looks like his bands. You also must cut the neck off split right up the middle to just under his nose and then piece by piece, bit by bit, cut out the mouth, trying it on in many stages during the process to make sure you haven?t cut too much. But basically you leave the nose intact, cut out a lot of the cheek area as well.

Then you should have two strips of latex mask left, about 3 inches wide each that can come to meet each other at a ?seam? that meets under your chin. You then use welders glue (silver metallic tube at wal mart) to glue the two pieces together. This now leaves you with a full Fisto head with a cut out mouth that when worn, sucks up to your face and looks nearly seamless. It allows you to talk, breathe, eat drink, do whatever.

Then you sew your own tentacles. I sewed two rather long double ended tentacles, stuffed them with polyfill and hung them over my neck, hanging down the front. This not only covers the sides of the neck but also adds dimension and keeps things screen accurate.

I bought some 4 inch thick foam from a fabric store, and sculpted it to fit into the top of the mask so none of it would droop. Ideally you wear a backwards baseball cap under the whole thing for some extra support. Make sure the foam you carve fits into each semi cylindrical groove in the top of the head tapering off as you get closer to the front of the mask. It's all trial and error but it's purpose is to keep the mask comfortably elevated without having to keep lifting your neck all the time.

Leave enough extra foam jutting out from the edge of the mask where the tentacles were cut off by about an inch or so. You welders glue the foam to the mask so it stays in place. Then sew the tentacles for the head. You do this by using a measuring tape to figure out how long you want them to be. I just wore the mask while letting the measuring tape hang down from the appropriate height. Once you get the length for each one down, measure that to green fabric. I used broadcloth and it worked great but if I had to do it over again I'd try to find something a little more stretchy like the same stuff they make tights out of. Just keep in mind that that stuff is very difficult to sew with and almost impossible to just guess lengths with. It's more trial and error but I feel it would be worth it. I use the exact same stuff to do Twi' Lek heads and it looks absolutely stunning.

I measured the half circumference of what one of his tentacles would be from the mask grooves and multiplied that by 2 to get an idea of how big around the top of the tentacle would have to be in order to perfectly fit onto the mask. Use that measurement and add some seam allowance to sew each tentacle just for the mask.

You stuff each of them once they?re sewn with polyfill leaving some room at the top. Then you pull the top of the tentacles fabric over the foam that?s jutting out from your mask as if you?re pulling a sock over a foot. Then using a toothpick, welders glue the fabric around the foam, and again glue the top to the mask border. Now the hard part?s over. All you have to do now is paint the mask with some water based face paint you use for your face that doesn?t smudge. Dab it with a paper towel when you?re done and let it dry. I chose to go with a brighter green because it pops more but it's not so far off that the character isn't recognizable. It's just fun as hell. After that if you want to do markings go crazy.

The results look like this?

http://inlandempirestrikesba

 

If you made your belt, why didn't you make it more accurate? Kit's "accent belt" is much wider than with the other Jedi belts that we see in the films, at least on the more major characters.

 

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were the foremost expert on making Kit Fisto costumes yourself. My bad.

ANYWAYS

I had several different sources to go on at the time and I just decided to go with what worked best for me. Why is everyone so afraid to take any creative license when it comes to this stuff? It's like if you're not some unoriginal clone then your joy has been robbed from you. Someone had to take creative license making Episodes 2 and 3 or Anakin would just look like every other Jedi knight. Dare to be different people, come on.

My answer to the belt question is going to be the same answer I give for robes or any other minor thing. In real life people have a variety of clothes. I understand that Jedi appear a certain way in the films but those films only take place over the span of a few days tops and all of them change their looks from one film to another. Are you going to chastize me for putting pen caps on my belt because I think they're cool when he didn't wear them in the film?

If every Jedi only had one set of clothes in the closet that would mean a lot of naked laundry days. I made this costume to look badass and to have a fun time in, and I have. I've met a lot of really cool people and done a lot of great things.

Anybody else can do whatever they want, like holding two sabers at a time, one of which is not even a cannon colored blade for example.

Until I have reason not to be I will stay as laid back as this fella.

http://www.jedinet.com/prequels/news/newsimages27/kitmace.jpg