Yeah, it doesn’t sound quite as good as “I was a teenage werewolf” but it was a lot of fun.  A short while back cable network Spike TV had the exclusive rights to air the Star Wars saga.  They came up with some great promotional ideas too.  Maybe you saw some of the billboards and bus ads.  My fave was the one that had an image of armored vader (I hate that I have to specify ARMORED there) with the caption “A guy can only be called ‘Annie’ so many times before he snaps.”  Awesome.

They also made a series of four television ads.  There was Vader playing golf, an angry Ewok in the park, Boba Fett at a business conference, and this one, Tusken Raiders at the office.

Out of the four spots, the Boba and the Tuskens were played by 501st members, myself included.  I’m the main Tusken getting chewed out in the spot.  Lucasfilm contacted our 501st garrison asking for these particular costumes and I answered the call.  There was an approval process with them and we were on our way.  The date for the shoot jumped around a bit as these things are want to do but I was able to wrangle my schedule to be a part of it.

The Tusken shoot was short but Boba really got a long workout.  His day was quite lengthy.  The best part happened when crew members started pulling out cameras and asking for photos with all of us.  Pretty soon it was as busy as any 501st trooping event!

I’ve since modified my prequel Tusken costume a bit but I’m proud to have this version recorded for posterity.

Star Trek came back into our lives this year for better or worse.  The great thing is that it makes this a really cool Halloween costume.  I’ve chosen one of the lesser known characters for this tutorial – the doomed red shirt.  You know the ones.  Every time a crewman you’ve never seen before beams down to a planet wearing a red shirt his end is near.  It’s as inevitable as death and taxes.  Okay, okay, I guess it IS death I’m talking about here and what better way to goth up Trek for Halloween?

There aren’t many sources to mention but the T-shirt came from ebay.  Search for Star Trek red shirt and you’ll see you have a ton of choices.  The one I got was simply the cheapest.  I should also mention that I bought the prop toys at BigBadToyStore.com.  I like BBTS for the most part and had rather buy from them than most of the bigger toy retailers.  They often run great sales but some of their merch is overpriced.  Caveat emptor.

Just remember – n ext time someone asks you to go somewhere you’ve never been and you happen to be wearing a red shirt, think twice before accepting.  I’m just saying.

Yeah, Tony. That’s right – TONY. Don’t remember a Tony in Die Hard? Well check out THIS PIC and THIS PIC. Does that jog your memory? Yeah, I don’t know why a German named Karl has a younger bro named Tony. he just does! Sometimes you gotta let this stuff wash over you, you know? Anyway, Tony makes for a very simple and very cool Halloween costume. Check out the video for more.

I’ve been meaning to upgrade my Jason Voorhees costume for a while now. I have a pretty cool Vs. hockey mask so I decided to make a Vs. machete. In this video I show you how I went about it. If you’d like to download the image of the prop I used as a guide you can get it HERE.

For the last year or so I’ve been working on a web series called Jupiter’s Ghost so I wanted to share some of the prop and costume shortcuts we used. Most of the props are modified found objects simply because it’s faster than fabricating something from scratch. Hell, they even did that for Star Wars so if it’s good enough for Lucas, it’s good enough for me. Of course, I still prefer Han shooting first so I don’t agree with Lucas on everything.